Wide-Open Town

A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965

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by Nan Alamilla Boyd

University of California Press

Due/Published May 2005, 336 pages, paper

ISBN 0520244745

New in paper (S05)

Wide-Open Town traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history. Bringing to life the personalities and milieu that fueled this era, Nan Alamilla Boyd examines the culture that developed around the bar scene and homophile activism. She argues that the communities forged inside bars and taverns functioned politically and, ultimately, offered practical and ideological responses to the policing of San Francisco's queer and transgender communities. Using police and court records, oral histories, tourist literature, and manuscript collections from local and state archives, Boyd explains the phenomenal growth of San Francisco as a "wide-open town"--a town where anything goes. She also relates the early history of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement that took place in San Francisco prior to 1965.

Wide-Open Town argues that police persecution forged debates about rights and justice that transformed San Francisco's queer communities into the identity-based groups we see today. In its re-creation of bar and drag life, its portrait of central figures in the communities, and its chronicling of this period in the country's most transgressive city, Wide-Open Town offers a new chapter of American queer history.

"Boyd spins out a fascinating story of a unique community and in the process informs our understanding of the development of gay/lesbian communities and activism in places beyond San Francisco. She does this by showing the links between and relationship of cultural resistance and various forms of political organizing, and by rethinking the ways that major events in U.S. history, such as Prohibition and the Second World War, have shaped gay/lesbian history." - Leila J. Rupp

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: San Francisco Was a Wide-Open Town
Oral History: Josˇ Sarria
1. Transgender and Gay Male Cultures from the 1890s through the 1960s
Oral History: Reba Hudson
2. Lesbian Space, Lesbian Territory: San Francisco's North Beach District, 1933-1954
Oral History: Joe Baron
3. Policing Queers in the 1940s and 1950s: Harassment, Prosecution, and the Legal Defense of Gay Bars
Oral History: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
4. "A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility": San Francisco's Homophile Movements, 1953-1960
Oral History: George Mendenhall
5. Queer Cooperation and Resistance: A Gay and Lesbian Movement Comes Together in the 1960s
Conclusion: Marketing a Queer San Francisco

Appendix A: Map of North Beach Queer Bars and Restaurants, 1933-1965
Appendix B: List of Interviewees
Notes
Index