This bar sucks. Enforce your no smoking rule fuckers!
This bar sucks. Enforce your no smoking rule fuckers!
When I drove up the coast from LA I was amused to realize each part of California had a different local folk crime – some practice that was formally illegal but nonetheless not considered a violation of the social order, in fact constitutive of it
LA was drunk driving, San Francisco was prostitution, the Emerald Triangle was obviously growing marijuana
Santa Cruz was smoking in bars
Tbh this is a little off, growing marijuana is almost as culturally and economically significant in LA as in the north, although the Emerald Triangle is the most productive region (also Santa Cruz is a big one). Drunk driving thing is definitely correct. The “folk crime” in San Franscico is not really prostitution imo — it’s common, but I’d say the most definitive crime in SF is street-level drug dealing.
I’ve only been to Santa Cruz once, and we didn’t go to any bars because I don’t drink. But I believe you about the smoking thing 100%, somehow it’s just correct
I mean, there were the asian gang grow houses in the Santa Clarita Valley and all, but they were still understood as outlaws, not pillars of the community.
And for SF I’m including Silicon Valley (and its heavily-male, well-paid workforces), and also things like massage parlors, whatever sort of kink sex work, and online stuff which in the ‘00s really kicked off there - escort review sites, “hobbyist” forum community, the standardization of the “RBGFE” (DFK, BBBJ, CFS, MSOG, maybe DATY I forget)
It’s not even a matter of how common it is but how acceptably it’s coded, and SF circa Occupy was the first culture I’d experienced to normalize sex work.