Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre

 

Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre is a striptease club at 895 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco, near that city's skid-row district. Opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie (the Mitchell brothers) on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell remains one of America's oldest and most notorious adult-entertainment establishments; by 1980, the nightspot had become a major force in popularizing close-contact (i.e. the dancer sitting on the customer) lap dancing that would become the norm in strip clubs nationwide.^[1] The late journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a longtime friend of the Mitchells and frequent visitor at the club, claimed to be its night manager in 1985 and called the O'Farrell "the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America" and Playboy magazine praised it as "the place to go in S.F.!"

Operation

The O'Farrell is open six days a week and nearly every evening of the year. Customers must pay a comparatively steep admission price ($20-$50, depending on the time of day) and no alcoholic beverages are served (although a snack bar operates on the premises). The O'Farrell's main showroom is New York Live, a continuous striptease show where one performer dances on stage while the others offer lap dances by asking each customer, "Want some company?" Performers insist on substantial tips ($20 is common) for these services and there are several themed rooms, such as the Ultra Room, a peep show-type room where patrons stand in private booths watching women perform with various props or dildos; the Green Door Room (named for the Mitchells' two films, it was the principal set of the latter), with semiprivate showers with a selected model, heavy petting in the “Kissing Room” (although not all dancers make themselves available for private sessions with customers) and live onstage lesbian simulated-sex performances.

History

The theater was opened as an adult cinema by the Mitchell brothers on the site of a former two-storey Pontiac car dealership. Upstairs they produced and directed the pornographic films they showed downstairs. Later, observing that the Condor Club in North Beach had been a topless bar since 1964 with legal impunity, the Mitchells decided to make their establishment primarily a striptease club by having their carpenter build live showrooms, but sex movies continue to run at the O'Farrell.

The hit porn film Behind the Green Door premiered at the O'Farrell in 1972, with the Mitchell brothers' parents in the audience.^[2] The Mitchells produced and directed a number of others, with mixed commercial and critical success.

In the 1980s, newly elected Mayor Dianne Feinstein walked into the O'Farrell and said, "I want to check this place out." Jim Mitchell, standing in the lobby at that moment, reportedly said, "Sure, if you buy a ticket." Feinstein walked out. Soon after, raids occurred, ostensibly to restore safety and health of exotic dancers and resulted in obscenity charges' being filed against the Mitchell brothers. The Mitchells, apparently not lacking a sense of humor, changed their marquee to read, "For showtimes, call..." and displayed Feinstein's unlisted phone number. ^[3]

The theater featured sex shows on stage until the courts ordered them to discontinue doing so. As well, the dancers in New York Live originally were nude as they sat on customers' laps, but a judge instructed the O'Farrell's management to ensure that the girls at least wore brassieres and underpants. Spontaneous lesbian sex acts are still common at the O'Farrell (many of the dancers are gay or bisexual).

The Mitchell brothers supported various cartoon artists, and when the 1984 Democratic National Convention was held in San Francisco, they opened the second floor of the O'Farrell to a group of underground cartoonists covering the convention for the San Francisco Chronicle.^[4]

On February 1, 1985, the theater was raided by a dozen police officers during a performance by Marilyn Chambers (the star of Behind the Green Door); the District Attorney declined to press charges. Police later retaliated against a journalist who had suggested that the raid occurred to derail an ordinance that would have stripped police from rights to license adult theaters.^[5]

Over the years, the Mitchells had to defend themselves in some 200 court cases involving obscenity or related charges. They were always victorious, represented by aggressive counsel^[6] (Michael Kennedy, then Artie Mitchell's wife Meredith and, following her dismissal, the late Tom Steel and his law partner Nanci Clarence).

Hunter S. Thompson claimed in his book Kingdom of Fear that he had worked for a while as night manager at the club, an assertion picked up by some news articles.^[4].

In February 1991, the theater entered the news after the premeditated killing of Artie Mitchell by his brother. Michael Kennedy defended Mitchell and convinced the jury that Jim killed Artie because the latter was psychotic from drugs and had become dangerous (Artie had recently threatened to throw a Molotov cocktail into the O'Farrell; his brother/murderer, in 1996, established the "Artie Fund" to raise money for drug-abuse prevention). Jim Mitchell was sentenced to six years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and released from San Quentin after having served half his sentence, in 1997. Today his daughter Meta, 28, is the O'Farrell's general manager. (See the article on the Mitchell brothers for details.)

