Sex Club to Replace Infamous Strip Club

Out with stripping, in with sex...

​
Entertainment Commissioner Terrance Alan owns the 220 Jones Street building, and was also a co-owner of Pink Diamonds. (Alan still disputes that he was an owner; "If I had been involved in the management of that business, it would have closed long ago," he said in a phone interview today.) The club had been linked to numerous shootings in the Tenderloin, and had also been host to drug deals and prostitution, according to a complaint filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Last June, a patron was killed on the sidewalk outside of the club. In October, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch ordered the club to shut down for a year.

Meanwhile, the Power Exchange sex club had been forced out of its previous neighborhood  by neighborhood activists. The club moved to the Tenderloin and re-opened at 34 Mason Street, but had to shut down again in November when its new building didn't meet fire inspection standards, owner Mike Powers told SF Weekly in a phone interview.

Then Powers and Alan bumped into each other at a downtown bank. "We used to be partners many years ago, [at] a magazine called Fetish," said Powers, an erstwhile mayoral candidate. The twosome were chatting about their lives, and "next thing you know," Powers said, they had realized they might be able to solve each others' problems.

The Power Exchange has already moved into 220 Jones Street, and, depending on the results of an inspection, the club could be open "as early as tomorrow," Powers said. For now, the lease is month-to-month, but "I think Power Exchange is probably going to have a new long-term home here," Powers told us.

While the neighbors who succeeded in shutting out the Power Exchange from a location on Gough Street had complained about the club's rowdy patrons, Powers said he thought his operation would prove to be much less of a headache to Alan than Pink Diamonds. "What was there was just not being run professionally," he said.

"[Alan and I] have a solid trust for one another," Powers told us. "He knows I run a very tight, clean ship."

Alan told SF Weekly that he has known Powers for 15 years. "My previous tenant has created quite a nightmare for both the San Francisco Police Department, the city attorney and myself," Alan said. 

"That building has been in the adult entertainment business since 1952, and I'm pleased that someone I have great confidence in, with a track record, is going to take up the management of it."