Power Exchange SF

[+ glutes]

What is wrong with PE going to SF's Tenderloin? It would be an improvement to the current neighborhood, but would you want to pass crackheads on your way to?

 

Can you imagine if someone tried to open a sex club in the Marina? Or Pacific Heights? The neighborhood groups would blow a gasket.

 

by C.W. Nevius sfgate.com

 

But in the Tenderloin, anything goes. At least that's what everyone says.

 

When the Power Exchange, a club where patrons pay a fee to engage in or watch sex acts, moved into the old Crash Club at 34 Mason St. last week, the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District wasn't even notified. The club's workers just moved in, opened for business, and apparently assumed that no one would say a word.

 

They are in for a surprise.

 

"I don't think they realize how organized we are," said Elaine Zamora, manager of the Market/Tenderloin CBD. "First it was Pink Diamonds (a rowdy night club), then (a liquor license fight at) Tip Top Market, and the Power Exchange is next on the list."

 

Planning Department zoning administrator Lawrence Badiner says the agency will be sending a "notice of alleged violation" to the Power Exchange, questioning whether the permits are up to code. Objections from the neighbors will be part of the process.

 

"We will take that very much into account," Badiner said.

 

Vociferous complaints are already being filed.

 

"People are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," said Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and a longtime activist in the neighborhood. "We are even getting the tenants in hotels on lower Turk coming out and saying enough is enough."

 

Activists and residents banded together to document violations, lodge complaints and make videos of the wild after-hours scene at Pink Diamonds on Jones Street. After more than 70 residents gave statements to the city attorney's office last month, they believe the club will be shuttered.

 

But the real eye-opener was Thursday at the Planning Commission, when Tenderloin residents turned out for public testimony against the transfer of a liquor license from Grand Liquor - on the troubled corner of Turk and Taylor streets - to Tip Top Market, down the street.

 

Although most agreed that Grand Liquor owner Karim Rantisi was a nice enough guy, they also said that the entrance to his store had turned into an open-air drug market and magnet for muggers. Just 12 hours before he testified at the Planning Commission hearing, Tenderloin Station police Capt. Gary Jimenez says his officers made a drug bust at the corner, netting 5 grams of rock cocaine and arrested a man on parole.

 

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out," Jimenez said. "Would I like to hang around that corner? Hell, no."

 

Rantisi isn't to blame for the drug sales, any more than he is responsible for the shooting of six people - one of whom died - in front of his store this year. But the neighborhood is determined to decrease the number of liquor stores.

 

Those who spoke said they would support the new market, but not if it sells booze. Some of them even said they felt sorry for Rantisi, a hardworking Jordanian immigrant, but if the idea is to cut down on liquor licenses, the rule has to apply to everyone.

 

It's hard to ignore three hours of testimony from a neighborhood. And in what may be a tide-turning moment for the long-troubled Tenderloin, the commission rejected the liquor license 6-1.

 

Jeff Buckley, director of the Central City SRO Collaborative, helped organize the speakers before the Planning Commission hearing.

 

"Part of the reason we are doing this is to counter the image many people have of Tenderloin residents," he said.

 

That image might have been of a disorganized, indifferent group that shrugged at random violence, drug dealing and raucous clubs, but Dina Hilliard, who works with Zamora at the Community Benefits District, says that's changed.

 

"I just feel this surge of activism coming up," she said.

 

The Power Exchange should get ready to feel the surge.

 

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/12/BA8619LQ8S.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0QuNoOQNr

[+ sf westcoaster]

San Francisco'c new chief of police has targeted the Tenderloin as an area of concern. Most of the police action has been centered on dope dealing but in general there is a move to make the area less seedy, therefore, at this point in time, anything not main stream is going to be subject to examination.

[+ Lucky]

The gay vote in San Francisco means that some sort of compromise will be reached.

Frankly, the Power Exchange never did much for me. Blow Buddies was more fun.

[socalboy2283]

There actually used to be an upscale straight sex club in pacific heights called Twist I believe it was.

[+ glutes]

Anyone going to the Grand Opening?

 

Marie-France Ladine, principal of the San Francisco City Academy in the Tenderloin, got an unpleasant surprise last week. She learned that the faith-based school's new neighbor is going to be the Power Exchange sex club.

 

Sex club moving in next to K-8 school in Tenderloin:

 

"Our school is right next door," she said. "We can hear the music through the wall."

 

Actually, that music was from the previous tenant, the Pink Diamonds strip club, and if you were a world-class optimist, you might say that the Power Exchange is an improvement. Although the sex club has been controversial, it hasn't had the outbreaks of violence that made Pink Diamonds notorious.

 

"One evening we had a youth group," Ladine said. "And as soon as they got there, shots were fired. They were diving on the floor."

 

Terrance Alan, who owns the building at 220 Jones, next to the Academy, says it isn't his fault there's a school next to a club that sponsors sex between consenting patrons.

 

"An adult business has been open at that location continuously since 1952," Alan said. "The school moved in there with full knowledge that this was an adult business."

 

True, but the Tenderloin neighbors complain that there was no community outreach, no advance warning, and no chance to speak out against a sex club opening next to a school that has students from kindergarten to eighth grade.

 

"There are 3,500 kids in this community," said Ladine. "They're poor, they're scared, and a lot of them don't speak English. They have no voice."

 

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/16/BA5I1C0TL9.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0fiX4wfGa

[+ Lucky]

It's not like the kids are going to be seeing actual sex acts, and school will no doubt be out during the busiest hours of the club.

[+ Gar1eth]

It's not like the kids are going to be seeing actual sex acts, and school will no doubt be out during the busiest hours of the club.

 

I'm sorry Lucky--I just can't agree. It's the general atmosphere that Power Exchange will bring It's fine for adults if they want to go to PE--but I don't want it near a school, daycare, hospital, mental health clinic, addiction clinic, or a religious institution.

 

Gman

[J-Man]

It's been many years since I've been up that way, but isn't 220 Jones where the late, lamented (by me, anyway) Campus Theater used to be?

[socalboy2283]

I'm sorry Lucky--I just can't agree. It's the general atmosphere that Power Exchange will bring It's fine for adults if they want to go to PE--but I don't want it near a school, daycare, hospital, mental health clinic, addiction clinic, or a religious institution.

 

Gman

 

Because having consenting adults indulge in their own perversions in private is so much worse than the rampant drug use and muggings that normally inundate that neighborhood

[+ glutes]

It's been many years since I've been up that way, but isn't 220 Jones where the late, lamented (by me, anyway) Campus Theater used to be?

 

J-man, you are correct.

The school moved in after it went hetro...

[Guest TBinCHI]

I'm sorry Lucky--I just can't agree. It's the general atmosphere that Power Exchange will bring It's fine for adults if they want to go to PE--but I don't want it near a school, daycare, hospital, mental health clinic, addiction clinic, or a religious institution.

 

Gman

 

Then perhaps the school should not have opened its doors where it did. And, since when did we start regulating what could be near a hospital, mental health clinic, addiction clinic or a religious institution? Sorry but that's going WAY too far.

 

Anybody know the status of the attempts to shut it down?

[+ glutes]

Sorry but that's going WAY too far.

 

Welcome to San Francisco!