The End of San Franciscois about a young gender-bending queer male who drops out of an elite East Coast university and escapes to San Francisco, in search of a world more politically charged, sexually saturated, and ethically consistent. This is the person who will evolve into Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, infamous radical queer troublemaker, activist and agitator, community builder, and anti-assimilationist commentator. Here is the intimate, messy, and complicated story of the formation of one of the contemporary queer movement's most savvy and outrageous writers and spokespersons. Part memoir, part social history, and part elegy, The End of San Franciscomoves seamlessly between past, present, and future. Shifting between time and place, the book pivots from a circumscribed childhood spent in 1980s Washington, DC, to 1990s San Francisco--and the camaraderie and conflict found in direct-action organizing, club culture, public sex, and elective families--to New England, post-grunge Seattle, Rudy Giuliani's New York, and back to San Francisco in time to witness the birth and death of the dot-com era. Ultimately the book centers on the myths and realities of San Francisco as a refuge for radical queer visions. Using an unrestrained associative style to conjure the untidy push and pull of memory, inspiration, resistance, and loss, Sycamore exposes the tensions between idealism and critical engagement, trauma and self-actualization, and the politics, perils, and potentials of queer world-making today. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamoreis the editor of four anthologies, including Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots, That's Revolting, and Nobody Passes, and two novels.