Sweet Street

Every city has a Sweet Street. You know it when you see it: the neon signs, the strip clubs, the honky-tonk bars, the sidewalks that come alive after midnight. Most people hurry past. Jack Olsen went in.

In the early 1970s, Olsen embedded himself in the bars and strip clubs of San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, spending months among the hustlers, pimps, strippers, waitresses, bartenders, bouncers, junkies, cops, and club owners who inhabited this shadow economy. He listened to their s...