Tea Room Theatre Closing

One of San Francisco's last gay porn theaters is set to close this weekend.

The Tea Room Theatre, at 145 Eddy Street, which has been in business since the early 1980s and has offered customers a place to watch adult movies and performers, as well as engage in sex acts of their own, is set to close Sunday, May 15.

The theater's one of the last gay businesses in the Tenderloin district, which was once home to many gay bars and bathhouses and served as the city's gay hub, long before the Castro earned that distinction.

Steve Angeles, who's worked at the theater for several years, said Monday that he didn't know many of the details of the situation, but "the company doesn't make any money," and "the rent is very expensive."

The Tea Room tends to draw men 40 and older. Business has been steady, Angeles said, but the owner, who couldn't directly be reached for comment, hasn't been able to make a deal on the rent, which had already increased several times.

Angeles doesn't know how much the current rent is. The owner's only been signing six-month leases in recent years, he said.

Responding to many of a reporter's questions while standing behind a metal gate in the theater's lobby, Angeles said he doesn't know what will happen to the space.

The main draw has been that the theater shows "brand new movies" and has a high-definition projector, Angeles said. But another attraction has likely been the Tea Room's price. For $15 - $10 on Tuesdays - a customer could spend practically the whole day there.

Inside the theater late Monday afternoon, the small auditorium, which has about 50 seats, was practically empty. Just two men were there when a reporter arrived. Another man, who was dressed only in his underwear and apparently does triple duty as a dancer, cashier, and manager, hunched over one of the customers as they talked quietly.

Techno music played as the current movie sat frozen on the opening credits, and blinking red, green, and white lights lined the tiny wooden stage that's recently held four or five dancers a week.

In an area behind the auditorium, several metal lockers from an old hospital provided a space for men to leave their clothes, and a sex scene played out on a small TV that sat on top of a vending machine, where customers could buy potato chips and other snacks.

Up a short flight of stairs, men wandered in and out of a room lined with a wooden bench where another porn movie was showing.

One man, a 50-year-old gay San Francisco resident who didn't want his name published because "my significant other would not be happy about it," said he's come to the Tea Room for 25 years and called the theater's closing "the end of an era."

"Places like this have been dying off over the years," he said, but "there's definitely a group of people for whom this is an important place for them to express their sexuality, and you're not going to find a lot of these people on Grindr with hot torso pics."

Marco Ruelas, 60, stood near the vending machine drinking a Busch beer as moaning emanated from the movie in the other room.

Ruelas, a gay San Francisco resident, said he's "sad" about the theater closing.

"I like this place, because I feel very comfortable. It's different than other places, and I can take a beer," he said. Sometimes he lets other men jerk him off or perform oral sex on him.

He doesn't know where he'll go when the Tea Room closes. The adult bookstore near his home in the South of Market neighborhood is "dirty," Ruelas said, and many of the customers there smoke crack.

The Tea Room has five staff, said Angeles, who said he's already retired and was about to take an annual vacation "anyway," so he wasn't too upset about the job loss.

There isn't much to sell from the theater, other than the projector, he said.

Angeles said he's told some customers, many of whom come from Bay Area cities outside of San Francisco, about the closing. Their options are limited, he said.

Unlike the Tea Room, the other remaining gay porn theater - the Nob Hill, at 729 Bush Street - isn't close to a BART station, and many of the Tea Room's customers can't make the "long" walk up the hill, Angeles said.

Other businesses

The Nob Hill Theatre and other businesses in the area are hanging on for now.

Larry Hoover, one of Nob Hill's owners, said of the Tea Room, "I'm sorry to see them go."

"We're more of a trek up the hill," he said, but "we would welcome" the Tea Room's customers.

Hoover, whose theater opened in 1968 and is best known for its live performers, said the other business's closing might bring more customers to his downstairs video arcade.

He said Nob Hill's location lends itself to travelers staying in nearby hotels and businessmen in the area, among others.

"We're doing well," Hoover said. "We're hanging in there." The headline performers "really draw a nice group of people," he said. "That keeps us current on the porn scene. It's a real plus for us."

Bob Mainardi is one of the owners of the Magazine, which is at 920 Larkin Street, several blocks from the Tea Room. According to its website, Mainardi's shop specializes in "back-date magazines, ephemera and erotica."

He said business is "terrible, but we're hanging on."

The shop has been open in one location or another since 1973.

"The Internet has changed everything," Mainardi said. "Theaters, bookstores, it's all changed."