Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater San Francisco Vintage T-Shirt For Sale

MitchellBrothers O’Farrell Theater San Francisco Vintage T-Shirt

The 100% cotton men's classic tee will help you land a more structured look. It sits nicely, maintains sharp lines around the edges, and goes perfectly with layered streetwear outfits. Plus, it's extra trendy now! • 100% cotton
• Sport Grey is 90% cotton, 10% polyester
• Ash Grey is 99% cotton, 1% polyester
• Heather colors are 50% cotton, 50% polyester
• Fabric weight: 5.0–5.3 oz/yd² (170-180 g/m²)
• Open-end yarn
• Tubular fabric
• Taped neck and shoulders
• Double seam at sleeves and bottom hem
• Blank products are sourced from The United States, Mexico, Canada, The United Kingdom, Germany, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Bangladesh.This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!

Size guide

LENGTH (inches)

WIDTH (inches)

SLEEVE LENGTH (inches)

S

28

18

15 ⅝

M

29

20

17

L

30

22

18 ½

XL

31

24

20

2XL

32

26

21 ½

3XL

33

28

22 ¾

4XL

34

30

24 ¼

5XL

35

32

25 ¼

MitchellBrothers O’Farrell Theater San Francisco Vintage T-Shirt

The MitchellBrothers O'Farrell Theatre was a strip club at 895 O'Farrell Street near SanFrancisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. Having opened as an X-rated movie theaterby Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell was one of America'smost notorious adult entertainment establishments. By 1980, the nightspot hadpopularized close-contact lap dancing, which would become the norm in stripclubs nationwide. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a longtime friend of theMitchells and frequent visitor at the club went there frequently during thesummer of 1985 as part of his research for a possible book on pornography.Thompson called the O'Farrell "the Carnegie Hall of public sex inAmerica" and Playboy magazine praised it as "the place to go in SanFrancisco!"

The club closedpermanently in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after a few years ofstruggling financially.

History

The O'FarrellTheatre went through two major phases which reflected a major transition in theMitchell brothers' business model: first as a movie house to feature theiradult films, and later as a cutting-edge strip club that offeredcustomer-contact shows with strippers. Over decades, the events at theO'Farrell Theatre have been as much about the brothers' stubborn persistence inapplying legal resources to avoid prosecution by San Francisco's vice squad anddistrict attorney, as they were about their unique innovations for the eroticentertainment industry.

Adult MovieTheater

Brothers Jimand Artie Mitchell began showing hardcore pornographic films at the O'FarrellTheater in July 1969. Before they decided to open for business, the brothershad been making and selling short 15-minute pornographic films called loops,which patrons could watch for 25 cents a minute in small arcades. But thebrothers wanted to go beyond the production of short loops and move on tomaking longer features whose distribution and presentation they could alsocontrol. With the conversion of an old Pontiac automobile dealership onO'Farrell and Polk streets, they built a makeshift soundstage for filming andseating for a movie theater to provide them with that opportunity. At a rate ofone per month, they churned out featurettes, which were 30 to 60-minute filmsthat could be advertised and then shown at the O'Farrell.

But just threeweeks after the theater opened, plain-clothed police officers walked in andarrested 25-year-old James Mitchell – still a film student at San FranciscoState University – for production and exhibition of obscene material. Noteasily deterred, the brothers vowed during a press conference to fight back andhired a young but fierce lawyer named Michael John Kennedy to defend themagainst the obscenity charges. Kennedy had already started to build a nationalreputation as a resourceful political activist, and would later representTimothy Leary, Bernardine Dohrn, Cesar Chavez, and Huey Newton. With Kennedyand the First Amendment behind them, the Mitchells tenaciously defiedauthorities by continuing to show their films while being arrested dozens oftimes over the coming year.

A little morethan a year later when the first case made its way to court, the trial became alocal media circus as a flamboyant and wisecracking Kennedy irritated thedistrict attorney while he challenged the legal definition of obscenity. Aftera long trial, the jury became hopelessly deadlocked, and the brothers escapedwithout conviction. Kennedy believed that the social value of pornography wasthat it served as a shield for the rest of art and literature – meaning that ifpornography could not be censored, then other forms of art would be protectedas well.

