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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
He then moves on to the reign of terror imposed by the "Sydney Ducks," a gang of violent ex-cons from Australia who pillaged the town at will in the early 1850s -- in addition to committing innumerable murders, robberies and other crimes, on several occasions they actually burned almost the entire city down -- and laughed at the corrupt and incompetent municipal authorities. This period, which Asbury calls "the nearest approach to criminal anarchy that an American city has yet experienced," led to the formation of a vast citizen's vigilante group called the Vigilance Committee, which over the objections of corrupt politicians (as well as some honest ones fearing the consequences of such organic manifestations of the popular will) took the law into its own hands by seizing several notorious prisoners and publicly hanging them. This rough justice was applauded by the vast majority of San Franciscans, and it put an end to the state of lawlessness imposed by the Sydney Ducks and other thugs.
But San Francisco was not destined to remain sedate. As commerce boomed, "the human flotsam of the seven seas began to wash against the shores of San Francisco for the third time in its brief but eventful history." The area formerly known as Sydney-Town became known as the Barbary Coast. Located in the small area east of Chinatown, south of North Beach and north of what is now the Financial District, the Barbary Coast -- the name may have been bestowed by a sailor who thought it resembled the pirate-ridden coast of Africa -- was a veritable Zone of Misrule.
Fanned by the thirst, lust, gambling fever and extravagance of miners, adventurers and desperadoes of all stripes, and ignored or abetted by corrupt or complacent city authorities, an empire of prostitution, drinking, gambling, dancing, shanghaiing, opium smoking and all conceivable combinations thereof thrived in a few city blocks. It was, Asbury writes, "a unique criminal district that for almost 70 years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent."
It's enough to make a San Franciscan swell with civic pride. And on Asbury goes, subjecting the Coast's long and disreputable history to microscopic attention, lingering over such bottom-of-the-barrel sexual services of the day as breast fondling (10 cents for one, 15 for two) and establishments that allowed visitors, for a modest fee, to peep through a hole at the goings-on behind any door in the house. One of his most remarkable chapters concerns the common practice of shanghaiing sailors -- forcing them by trickery, alcohol, drugs and main force, onto ships headed out for long voyages.
One of the many enjoyable things about Asbury's prose is its utter lack of euphemism, its complete insensitivity to potential wounded feelings. Wondering why so many sailors submitted to the abuse meted out by touts and innkeepers, Asbury writes, "The answer probably lies in the fact that in those early days the vast majority of seamen were great stupid hulking brutes of scant sensitivity and little or no intelligence." No beating around the bush there, matey! But the Society for the Defense of the Intelligence of 19th Century Seamen will have to wait in line to file its complaint, for here is Asbury on the influx of Chinese immigrants:
"The Chinese invasion of San Francisco and California began in the summer of 1848, about five months after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort, when three frightened subjects of the Son of Heaven -- two men and a woman -- disembarked from the brig Eagle and vanished in the foothills behind Yerba Buena Cove. So far as the records show, they were the first of their race to pass through the Golden Gate, at least in modern times. Soon thereafter the yellow torrent was raging in full flood ... The deluge of yellow men reached its peak in 1870 ... the influx from the Flowery Kingdom was definitely stopped by the Scott Exclusion Act of 1888."
"[S]ubjects of the Son of Heaven"? "Yellow torrent"? "Deluge of yellow men"? "Influx from the Flowery Kingdom"? To a modern ear this sounds suspicious, if not downright racist. There's no doubt that Asbury is guilty of trying to make the Chinese exotic, and there's no doubt an element of distasteful condescension (as well as amusingly anachronistic non-PCness) in such Orientalizing. But Asbury doesn't come across as a bigot: He describes the appalling racism directed at the Chinese by whites with clear disapproval. His account of the "slaves of Chinatown" -- girls as young as 3 who were sold by their families into lifelong prostitution -- is chilling.
Perhaps the most disturbing passage in the entire book is when he cites a San Francisco Chronicle story describing how the prostitutes' owners got rid of them when they were no longer useful: after telling a girl she must die, they locked her in a small room called a "hospital" with a cup of water, a cup of rice and a small lamp. When the lamp had burned out, the "doctors" entered: usually the girl had starved to death or committed suicide, but even if she was alive when they entered, they left with a corpse.
In the conclusion of his tale, Asbury describes how the Barbary Coast was finally cleaned up by a reform-minded City Hall, lingering on in its last years as a shadow of its former self. In its pathetic end, the district attracted upper-class slummers who ventured into its diminished dance halls to gawk at a taste of "real low-life," much of it now lamentably staged for their delectation.
