Safe for Whom? And Whose Families? Narrative, Urban Neoliberalism, and Queer Oral History on San Francisco’s Polk Street
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11664325 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph Plaster (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 86-113 |
| Publication date | 2020-08-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Public Historian (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0272-3433 • E-ISSN: 1533-8576 |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1525/tph.2020.42.3.86 |
| OpenAlex | W3048402360 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
In this essay I reflect on my experience as director of Polk Street: Lives in Transition, a project that drew on oral histories to intervene in debates about gentrification, homelessness, sex work, queer politics, and public safety in the highly polarized setting of gentrifying San Francisco. From 2008–10, I recorded more than seventy oral histories from people experiencing the transformation of the city’s Polk Street from a working-class queer commercial district to a gentrified entertainment destination serving the city’s growing elite. Oral histories enabled me to document a local past rich in non-biological family structures, which I interpreted through public “listening parties,” professionally mediated neighborhood dialogues, a traveling multimedia exhibit, and radio documentaries. The project challenged gentrifiers’ claims to be promoting “safety” and “family” by positing alternative understandings of both concepts drawn from oral histories with transgender women, queer homeless youth, sex workers, and working-class gay men who had made Polk Street their home
Archaeology · Art · Art history · Economic growth · Gentrification · Homecoming · Media studies · Narrative · Neoliberalism (international relations · Oral history · Political science · Politics · POLK · Queer · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |