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While most of the hardcore porn theatres that infested inner cities were demolished or reclaimed for more respectable uses in the late 80’s, San Francisco’s Mini Adult Theater continued to spin on in time capsule fashion through the 90’s, surviving to the cusp of the new millennium, a lost lonesome relic from the days when the town resembled an open-air bordello.
The humble two-story structure at the corner of Jones and Golden Gate in which it resided had lots of history behind it, having been built in 1918, but there was little evidence that it was ever intended as a theatre building and displayed nary a trace of that kind of architectural character. The Mini Adult was no movie palace. Rather it survived a low-key existence here at the scariest intersection of San Francisco’s hairiest neighbourhood, the Tenderloin. Outside a ragtag army of homeless people camped on the sidewalks in filthy sleeping bags and waited in long line on Jones, towards Market, to get a free meal. Smeared with graffiti, the Mini Adult was a product of this neighbourhood, an embodiment of all that was low-down and lawless about the proverbial inner city American porn theatre. And it supplied the classic product in spades: an endless glut of scratchy, splicy early-seventies 16mmm hardcore porn films served up in appalling viewing conditions to a monumentally uncomplaining and usually otherwise engaged audience.
The following impressions are based on a series of visits I made to the theatre circa 1992.

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Pick a pleasant sunny day to visit the Mini Adult to add to the jarring contrast of the vile darkness into which you are about to be plunged.
As you approach the battered wooden door you notice crude hand-drawn posters of early-seventies porn films that no one ever heard of taped inside grubby poster cases, the glass long ago smashed out. Although the posters are periodically changed you can be sure these aren’t the films that are going to be playing today. It’s academic anyway since all the lead footage has flopped endlessly on unattended projectors, Green Parrot style, and none of the films have titles anymore. The posters themselves are curious. Consisting of simple free drawn imagery, they sport crude hand lettering and resemble artefacts from an exhibit on Art Brut. The theatre owner could have had his kids draw these. They reflect the fact that at the very beginning, in 1969, hardcore porn was a poverty-stricken enterprise. In a few years it became big business and set out making billions of dollars, but none of that money or glamour has rubbed off on the Mini Adult. The atmosphere and the films themselves are straight out of the primal dawn of 1969 when it was all just a bunch of dirty hippies trying to get dope money. Here time stands still.
You pass through the door and pause at the glass encased ticket counter to the right, its surfaces streaked with greasy desperate fingerprints and the suds of dried whiskey. An Oriental guy takes your 3 bucks and hands over your stub with hardly a glance. His hands are dirty and you can see over his shoulder that he is repairing one of the two junky Bell & Howell 16mm projectors used here. In fact the ticket alcove doubles as the projection booth.
You push through the curtain hanging over the doorway and enter total darkness … bumping into an immobile cluster of men gathered just on the other side. No one says anything. Words, even words of surprise or anger when you step on someone’s foot, are never uttered here. Nobody has a voice or a face here in the Mini Adult.
Carefully feeling your way down the rows of seats so that you don’t end up sitting on someone’s lap, you find a place. The flickering projector beam dominates the atmosphere. After a while your eyes adjust to the darkness and you realize that a theatre that was almost full when you entered is now almost empty, the density and deployment of the audience changing rapidly here and without any connection to the movie.
The Mini Adult is nothing if not atmosphere. In contrast to previously profiled theatres like The Met, The Variety Photo Plays and The Pilgrim which were characterized by constant rustling sounds, The Mini Adult is a veritable sanctum of deathly silence. All the better to hear the clatter of the junky 16mm Bell-and-Howell projectors and the bang of the occasional empty beer can tossed onto the grungy concrete floor by a drunken patron who couldn’t possibly care less.
