Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. By Josh Sides. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 292 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-537781-1.)

Abstract

The movie character Dirty Harry as the “smut-busting vigilante” is just one of the examples of the sexual counterrevolutionaries Josh Sides identifies in his important and provocative book, Erotic City (p. 167). Sides's re search explores San Francisco since the days of the gold rush but pays particular attention to the economic and social transformations that shaped San Francisco throughout the twentieth century. Sides argues that after about 1915, and especially noticeable by the 1960s, the distinction between a private and a public sexuality began to break down, and sexual practices and opportunities that had been formerly confined to districts such as the Tenderloin and the Barbary Coast began to spread into residential and family neighborhoods. While the individuals responsible for these sexual revolutions have attracted considerable attention, the changes to public space also gave rise to sexual counterrevolutionaries who had their own ideas about the proper role of sex in society. Their attempt to reimpose a more traditional view of urban life was often violent. In other cases political struggles ensued that created the present-day balance between certain guaranteed constitutional rights and the rights of other people regarding the use and definition of neighborhood spaces. In the end, Sides challenges the contention that race was always the most important factor shaping the post-World War II city. He argues that the development of urban spaces was as likely the product of a cultural shift that grew out of these struggles over sex and morality.