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Big Al's

Landmarks in San FranciscoNorth Beach, San FranciscoSex industry in San Francisco
Condor Club, Big Al's, Roaring 20's, Hungry I Club
Condor Club, Big Al's, Roaring 20's, Hungry I Club

Big Al's was one of the first topless bars in San Francisco and the United States since the mid-1960s. It was the first bottomless bar in San Francisco. It is next to the Condor Club, where the strip-club phenomenon began; and as of 1991, claimed to be one of the largest porn stores in San Francisco.The adult book store closed its doors in 2009. It was later replaced by a sandwich store, and is currently a cigar shop. Both businesses kept the venue's name and iconic neon sign. A San Francisco landmark, the site has been featured in several films and TV shows, on postcards, and in tourist brochures.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Big Al's (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Big Al's
Columbus Avenue, San Francisco

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Wikipedia: Big Al'sContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 37.798 ° E -122.4066 °
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Europa hotel

Columbus Avenue 320
94133 San Francisco
California, United States
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Condor Club, Big Al's, Roaring 20's, Hungry I Club
Condor Club, Big Al's, Roaring 20's, Hungry I Club
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Condor Club
Condor Club

The Condor Club nightclub is a striptease bar or topless bar in the North Beach section of San Francisco, California The club was a small bar on the corner of Columbus and Broadway for most of the 1900s. Known as the Pisco Bar, it was purchased by Mario Puccinili who called it Pucci's House of Pisco. It was sold a couple of times and in 1958, was owned by Gino Del Prete. Pete Mattioli became Gino's partner in 1958 and promoted the club, which became a jumpin’ jivin’ entertainment center of North Beach, featuring George and Teddy and the Condors. In 1963, they hired a cocktail waitress named Carol Doda. She went on to fame wearing and dancing in the new topless swimsuit on June 19, 1964. The club has thrived since that date. The club is located at the corner of Broadway and Columbus Avenue. The large lit sign in front of the club featured a picture of Carol Doda. The sign had red lights on the image of her breasts. She was the first topless entertainer there and the most famous. Her première topless dance occurred on the evening of June 19, 1964.The club went "bottomless", with the dancers performing fully nude, on September 3, 1969. In 1972, bottomless nude dancing became illegal in establishments that served alcohol in California, but Carol Doda continued dancing there topless until 1986. A bizarre death occurred at the Condor Club in November 1983. Bouncer Jimmy Ferrozzo and his girlfriend, exotic dancer Theresa Hill, decided after hours, to have sexual intercourse on the famous white piano on which Carol Doda made her entrance, being lowered from the ceiling by cables. They accidentally hit the "on" switch, and the piano rapidly rose to the ceiling, trapping the couple. Ferrozzo was asphyxiated, while Hill survived only because she was thinner than her companion.The club closed in 2000, but soon reopened as a sports bar/bistro. Between 2005 and 2007, it was Andrew Jaeger's House of Seafood & Jazz, a branch of the owner's original restaurant in New Orleans. However, in August 2007, it once again became the Condor Club, once more featuring go-go dancers. The current Condor Club is branded as "San Francisco's Original Gentlemen's Club."

Ping Yuen
Ping Yuen

Ping Yuen and North Ping Yuen (sometimes collectively called The Pings) form a four-building public housing complex in the north end of Chinatown, San Francisco along Pacific Avenue. In total, there are 434 apartments. The three Pings on the south side of Pacific (West, Central, and East Ping Yuen) were dedicated in 1951, and the North Ping Yuen building followed a decade later in 1961. Some of the largest murals in Chinatown are painted on Ping Yuen, which are prominent landmark buildings taller than the typical two- or three-story Chinatown buildings that date back to the early 1900s. The formal effort to build Ping Yuen started in 1939 after Chinatown was called "the worst [slum] in the world"; it was the first public housing project completed in the neighborhood, and unlike the typical single room occupancy housing of Chinatown, featured private bathrooms and kitchens for each apartment when the first building opened in 1951. Like most buildings in Chinatown, it was designed by western architects with Chinese thematic elements. Although it was touted as potentially drawing more tourists to the area, it soon became known as a dangerous place, with the July 4 shooting over fireworks sales that occurred at Ping Yuen leading to the Golden Dragon massacre of 1977. The murder of Julia Wong in 1978 inspired residents to go on a rent strike, led by future mayor Ed Lee, for improvements to building maintenance and security. Ownership of Ping Yuen passed from the city to the Chinatown Community Development Center in 2016, which is continuing to work with residents' associations to improve conditions.