The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld by Herbert Asbury

The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld Reviews

• 
  Eli Hornyak

  Classic history. Not a lot of good stories, pretty much just talking about different brothels and dancehalls.
• 
  Melanie Spiller

  This book was published in 1933, not all that long after the Barbary Coast was shut down and modern San Francisco took its shape. In that regard, it's clearly drawn from the writer's own experiences as well as some research.
  
  I enjoyed the sense of the time that I got, going back to 1848 and as far forward as the 1920s. The book is light on contextual history, heavy on politics and prostitution. I needed a map, so I printed one from GoogleMaps, and taped it to the inside cover. I live in SF, but even so, all the street name-dropping, especially in the first quarter of the book, made me get lost. Someone less familiar with SF would have an even harder time of it.
  
  At least a half of the book discusses prostitution, which seems out of proportion somehow. It was clearly a huge way of making money in the region, but I wished for more about legitimate businesses (restaurants, rooming houses, grocery stores, etc.) and perhaps a bit more about the other illegal activities. Mugging is barely covered, and shanghaiing gets only a dozen pages or so. There was a LOT of money in the area (people were making as much as $50,000 a year in mining and mining-related industries in the 1850s and 60s), and I would have liked more about those industrious souls. The upstanding citizens of SF are discussed in their prurient interest in the bawdy houses, and a kind of tourism industry took advantage of their interest. Otherwise, how the rest of the city was affected by the Barbary Coast wasn't mentioned.
  
  Also, very little was discussed about the earthquake and fire of 1906, which, for those of us living in SF, provided a "before and after" structure to the city. Asbury focuses on who was mayor and whether that mayor was part of the prostitution problem or not, rather than taking a larger view.
  
  I've only just begun researching the area and the time period, so perhaps some of my criticisms are because the information I wanted wasn't important to this author. In general, I enjoyed the book. The writer's style was pleasant, he didn't sound lascivious even though he devotes so much attention to the bawdier side of the Barbary Coast, and I did get a strong sense of which politicians were trying to make SF a better place and which were trying to get rich off the efforts of others.
  
  I would recommend this book, even though I gave it a lowish rating.
• 
  Celeste

  This book is fantastic. Brilliantly entertaining stories, and most of them close to agreed upon historical consensus. Lurid details of the "Underbelly" of the Barbary Coast. I couldn't get enough of it, and this book launched me into an obsession with the history of San Francisco. At least a particular side of SF. Great to read in tandem with "You Can't Win", by Jack Black ...
• 
  Linda Martin

  I'm happy to report I finally finished reading this nonfiction history of a city I've spent a lot of time in. I was born nearby in Oakland and moved to San Francisco as a young adult. (I no longer live there; I've escaped to a small mountain town.)
  
  I chose to read The Barbary Coast for novel research; one of my novels takes place primarily in San Francisco in 1855 so I needed to know more about what the city was like back then.
  
  This book is a chronicle of human depravity in early San Francisco from about 1848 to 1917, in the section of the city that was known as the Barbary Coast. If you want to read about decadent dehumanizing depravity, indecent debauchery and despicable moral deficiencies, this is the book for you.
  
  The Barbary Coast started as an entertainment venue for gold rush prospectors who had left their wives, families and all pretense of moral decency behind on the East Coast. Even when the gold rush was over the money flowed in the parlor clubs, dance halls and saloons with the foundation of this district being in the countless lives of desperate prostitutes who chose that profession to escape extreme poverty and destitution. I'm not defending their actions; many if not most of them were just as morally debased as any other person spending time in the Barbary Coast.
  
  Author Herbert Asbury made a career of writing books about vice, evil and desperation in the history of major American cities: New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and this book about San Francisco. He also wrote about Carry Nation and interestingly, his memoir is titled
  Up from Methodism: A Memoir of a Man Gone to the Devil. That doesn't surprise me, as this man spent years and years researching the worst evils of big city histories, then writing about them.
  