With the adultfilm Behind the Green Door and its premier at the O'Farrell in 1972, theMitchell brothers made their first attempt at creating a feature-length adultfilm for mainstream audiences. The stigma of sex in mainstream movies had beenbreaking down with films like Last Tango in Paris, and the Mitchells decided toinvest extra time and expense into the film's making. Behind the Green Doorenjoyed a national marketing coup when it was revealed that its wholesome 19-year-oldstar, Marilyn Chambers, was the same model who appeared holding a baby on IvorySnow detergent boxes. The film was made for $60,000, grossed $2 million in itsfirst year, and later became the second highest-grossing adult film of all timewhen it made more than $50 million. With it the Mitchells became millionaires,opened another ten adult theaters, and had plenty of funds for laterexperiments at the O'Farrell when it transitioned into a cutting-edge stripclub.

In the early1970s, the theater would stop its adult features at midnight on a couple nightsa week, and then re-open as The People's Nickelodeon, along with a five-centadmission charge and free popcorn. The midnight shows were a montage of oldfilms, and live vaudeville-style entertainment provided by the Nickelettes, achorus line of outrageously funny women who would do spunky song-and-danceroutines. The audience of young hippies and a few oldsters would see moviessuch as Marx Brothers, Abbott, and Costello, Yellow Submarine or othercounter-culture favorites, while occasionally engaging in drinking, marijuana,and general carousing. Inspections and disruptions by the fire department andpolice were common, but the shows usually continued until three in the morningor later.

Strip club

Everythingchanged for the Mitchell brothers during the second half of the 1970s, when theinvention of the videocassette recorder brought about a proliferation of videorental shops. First videocassette profits of the brothers' movies began todrop, and then demand for public adult movie screenings began to plummetbecause customers could now rent movies for one dollar a night. Realizing thatthey needed a new business model for the O'Farrell Theatre, the Mitchellbrothers sent manager Vincent Stanich around the country to explore"customer-contact" shows in bars and strip clubs.

After Stanichreported back, the Mitchell brothers responded by opening three new rooms inquick succession which featured live shows by strippers: The Ultra Room, TheKopenhagen, and New York Live. In 1977 they opened the Ultra Room whichfeatured live shows of lesbian bondage. It had a floor-level stage which wassurrounded by thirty narrow booths that had glass to separate performers frompatrons. Some months later the booths' glass was taken down and enabledcustomer-contact shows. The Ultra Room's shows were very popular, cost $10,lasted for a half-hour, and were sold out on the very first day. Next to openwas The Kopenhagen which was a small room with perimeter seating that had liveshows in front of, and sometimes upon, a small audience by a pair of nakedwomen.

However, theclub's most profitable new venue was New York Live! which was a strip club actthat had a square stage and theater seating on three sides. Strippers performedthree song sets while usually being totally nude for the final song. Most ofthe other strippers who were not performing on stage were sitting naked oncustomers' laps for tips. The amount of tipping rapidly increased, employeescoined the term 'lap dancing', and the lap dance's popularity caused lines ofmen to regularly appear outside the theater's doors. The Mitchells hired newdancers as fast as they could to keep up with demand, and with the lap dance,they pioneered a strip club innovation which gained them internationalnotoriety and generated more money than their current film business.

Though theO'Farrell Theatre had successfully fought prosecution in the 1970s concerningobscenity in its films, during the 1980s it would face a new kind of threatfrom the courts about whether customer contact could be legal during liveshows, and if strippers had the right to give lap dances. A new mood came tocity hall when Dianne Feinstein became mayor following the assassination ofGeorge Moscone. As a city supervisor, Feinstein had been a strident anti-pornvoice, and then as mayor, she made it clear to her district attorney that heshould be aggressive on obscenity and porn cases. In July 1980, less than ayear after Feinstein had been elected mayor, fifteen police officers raided theO'Farrell Theatre and arrested fourteen patrons, six performers, and sevenemployees for charges related to prostitution. During a press conference, JimMitchell vowed to fight the charges and stated, "We believe we have alegally protected show under California laws. Fondling a girl's breast is notprostitution." In the first trial originating from that bust, threestrippers faced charges of committing lewd acts in public. The trial resultedin mistrial decisions for two dancers and a single conviction for one dancer –she would become the only dancer in history to ever get a rap sheet whileworking at the O'Farrell, but she did not receive jail time or a fine.