Following the fratricide and its legal aftermath, two Bay Area reporters, David McCumber and John Hubner, wrote books about the Mitchell brothers: X-Rated (McCumber) and Bottom Feeders (Hubner). In each book, the author portrays the O'Farrell Theatre (up until the early 1990s) as a mirrored, velvet-lined house of sleaze where perfumed, bikini-clad predators prowl the aisles, hustling greenbacks from shy, ugly customers who cannot get girls any other way. Upstairs, the managers' offices are a model of inefficiency, staffed by the brothers' boyhood friends who play pool and smoke marijuana all day. At one point, the Mitchells' Berkeley-educated business manager (in charge of selling the brothers' videos to rental outlets nationwide) is said to be, out of sheer laziness, two months late in processing orders as his frustrated customers leave phone messages by the dozen.

During the celebrations for the O'Farrell's 30-year anniversary in 1999, burlesque star Tempest Storm, by then in her 70s, danced on stage. Mayor Willie Brown declared a "Tempest Storm Day" in her honor.^[7] Marilyn Chambers returned to performed in the theatre on July 28 1999 in what Willie Brown dubbed "Marilyn Chambers Day."^[3]

In 2004, two similar San Francisco clubs (the New Century Theater and the Market Street Cinema) were visited by undercover police officers and some dancers allegedly propositioned them for prostitution. The dancers were cited for prostitution and the managers for operating a brothel. The assistant manager at the Market Street Cinema told the police to investigate the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre.^[8] All charges were later dropped; these days, the authorities seem not to mind what transpires between the customers and dancers as long as it remains discreet.^[1]

When San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women proposed in 2006 to ban private booths and rooms at adult clubs because of concerns about sexual assaults taking place there, several O'Farrell dancers spoke out against the ban.^[9]

As of 2006, Meta Mitchell continues running the O'Farrell; legal representation is provided by former San Francisco Supervisor and two-term District Attorney Terence Hallinan.^[9]

Labor disputes

Originally, the O'Farrell Theatre's management paid their dancers a flat fee per shift; in the 1980s, they replaced that fee with an hourly wage (the Federal minimum wage) but allowed the women to accept tips.^{[citation needed]} In 1994, the O'Farrell's general manager, the late Vince Stanich (who hired, scheduled and fired the strippers) created up a separate company, Dancers Guild International (DGI), and changed the dancers' status from that of paid employees to unpaid "independent contractors" whom he required to pay DGI "stage fees" of up to $300 per eight-hour shift. Many O'Farrell stripteasers considered this unfair and possibly illegal; two of them, Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce, filed a class-action lawsuit against DGI (the plaintiffs would ultimately number more than 500), arguing that Stanich's reclassification of the dancers as independent contractors was unlawful and that they were owed back wages as well as a refund of the stage fees. The case was settled in 1998; the dancers were awarded $2.85 million.^[10][3][11] Similar suits challenging independent contractor status have since been filed against numerous other strip clubs, and labor commissions as well as the courts have consistently ruled in favor of dancers and awarded past wages and stage fee reimbursements.^[1] To this day, the theater management adamantly opposes all attempts of the dancers to unionize.

After the 1998 case the O'Farrell changed the performers' payment structure again: they posted a "suggested" fee of $20 per lap dances and $40 per private performance and set a "quota" of $360 per woman per night; the women were allowed to keep half the quota plus all tips. Dancers claimed feeling pressured into paying $180 per night even if they had earned less than that, and another 370-plaintiff class-action suit began in 2002. In 2007, a judge ruled in favor of the dancers, declaring the quota system illegal and requiring the O'Farrell to pay any amounts employees could show they paid to fill their quotas, minus any amounts the employer could show the dancers had collected but failed to report. O'Farrel was also ordered to reimburse dancers for required theme-oriented costumes.^[12]

Location and murals

The theatre is located in the North-West part of the Tenderloin District, at the corner of Polk and O'Farrell street at 37°47′5.8″N, 122°25′9.5″WCoordinates: 37°47′5.8″N, 122°25′9.5″W, on the same block as the Great American Music Hall. The entire exterior west and south faces of the theater are covered with two large murals. The west wall depicts a rainforest scene, and on the south wall is an underwater scene featuring a pod of whales. These murals were painted in 1976 and 1985 by Lou Silva^[13].

Notable Dancers

• John C. Holmes, porn star, performed sex shows in the Ultra Room in the 1970s
• Marilyn Chambers, porn star, performed as headliner in early 1980s and 1999
• Megan Leigh danced as Eve in the mid-1980s; she later became a porn star and committed suicide in June of 1990
• Fallon porn star, danced in mid-1980s
• Blaze Starr famed stripper
• Tempest Storm famed stripper
• Edy Williams adult motion picture and television actress
• Annette Haven porn star
• Nina Hartley porn star
• Erica Boyer porn star, danced as Super Vixen
• Lily Burana was involved in the class action suit and wrote about her experiences as dancer at the O'Farrell in her 2001 book Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (ISBN 0-7868-6790-6).^[14]

External links

• www.ofarrell.com, the O'Farrell Theatre's official web site

References

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