  The five-star rating is based on the author's writing style and research skills. It is not based on my love of the book's content. These topics were shocking and distressing to me. It saddened me to learn of the depravity of so many of my fellow humans. The section on enslaved Chinese teenage prostitutes was especially heart-rending. Most of them died before the age of 25. Many of them were enslaved when they were infants and knew no other opportunities in life.
• 
  Michael Burnam-Fink

  Early San Francisco was a profoundly strange city. The Gold Rush exploded a sleepy port into an expensive haven of vice and villainy, designed to separate miners and sailors from their cash with booze, prostitution, and blunt objects. The dense area of houses of ill-repute, named the Barbary Coast, was a real-life version of that
  Simpsons song about New Orleans. Asbury's book is from 1933, and takes pretty much every lurid newspaper article from the time at face value. There are some interesting anecdotes about such characters as Dirty Tom McAlear, who would eat or drink anything for a few cents and hadn't had a bath in fifteen years, to wars between proprietors of vice and the vigilant Vigilance Committee, or the various ruses used to shanghai sailors onto new ships, but overall this book is just long, early 20th century scandalizing about admittedly very bad vice, without much of an organizing framework.
• 
  Amina Ahsan

  Great look back at the start and end of the Barbary Coast. The SF underworld. The waterfront district of SF in the 19th century, notorious for its cheap bars, nightclubs, prostitute abs gambling houses abs the high incidence of crime. As an SF resident it bring to life all the neighborhoods and streets that we are so familiar with in the 21st century.
• 
  Aaron Hertzmann

  Interesting window into the past, but also focused on the lurid and sensational at the expense of broader context. Couldn't sustain interest after 100 pages.
• 
  E.

  Beh. This is one of those books I'll pick up and put down for years to come when I'm bored or in the can or something. Someday I might finish it, or not. I don't really care either way.
  
  This isn't to say it's not interesting. It is. But it's hard to tell what is true and what is conjecture. Some interesting history in here though. SF!
• 
  Sam

  "Informal history" means that legend is mixed in with fact. Most legends are based on fact anyway....
• 
  Farrah

  SF is still fucked up. But now everyone has ironic haircuts and iphones.
• 
  Andrew

  You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
• 
  Frank

  When I first started reading this, I didn't realize that it had been written in 1933 and that the author also wrote Gangs of New York and other books detailing crime in cities such as Chicago and New Orleans. But as I started to read this, it became rather obvious that the book was written in a less politically correct era when Chinese were referred to as Celestials or Chinamen and some of the words used such as bagnio (bordello or brothel) are little used today.
  
  But overall, this is a very extensive history of San Francisco and its vices from the time of the gold rush in the 1840s up until about 1917 when the city closed most of the "bagnios" that thrived in the section of the city known as the notorious Barbary Coast. I lived in the Bay Area for about 13 years during the 80s and 90s but I was really unaware of most of its wild past. A lot of this was fascinating and perverse. Included in the history were immigrants from Australia who started some of the earliest gangs in the city and targeted much of the Latino population. The gangs were called the "Hounds" and the "Sydney Ducks" and they were instrumental in the forming of the Committee of Vigilance in 1851 to rid the city of their presence. A lot of the book focuses on the brothels and prostitutes of the era including young Chinese girls who were smuggled from China and forced to work in small "cribs" in the city. It also tells of the Chinese gangs called tongs and their wars with each other. And then there was the plight of the sailors who embarked in the city and were taken for anything they had.
  
  There was a lot of detail about various personages who played a part in the story including brothel owners, gamblers, dance-hall girls and performers, etc. Some of this in the later chapters became a little tedious and I ended up skimming some of it. Overall, I would only mildly recommend this if you are interested in the history of San Francisco when it was its wickedest...
• 
  Jonathan Fesmire

  What an incredible look at San Francisco history!
  
  From the earliest days of the California Gold Rush in 1848 until the final doors were forced shut in 1921, the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco was home to extreme crime and debauchery. Many of the city's most memorable historical figures profited from the Barbary Coast. Between it, Chinatown, and the Upper Tenderloin district, San Francisco has perhaps the most colorful history of any U.S. city.
  
