Sex in the West

Ernest Bellocq

I gave the book to my ex when we split cause... it was his book, but it was one of several photo books that sorta killed me to see go out the door.

Oh my god! This is the first time I've actually heard Osso speak! Usually I run across her on acronym threads or some such thing that requires terse, monosyllabic answers. It's like the floodgates have opened. Osso speaks!

I am shocked.

Really, Gus? I have been known to blather on and on, usually in an idiosyncratically disjointed way. Remember the dlowan's digression threads on abuzz?

Yeah, she always talks like that, gus. On and on and on.

Oh yes, the good 'ol days. Where men were men, and women were....well let's say you didn't have to worry about the hookers whipping out penises.

Oh, I don't know about that.... Read Susan Lee Johnson's Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush, New york, Norton. 2000.

What an interesting group of responses. Will have to skim the books mentioned . . . must work on my book group presentation for the next couple of weeks.

The library has a new computer system that kicks you off when your hour is up. Pant! Pant! Pant! those last are not related to the subject matter of this thread.

The Seattle diversion makes me miss my close friend who was from Seattle. She died two years ago.

Thanks so much.

Now, does anyone think the movement west by opportunistic women following miners have anything to do with California evolving into a place associated with wealth and sex?

One could expand that to the Las Vegas issue. My GF's step father does 20th century American social history and is quite into the whole sex and gender things, and he would probably say that the 'wealth" aspect has more to do with women (and men) moving to a place where high wages for unskilled labour are likely to be found. This would include prostitution, which is unskilled, but can be quite deadly for the practitioner.

hobitbob,
Interesting thoughts about unskilled laborers being drawn to where wealth is being generated. Thinking of Massachusetts in the present, with people not making enough for food, shelter and gasoline by working two or three jobs, seven days a week, you wonder why that is so.

California has always been a boom-or-bust kind of place (well, once the European folk showed up, anyway). Probably wouldn't attract the most tame elements of society.

On the other hand... The Mormons were on their way to the San Francisco Bay when word reached them that Fremont had already "claimed" it. Et voila, Salt Lake City becomes the chosen stopping place. (I 'spect there are others here who can fill in details; my history is a little spotty.)

That's the one. Rick's is the topless joint whose owner requested a rezone to expand parking. Political contributions were made to several city council members, and thus was born our tempest in a teapot, Strippergate. The cute young women depicted in the cartoon were thrown out of office in Tuesday's election.

Generally, sex in the west is the same as sex in the east ... we just aren't as guilt ridden as those damn Yankees.

Sex in the west isn't the same as sex in the east? Well, I have been thinking of the Thornton Wilder play Our Town since PBS broadcast its excellent version starring Paul Newman. Someone here in the town where I live had considered presenting it and asked me if my daughter and I would be interested in playing the mother and daughter in the drama.

Although my town is very upscale seeming, Our Town drama is a little lurid. There is the former Board of Education member who moved here with her second husband -- who she began her relationship with while she was pregnant with her first husband's fourth child. she hyphenated the names of both husbands for her surname: the effect was like notches on a gun. This woman had bleached blonde hair and looked like a "little Ivy League" cheerleader. Has lots of people buffaloed. A crunchy-artsy type told me blondie was "really good at shopping" while a working class woman described her as "tall, blonde and lovely." I thought her harsh and in my head referred to her as "the raptor."