My Neighborhoods photo collaboration project, week 16: The Tenderloin.
The Tenderloin is a dense downtown neighborhood located in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, nestled between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. It encompasses about fifty square blocks and a conservative description has it bounded on the North by Post Street, on the East by Mason Street, on the South by Mission Street and on the West by Van Ness and Ninth Streets.
Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre is a striptease club at 895 O’Farrell Street. Opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell 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 lap dancing, which would become the norm in striptease clubs nationwide. 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 San Francisco!" (from Wikipedia)