  This account of that infamous district, first published in 1933, is an entertaining and sometimes shocking read.
  
  "The Barbary Coast" is one of the books I've read as research for the next book in my steampunk zombie western series, which will take place in San Francisco in late 1876 and will involve this district and many of its more dangerous inhabitants from that time. I wish I could thank Herbert Asbury for this detailed resource.
• 
  Julie

  Historical book about the Barbary Coast in San Francisco from the Gold Rush in 1849 to its demise in 1917. The first half of the book is more about the history of San Francisco itself than just the Barbary Coast—and it is a horrible history, filled with lawlessness and horrendous crimes. Early San Francisco was inhabited primarily by men, most of whom were violent and not held accountable for their crimes since the police and politicians were corrupt. Examples include young Chinese girls sold in China and shipped to prostitution houses as slaves; sailors kidnapped from their ships and drugged, then put on near-pirate ships to sail across the Pacific; houses of prostitution called cribs and cow-yards forcing girls and women to service as many as 30 to 80 men a night. Very well researched, written and detailed—including the 1906 earthquake and fire. Though, due to the intense subject matter, it was very difficult to read.
• 
  Jeff

  A fascinating, salacious read, paints early San Francisco out to be a mix of the Wild West and a Capone-esque gangster world, with at times a Dickensian black-humored twist.
  
  Caveat: the book is a time capsule of the period it describes, but also of the period in which it was written. The author puts forth what in his time must have been a notably progressive take on his subject matter, but ultimately can't help sounding like a product of his time. Just something to be aware of.
  
  Summary: recommended reading if you enjoy true crime, mob, or wild west stories. I wish Scorsese would make a movie out of this like he did the author's other book, Gangs of New York.
• 
  Steve Scott

  I love Asbury’s books.
  
  Critics have said he embellished his works, but it appears he researched them. No doubt many of the tales grew with the telling and were magnified by the time Asbury got to them.
  
  He chronicles the vice of San Francisco from the Gold Rush days up to ten years past the 1906 earthquake. He writes of racism, child exploitation, violence...all fascinating and tragic accounts of the era that explode “Golden Age” myths of modern times.
  
  Sometimes the stories are darkly funny as well. No spoilers.
  
  
• 
  Jimmacc

  When I purchased the book, I was expecting a story along the lines of “gangs of New York” movie. This book is a piece by piece history of the Barbary Coast from beginning to end. Really interesting descriptions of the…depravity/lawlessness/…? That occurred in that area starting off with the gold rush and then through the early 1900’s. The influence of nyc gangs, the life of sailors, continually intricate ways of ripping off or sterling people.
  
  On the dry side, but nonetheless a worthwhile read.
• 
  Susy

  I did enjoy finding out some history I did not know about my home town of 22 years but this book was often painful to read. Granted it was written in the early 1930s but it was so full of racism and sexism - ouch.
• 
  Kat Cui

  Very um... lurid as advertised/promised? I feel like Herbert would b hella mad that Chesa Boudin is DA now. I was happy to have reached the end of this book which is never a good sign. Literally the only humanizing excerpt from this book comes three pages to the end
• 
  Michael Flick

  The history of commercialized vice in San Francisco from the Gold Rush of 1849 to its end in 1921—replaced, of course, by today’s freestyle vice, not as flamboyant or lucrative, but we enjoy what’s available nonetheless.
• 
  Sierra

  It was written in 1933 so you have to keep that in mind, but I appreciated the non-fiction account of life in early San Francisco. It added much to a historical fiction story I just finished.
• 
  Jo Ann

  Wow! When I'm in San Francisco in a few weeks, I'd like to check out some of the addresses where the historical underground of this magnificent city began! Recommended to me by Wes Egan...
• 
  Heidi

  So. Much. Prostitution.
  
  An interesting history, but recounting the history of every single bar and brothel in the city got old.