Stingaree, San Diego

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. 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.

Though the name "Stingaree" (a colloquial pronunciation of "stingray") refers primarily to the period before 1916, the neighborhood's character as a red-light district lasted until its massive redevelopment in the 1980s.