The projectors are the key to the ambiance. Placed behind portals crudely cut into the back wall, their beams of light pierce a darkness laced with reefer and tobacco smoke at about head level. This guarantees that about every two minutes the blank, glassy-eyed mug of a wandering patron throws a silhouette up onto the screen. No one ever complains. Customers roam about and stand in front of the movie with a frequency and obliviousness that suggests brain damage, while behind them loom lurid, grainy, reddish images of guys with greasy beards and massive sideburns screwing skinny hippie chicks in unappetising close-up. Ugh! … Occasionally somebody will emerge out of the lavatory after blowing crack and stumble into the glare of the projector beam with nose twitching and bloodshot eyeballs rolling, only to falter clumsily into the front row of patrons who remain uncannily silent as they skilfully slip out of his slippery epileptic embrace.
A lot of elderly men wander about in confusion, as if they are completely oblivious they are in a movie theatre – even though the beam of the projector is shining directly into their blank faces. They come from the many fleabag residential hotels for which the Tenderloin has been known for decades. But youth has also left its mark here: legend has it that this was the favoured hangout of local gay filmmaker and enfant terrible Curt McDowell (footnote his films, and RIP 1987) in his heyday, and many young homies and punks are also in attendance.
Viewing conditions here are the worst observed anywhere. Giant hairy bobbing insect shapes attack the one-screen fornicators as gobs of crud and hair work their way through the never-cleaned rat’s nest projectors and jam in the film gate. The screen itself is nothing more than a battered sheet of plywood, while seating consists of rows of hard old-fashioned wooden movie chairs that better resemble church pews and might well date back to the forties.
The dialogue of the films is absolutely incomprehensible, and the easy-listening music that predominates on the soundtracks is distorted and wobbly beyond belief, like something coming from underwater. They keep the projectors running AT ALL TIMES because the last thing anybody ever wants to happen is for the lights to come on, and when splices break and the film suddenly stops patrons are left to sit for long periods in total darkness. Movies start and end without any warning, logic or continuity. Often you’ll be waiting for the second half of a movie to come on and they’ll just start up another spool of a different movie and you realize it doesn’t matter anyway.
All the above factors combine to make you doubt your own senses in a style somewhat similar to The Pilgrim but without its majestic spatial extremes. This is indeed a small room and probably couldn’t seat more than 50, but that’s not a problem because at any given time only half the audience is in their seats. It is hard to think of the mini-adult as a movie theatre at all. From what one can discern through the murkiness it contains large empty floor spaces that somehow reek of both urine and disinfectant. You could die in one of those far back corners and your body might never be found.
It is a classic one-man operation, but where is that one man? The ticket-taker/projectionist is never ever seen in the auditorium, and I have never observed anyone who might be even remotely employed there, with the possible exception of a black fellow I once witnessed dragging around a plastic garbage bag full of empties. He would fish out empty beer cans from between the seats, loudly crush them and then toss them into the bag. Approaching two musky forms engaged in a sex act, he simply looked around them for empties and continued on without a word.
It seems like the frailest of business enterprises: in five minutes the place could be completely cleaned out and the room returned to what it probably was before; a mouse-infested storage room for sacks of rice or boxes of stolen car parts. It has the smell of the illegal and temporary about it but it has been operating for decades!
The Mini Adult is so far below the authorities’ radar and located in a neighbourhood with so many worse problems that it managed to stay in business longer than any other such establishment, but in an almost invisible manner. The only people who know about it are the people who go to it (and a few people who have read my article). In a city where decadent punk, gay, lesbian and neo-vampire performance artists covered in piercings and tattoos seek to provoke and achieve new levels of shock, the wildest, most Dada little joint remains completely unknown. Sleaze is in style in S.F., but the Mini Adult is unto itself.
The only time I heard a spoken word in the place, the sound of a human voice, was when I had treated two friends from Detroit to an afternoon there and we were in the process of leaving. “Goodbye, officers!” rang out a sarcastic salutation as we passed through the tattered curtain over the exit door and back into the brutal blinding sunlight of the ‘real world.
There were no start times, there were no intermissions … there was no beginning, there was no end. No one was in charge. The darkness was absolute, eternal and merciful. People only feared one thing: the day they turned the lights up at the Mini Adult.

