Sinful Spaces

Simultaneously, the opium den in colonial port cities like San Francisco, London, and Shanghai became the ultimate Orientalist fantasy of sin—a dark, languorous space of moral and physical decay, often exaggerated by sensationalist media to justify racial segregation and policing.

The paradox is this: cities that aggressively erase their sinful spaces—closing every bar, razing every adult theater, policing every unlicensed card game—often become more dangerous, not less. Sin, like water, finds a level. sinful spaces