Like any good brick-and-mortar spot these days, North Beach bare-breasted joint Larry Flynt's Hustler Club has its own mobile version making the rounds in San Francisco. On Friday and Saturday nights, ladies can be spotted dancing behind plexiglass on the van's stripper pole like some kind of erotic zoo exhibit, while the van trawls for potential big spenders around nightlife-heavy corridors. During the day, however, the van has to park somewhere and lately that somewhere has been near the driver's home in the Outer Richmond district — which also happens to be within a few blocks of an elementary school and a public library.
Although the live ladies don't keep gyrating while the vehicle is parked on weekdays, the van is plastered with PG-13 images of bikini-clad women, which has set off a chorus of complaints from the neighbors. When residents near 37th and Balboa started spotting the vehicle around Lafayette Elementary school about a month ago, they turned to Richmond District Supervisor Eric Mar, best known for his work protecting families against Happy Meal toys. In this case, Mar was able to get the van towed for expired tags, only to watch it pop back up a few blocks away at 42nd and Geary.
Now that a CBS5 video report shed some light on the situation out in the avenues, Supervisor Mar (who is up for re-election this year) has found himself back in the national spotlight. The local news report has found traction amongst East Coast media outlets looking for San Francisco Next Banned Thing. And Mar doesn't disappoint — according to RichmondSF, his next piece of legislation aims to ensure that these kinds of vehicles can be towed.
As far as we can tell, the mobile peepshow is the only one of its kind in the Bay Area. Truck-mounted mobile billboards have been banned in the city for a few years now, although the city has been lax about cracking down on it.
Meanwhile, in the peanut gallery, reactions to the roving eye candy eyesore remain mixed. Aside from the obvious concerns about the legality of pole dancing inside of a moving vehicle, comments on RichmondSF run the spectrum from, "I actually feel somewhat neutral about it" to "I wonder what my daughters are thinking as they see the images of the women on this vehicle," and "put a tarp on it."
