The last remaining male strip club in San Francisco plans to host its last night of entertainment on Sunday, Aug. 19.
Nob Hill Theatre is among just a handful of increasingly rare adult male entertainment venues across the country. San Fran used to have a second, the Tea Room, which closed two years ago after 35 years of operation.
Nob Hill has been in operation for 50 years, and now its owners want to settle down. Proprietors Larry Hoover, 65, and Gary Luce, 63, will retire to Palm Springs. The owner of the building does not plan to continue using it as an adult entertainment venue.
The San Fran adult venue has been described as a “gay relic teetering on the edge of extinction.” It includes a 50-seat theatre, 20 video booths, a max, two private rooms for dancers and clients and private pole dance lounge.
Relatively few adult male entertainment venues still operate in the U.S., or even in Canada.
The closest adult male strip club to Charlotte is one of the nation’s most well-known — Atlanta’s Swinging Richards. Other well-known and popular clubs include Montreal’s Taboo, known for its twink dancers, and Lucky Horseshoe Lounge in Chicago’s Boystown.
Charlotte’s Chasers, located near NoDa, used to include nearly nude dancers and strippers. The club’s dancers even performed lap dances and private dances.
In 1994, new City of Charlotte zoning rules were written in such a way that Chasers could not continue its adult entertainment model. It was not granted a grandfather clause after a several-year grace period in which businesses had to comply with the new rules. Chasers’ owner sued in 2002, appealing the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case in November 2009. After the lost suit, Chasers transitioned to more fully clothed go-go dancers and added drag entertainment to its line-up.
Read more about Nob Hill Theatre from GayCities.com at gaycities.com/articles/44 and Bay Area Reporter at ebar.com/news/news//262173. Read more about Chasers’ legal saga with the City of Charlotte from qnotes at goqnotes-launch2.newspackstaging.com/4554/.