The City Aroused

Damon Scott tells a brilliant, fresh story about the origins of queer community organizing. When the post-war maritime economy and 1950s Lavender Scare transformed San Francisco’s waterfront, a racially diverse network of gay, transgender, and leather entrepreneurs built a queer nightlife district. That emergent geography became the target of the city’s redevelopment authority evictions. Scott’s original research and lively account reveal how the 1960s toolkit of urban renewal real estate strategies galvanized the queer political organizing that redefined San Francisco and the nation. ~Alison Isenberg, Princeton University, author of Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay

In The City Aroused, Damon Scott skillfully documents the experiences of those who lived through state-backed efforts to contain and then erase gay social life in mid-twentieth century San Francisco. Against the backdrop of national trends—in which ambitious redevelopment projects decimated the spaces occupied by marginalized communities in the name of modernization—Scott’s story provides a sharp-eyed spatial analysis of both queer community formation and normative power structures and policy at work in urban America. While the gay spaces of the San Francisco waterfront ultimately fell prey to the wrecking balls of urban renewal in the 1960s, Scott shows that the experience galvanized a newly politicalized queer community that became an important player in subsequent decades. ~Georgina Hickey, University of Michigan–Dearborn, author of Breaking the Gender Code: Women and Urban Public Space in the Twentieth-Century United States

The City Aroused is full of revelations . . . For readers interested in early LGBTQ history and its association with labor history and the history of development of a queer community nearly a decade before Stonewall it is essential reading. With around 40 pages of notes and quotes from sources not readily available before this book it expands knowledge of our history in a vital way. ~Bay Area Reporter