The Stingaree was a neighborhood in downtown San Diego from the boom of the 1880s until it was demolished during a vice eradication campaign of 1916. It was the site of the city's Chinatown.[1] Because of this, and it's working class origins, it had a reputation as the home to the city's "undesirables", including prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and gamblers. Additionally, the neighborhood was home to many other working-class citizens, and was in the center of a wider blue-collar residential area encompassing much of the city south of Broadway.[2]
Though the name "Stingaree" (a colloquial pronunciation of "stingray") refers primarily to the period before 1916, the neighborhood's character as a vice district lasted until its massive redevelopment in the 1980s.