\nThis 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 \u2013 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 \u201cfolk crime\u201d in San Franscico is not really prostitution imo \u2014 it\u2019s common, but I\u2019d say the most definitive crime in SF is street-level drug dealing.
I\u2019ve only been to Santa Cruz once, and we didn\u2019t go to any bars because I don\u2019t drink. But I believe you about the smoking thing 100%, somehow it\u2019s 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.
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