\u201cI would call it a theater in distress, but revivable,\u201d Gerry said. <\/p>\n
Most of the strip club\u2019s vintage memorabilia was sold off or donated to the GLBT Historical Society\u2019s archive, but the theater seats, projector room, and ground-floor stage are still there, as are several private pole-dancing rooms in the basement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774075345_45_-S3840x2560-FPNG.png\"\/)
Some pole-dancing rooms remain. Courtesy of Steven Gerry![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774075346_992_-S3840x2560-FPNG.png\"\/)
The stage and seats are also still in the building. Courtesy of Steven Gerry<\/p>\n
The famous sign, which was stripped off the Fairmont and bolted to the theater in the 1980s, has been restored and will soon be reattached, though not with the racy slogan. The red-and-white display must remain to appease preservationists, along with the 115-year-old building\u2019s faux stone facade, which was deemed historically significant to the queer community \u2014 though Gerry, as a gay man, finds that decision baffling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s horribly ugly design,\u201d he said. \u201cNo gay would approve that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gerry said there\u2019s no doubt that the theater was a cultural touchstone. He was delighted to hear John Waters name-check his listing this week during a Q&A after a screening of \u201cSerial Mom\u201d at The Castro Theatre.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe described two places in his mind that were important to him: The Castro Theatre and a parking space across from the Nob Hill Theatre, where he slept nights in his car when he first got into town,\u201d Gerry said of the filmmaker.<\/p>\n
Thus far, the agents have heard from parties interested in using the space for a traditional theater, nightclub, comedy club, or restaurant. But no strip-club operators have approached them \u2014 yet \u2014 nor have any developers or doctors looking to revive plans of creating a surgical center with condos above.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The property owner, an orthopedic surgeon who has an office around the corner, gave up on the conversion project after seven years due to the increasing cost of construction, pressure from the city to build higher and denser than he had intended, and the complexity of building out his dream surgical suites while abiding by strict preservation standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur client was not a big-time developer. He didn\u2019t have those kinds of resources,\u201d Wong said. \u201cIt\u2019s just another example of how the city just completely kills projects. You could have had at least four to five housing units, but now you have zero, because it\u2019s just untenable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Sider, chief of staff for the Planning Department, said that while the city encourages developers to maximize opportunities to create housing, the idea that the push to do so somehow slowed down the approval process \u201cis nonsense.\u201d He added that the city quickly approved a revised project for the site that didn\u2019t include housing in 2024, and that under new housing development rules, a project like the one the owner originally put forth could be approved in four months.<\/p>\n
As for the historic protection of the sign and \u201cstone\u201d facade?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s absolutely room for debate about whether PermaStone is patently ugly or \u201960s chic, or whether a historic sign is useless metal or vintage architecture, but it\u2019s tough to argue that preserving either would meaningfully impede a successful development project,\u201d Sider said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before its 50 years as a strip club and adult film venue, the Nob Hill Theatre building was a grocery store and, in the 1940s,\u00a0a jazz club called Melody Lane, where baseball legend Joe DiMaggio held court, according to Gerry. Later, it became Club Hangover, a New Orleans-style Dixieland nightclub that hosted Louis Armstrong several times in the 1950s. The owner who turned it into a strip club in the late 1960s did so only after his original plan to create a theater that screened international films failed to draw a crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one came. Nobody,\u201d Gerry said. \u201cHe decided, \u2018Well, I\u2019m going to pivot. I want to make a porn theater where the actual actors in the film will also be onstage live, performing in front of their films.\u2019 And that was the draw.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/-S3840x5625-FPNG.png\"\/)
Before its days as a strip joint, the venue was a jazz nightclub. Courtesy of Steven Gerry<\/p>\n
The venue\u2019s history has been part of the draw to those interested in making it rain there once again, including some in the LGBT community. But others are just drawn to the Nob Hill location and 5,500 square feet of space, with not a clue that the theater was internationally known for X-rated antics for half a century.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Francisco is so transient,\u201d Wong said. \u201cI\u2019ve had some young agents [tour] who had no idea that something like that even existed.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the city\u2019s part, Sider said he would be happy to see more or less any new use for the historic structure, from the approved medical project to a larger housing development, to a cultural or entertainment destination. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe would happily partner with anyone serious about reactivating this forlorn property,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, an enormous sign above the world-famous Nob Hill Theatre asked passersby to \u201cTouch our junk!\u201d But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[3010,2434,26854,388,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-229791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-commercial-real-estate","tag-lgbtq","tag-nob-hill","tag-real-estate","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}