The Stroll: Inner-City Subcultures

Ellen Gee was Assistant Professor of Sociology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.

The Stroll is a vivid, descriptive portrayal of street prostitution and, to a lesser extent, escort service prostitution, in the city of Toronto. It describes life on the street — its rules of behavior, the relationships among the key players, the chaotic way of living. Interspersed throughout the book are vignettes, mostly of the prostitutes. Davidson also critiques legal attempts to deal with the problem, particularly the 1985 amendment to the Criminal Code, of which he is highly critical.

The book is not an academic, sociological analysis of street soliciting, despite the fact that the title’s reference to inner-city subcultures might lead one to that conclusion. On the first page, the author states, “I wasn’t compiling a sociological report; I was writing about the street as I had seen it and lived it.” Davidson was a taxi driver in the “tenderloin” district of Toronto for three years. As such, he was a fringe player in the world of street prostitution (indeed, one interesting feature of the book is its highlighting of the often overlooked role of the cab driver in this trade), a position which allowed him to observe first-hand life on the street without mistrust and suspicion from the key participants.

A major strength of the book is its depiction of street prostitutes. The girls/women are shown to be victims of a sexist and sex-obsessed society, but we are also led to see how they play a role in their own fates. Another important aspect of the book is its highlighting of class contradictions in our society. Most of the girls live a lifestyle that, in many ways, approximates middle-class materialistic standards. Their job is, of course, antithetical to middle-class norms, but for many of the girls/women, it is probably the only means to the trappings of a middle-class life. Another important dimension is the book’s insights into female dependency upon men, in this case pimps, which speaks to the broader issue of women’s vulnerability in contemporary society.

One weakness of the book is the style in which it was written. While it is generally clear, it is often colloquial and sometimes reads like a script from Dragnet. Also, given Davidson’s criticisms of all attempts to deal with this social problem, it would have been interesting to know what he would propose.