For the nexttrial of the 1980 bust, the Mitchells went back to the law office of MichaelKennedy and secured his former partner, Dennis Roberts, to represent them.Roberts cleverly found a solution that would derail all the other cases againstdancers, by using a little-known statute called the First Offender DiversionProgram. Under that diversion program, first-time offenders could at any timebefore conviction plead guilty, go into the program, and emerge without acriminal record. When Roberts first mentioned the diversion program in court, afrustrated prosecutor exclaimed: "You can't do that!" However, thejudge corrected the prosecutor in stating: "Not only can he do that, butit seems to me that what you're going to have if you keep prosecuting thesewomen is a series of cases that are going to drag on for years toward trial,and as soon as you get into trial Mr. Roberts is going to divert thesepeople." That trial was the last time any performers from the 1980 bustwould face prosecution.

In thebeginning, the dancers of New York Live were nude when they sat on customers'laps, but later in the mid-eighties, an agreement was reached between theMitchell brothers' attorneys and the district attorney which instructed theO'Farrell to ensure that the girls wear some minimal amount of clothing whilein the New York Live audience.

The Mitchellbrothers supported various cartoon artists, and when the 1984 DemocraticNational Convention was held in San Francisco, they opened the second floor ofthe O'Farrell to a group of underground cartoonists covering the convention forthe San Francisco Chronicle.

A final attemptwas made to prosecute the O'Farrell under the Feinstein administration inFebruary 1985, when the Cine-Stage was raided by a dozen police officers duringa headlining appearance by adult film star Marilyn Chambers. However, thedistrict attorney declined to press charges against Chambers, and a judgerefused to issue a critical injunction against the brothers themselves. Also atthat time, the police department had been receiving protests from the media,public, and politicians concerning multiple scandals, like when a policeacademy graduate received fellatio from a prostitute at a police academygraduation party. Furthering their problems, police officers arrested a localjournalist for walking his dog without a leash after the journalist wrotecritically of the police department following the Chambers raid. In the wake ofthe Chambers raid and scandals by the police, the Board of Supervisors voted tostrip the police department of its power to license strip clubs, and that theMitchell Brothers should be paid $14,000 for damages resulting from theChambers raid.

Over the years,the Mitchells were the defendants in over 200 court cases involving obscenityor related charges. Mostly victorious, they were represented by aggressivecounsel.

In February1991 the theater entered the news after Jim Mitchell fatally shot Artie.Michael Kennedy defended Jim Mitchell and convinced the jury that Jim killedArtie because the latter was psychotic from drugs and had become dangerous.Later in 1996, Jim established the "Artie Fund" to raise money for drugabuse prevention. Jim Mitchell was sentenced to six years in prison forvoluntary manslaughter and released from San Quentin in 1997, after havingserved half his sentence.

During thecelebrations for O’Farrell’s 30th anniversary in 1999, burlesque star TempestStorm, by then in her 70s, danced on stage. Mayor Willie Brown declared a"Tempest Storm Day" in her honor. Marilyn Chambers returned toperform in the theater on July 28, 1999, in what Willie Brown dubbed"Marilyn Chambers Day."

When SanFrancisco's Commission on the Status of Women proposed in 2006 to ban privatebooths and rooms at adult clubs because of concerns about sexual assaultstaking place there, several O'Farrell dancers spoke out against the ban.

As of 2006,Jeff Armstrong, its longtime business manager, continued running the O'Farrell;legal representation is provided by former San Francisco Supervisor andtwo-term District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

In June 2010,Jim's daughter Meta Mitchell Johnson took control of the O'Farrell as manager.

