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SoMa
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At least twice a year, some self-important malcontent - “ usually an underpaid editor at the less popular of your city’s two weeklies - “ runs a “death of a neighborhood” column. The usual suspects are rounded up: Starbucks, luxury condos, the latest acronym for urban bourgeois (pomo-bobo?). But those in the know, know better. Despite demographic shifts, true subcultures always manage to thrive, in spite of, or sometimes because of, their surroundings.
In his frank portrait of San Francisco’s paradoxical South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, author Kemble Scott cannily unearths what lies beneath the gentrified surface. It’s a world of private sex clubs and niche fetishes, where savvy kept boys and clueless suburbanites are competitors in the hunt for the next high. The Armistead Maupin of the sexual underworld, Mr. Scott weaves disparate tales of dealers, con artists, exhibitionists and deviants of all varieties, to shocking and darkly hilarious ends. SoMa reveals the true nature of South of Market - “ raw, gleefully twisted, and immune to the khaki-clad dot com culture that rose and fell around it. SoMa, by Kemble Scott. Kensington Trade Press, February, 2007.
-HEATHER WAGNER
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