The Piano
In 1964, Carol Doda invented the topless bar. In 1983, a bouncer died on the piano. The city made it a Legacy Business.
The corner of Broadway and Columbus in North Beach has been selling something since before most of the current buildings were there. In 1958 it was music — Bobby Freeman played there, the Righteous Brothers, a young Sly Stone. By 1964 it was something else.
On the evening of June 19, 1964, a cocktail waitress named Carol Doda walked out wearing a monokini — a topless swimsuit, a garment that had existed for approximately five minutes — and became the first topless dancer in America. The Condor Club had accidentally invented an industry.
The city of San Francisco was, predictably, fine with this.
By 1969, Doda was dancing fully nude, which led to the “bottomless” trend in North Beach until California made nude dancing illegal in bars in 1972, and everyone went back to topless. Doda danced at the Condor until 1985. They put a giant neon sign of her on the front of the building with red lights on her nipples that blinked. This sign was considered tasteful for Broadway Street.
The centerpiece of the Condor’s act was the piano. A white grand piano, suspended on cables, that lowered from the ceiling with a dancer on top. The dancer descended from above. The audience looked up. The physics of the situation took care of the rest.
The piano worked perfectly for nineteen years.
In November 1983, after closing, bouncer Jimmy Ferrozzo and his girlfriend, dancer Theresa Hill, decided to make use of the piano in a way the management had not specifically prohibited, because why would they have needed to. At some point during the proceedings, one of them hit the switch. The piano began to rise. It takes about ninety seconds for the platform to travel from floor to ceiling — ninety seconds being, it turned out, not quite enough time to recognize what was happening and get clear of it.
Jimmy was on the bottom.
Theresa survived because she was thinner.
A busboy found them in the morning.
The police report on this incident exists. I encourage you to imagine writing it.
Carol Doda was still dancing at the Condor when this happened. She continued for another two years, because what else are you going to do? The piano was presumably serviced. The club ran for another seventeen years before finally closing in 2000.
It reopened. Of course, it reopened. It’s been a sports bar, a seafood restaurant, and since 2007 it’s been the Condor Club again, advertising itself as “San Francisco’s Original Gentlemen’s Club,” which is technically accurate if you are flexible about the word “gentlemen.” In 2022 the city of San Francisco added it to the Legacy Business registry, a program designed to protect historic businesses.
The historical marker out front commemorates it as the world’s first topless and bottomless entertainment venue.
It says nothing about the piano.