Operation

The O'FarrellTheatre was open seven days a week and nearly every evening of the year. Ageneral admission fee gave access to various themed rooms' live shows withinthe building, and no alcoholic beverages were served. The O'Farrell's mainshowroom was New York Live, a continuous striptease show with two song sets ona stage having theater seating on three sides. The Cine-Stage was a 200-seatmovie theater with a large raised stage that also presented live shows, comedyskits, and musical performances. There were several themed rooms, such as theUltra Room, a peep show-type room where patrons would stand in private boothswhile watching women perform with various props, such as dildos. The Green DoorRoom was named for the Mitchells' classic film Behind the Green Door and servedas the principal set for some movies. In the darkened Kopenhagen Lounge,customers used flashlights to watch performances by two nude dancers. All O'Farrell'smale employees, including managers, adhered to a strict dress code of blackbow-tie, white shirt, black slacks, and black shoes.

Labor disputes

Originally, theO'Farrell Theatre's management company, Cinema 7, paid their dancers a flatrate per shift and allowed them to accept tips, but in the 1980s they replacedthat payment with the federal minimum wage while still allowing the dancers toaccept tips.

In 1988, theO'Farrell's management (Cinema 7) created a separate company, Dancers GuildInternational (DGI), that would be run by Vince Stanich, and changed thedancers' status from paid employees to unpaid independent contractors who hadto pay DGI "stage fees" of up to $300 per eight-hour shift.

Many of theO'Farrell's dancers considered the O'Farrell's new policy unfair and possiblyillegal. Two of them, Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce, filed a class-actionlawsuit against DGI (the plaintiffs would ultimately number more than 500),arguing that the O'Farrell's reclassification of the dancers as independentcontractors was unlawful, and that they were owed back wages as well as arefund of the stage fees. The case was settled in 1998, and the dancers wereawarded $2.85 million. Similar suits challenging independent contractor statushave since been filed against numerous other strip clubs, and labor commissionsas well as courts have mostly ruled in favor of dancers and awarded past wagesand stage fee reimbursements. O'Farrell's management remained opposed to allattempts of their dancers to unionize.

After the 1998settlement, the O'Farrell changed the performers' payment structure again: theyposted a "suggested" fee of $20 per lap dance and $40 per privateperformance and set a quota of $360 per woman per night; the women were allowedto keep half the quota plus all tips. However, it was recorded that lap dancescost as much as $240 on some occasions. Dancers claimed feeling pressured intopaying $180 per night even if they had earned less than that amount, andanother 370-plaintiff class-action suit began in 2002. In 2007, a judge ruledin favor of the dancers, declaring the quota system illegal and requiring theO'Farrell to pay any amounts employees could show they paid to fill theirquotas, minus any amounts the employer could show the dancers had collected butfailed to report. The O'Farrell was also ordered to reimburse dancers forrequired theme-oriented costumes.

Sometime afterthe settlement of 2008, the club changed its workers' status from independentcontractors back to being paid employees who receive a minimum wage, workerscomp, and some healthcare coverage.

Location andmurals

The theatre islocated in the northwest part of the Tenderloin District, at the corner of Polkand O'Farrell Street, a few doors down from the Great American Music Hall. Theentire exterior west and south faces of the theater are covered with two largemurals. The west wall depicts a fantasy aquatic scene with flying fish, turtles,and whales with a silhouette of the San Francisco Bay in the background, and onthe south wall is an underwater scene featuring a life-sized pod of whales anddolphins. These murals were painted in 1977 (Lou Silva with Ed Monroe, DanielBurgevin, Todd Stanton, and Gary William Graham), 1983 (Lou Silva-solo), 1990by Lou Silva with the assistance of Joanne Maxwell Wittenbrook, Ed Monroe, MarkNathan Clark, and Juan "Blackwolf" Karlos, and 2011 by the Academy ofArt University. Notable visitors, while the murals were in progress, included:Melvin Belli, Marilyn Chambers, Paul Kantner, Toshiro Mifune, Huey P. Newton,Hunter S. Thompson, and Edy Williams. The murals were sponsored in theirentirety by Jim and Artie Mitchell.