Laguerre argues that the American city runs on a second set of practices that leave no trace in its formal records, and that these can be described as systematically as its institutions. The San Francisco and Oakland metropolitan area serves as the site, chosen partly because residents cross the town boundaries so freely that the region is itself informally bounded. Informality is treated as one pole of a continuum, and split into raw and cooked varieties according to how far dominant practice has already shaped it. The chapters move from the production of informal space, through gardeners, mechanics, carpenters, street vendors, flea markets and the subcontracted home workers who do the labour behind visible storefronts, to neighbourhood parapolitical groups and the mayor's office, cliques inside firms, home health care and interethnic talk. The same practices that keep the formal system running quietly distribute access to it unevenly, by group and by gender.