Actually there was an end and one day they did turn the lights up. This happened in 2001 when the Mini Adult came to a sudden and unannounced halt, the building having been bought by the Jack Sen Benevolent Association which had other plans for it. Soon enough they closed down the cinema and reconverted it into a sweatshop. They have remained there to this day. K & P sewing company operates the ground floor where the theatre was and Chinese women can be seen at their machines through what used to be the main door to the cinema. At the building’s east end is a sign over another door for Five Fortunes Sewing Co.
Dismantling the cinema was easy, and it probably did only take five minute, most of which was likely spent shovelling up the last of the returnable cans. In one fell swoop all the films and posters and photo stills were tossed into a nearby dumpster, only to be immediately fished out again by the artists, punks and slackers who lived in the neighbourhood. Some of the films ended up at the now defunct Werepad, an art/film collective over on 3rd Street at the foot of Potrero Hill. They put a few on their projector and quickly deemed them utterly unwatchable. But of course: when viewed in the Mini Adult the films had a certain absurd charm, but when taken out of that environment and exposed to a more dispassionate and objective scrutiny they were impossible to suffer. The films had always been the least part of the experience.

Postscript: News of the demise of the Mini-Adult reached me on a far distant shore, as I had moved to Denmark in 1993. I maintained contact with friends in San Francisco, and in 1998 I received a letter postmarked December 1998 from the filmmaker, Sarah Jacobson (footnote films, & death) who was aware of my article about the theatre, (Footnote that it was pub in Celluloidall & Zine Reader) essentially the piece you’ve just pursued, sans ending which had yet to occur. I here reprint the part of her letter which refers to the theatre and her visits in the fall of 1998. I think it really adds a new and personal dimension to the history of the place.

Dear Jack,

I’ve been meaning to write you for a while now. You remember the article you wrote about the 24-hour Mini Adult? You can’t imagine how influential that article has been on my life! About a month and a half ago, I was at Jacques Boyreau’s infamous Werepad and I struck up a conversation with this really cute guy about your article. Both of us have always wanted to check out the Mini Adult Theater but didn’t want to go alone and we could never find anyone to go with. I told this guy, Patrick, that I was dying to go and I gave him my phone number. Unlike most other people who say they are interested in going but never get up the guts, Patrick actually called me and we set up a date for Tuesday.
After seeing a double feature of Blade and Snake Eyes at the Saint Francis, accompanied by much evil weed, mixed Club drinks and malt liquor, we hit a 24 hour diner (the Pinecrest), passed a crime scene where some guy in a BMW had been shot dead by the cops, went karaoke-ing and then ended up at the mysterious 24 hour Mini Adult.
There was a beeping sound as we entered the lobby, not unlike a deli-liquor store. Then, as we passed through the subway turnstile there was huge buzzer sound that could wake the dead. I don’t know how recently you’ve been there, but instead of the drop dead quiet atmosphere it was like a party for homeless crack addicts who ran back and forth between the hallway to the bathroom and the theatre, changing seats often. Some guys were jerking off but most everyone was smoking crack as me and Patrick smoke pot. The sound of the movie was unintelligible. One of the films we saw, California Girls, (which I found out my best friend had on tape because she’s a roller derby freak and this film has a roller-skating plot!) starred John Holmes, who looks just like Jacques Boyreau! When Patrick took me home, we realized we had hung out for 10 hours and not been bored once.
The next day Patrick went to New Jersey for 10 days but the day after he got back he called me and we went to the Mini Adult again with his friend Ericka. Then, later in the week, we went to a press screening of Slam at the Embarcadero and wandered over to the Mini Adult. An older guy named Hampton kept coming over to tell us he was going to dress up as Mayor Willie Brown for Halloween. Each time he came over he kept touching my arm more and more so I grabbed onto Patrick’s arm to make the guy back off. When Hampton finally left, instead of letting go, Patrick leaned over and kissed me! Our first kiss at the Mini Adult, I can think of nothing more romantic. Since then it has been the best relationship I have ever had and I’m convinced it’s because our first date was at the Mini Adult. As we commented on the films, we realized we have the exact same taste in porn which is a nice bond for any couple.
Now we are committed to studying the setting of the mini Adult at all hours and situations. We finally ventured back to the hallway where a group of guys were listening to the World Series on a radio (I thought it was a loud party from next door)! We went on Halloween, where it was crazier than usual, complete with a big fat black guy in the back with a full clown suit on including the white face make-up, big shoes and big green fright wig. We take visiting filmmakers who are brave enough to go. We have yet to go during the daytime because we are too lazy so far, but we will.
It’s funny because almost everyone is there to have a place to go, 5 bucks for all night. But me and Patrick just go for fun and to make out. I get the feeling that the other patrons think we’re perverts for going to a porno movie to make out, but I’ve noticed the occasional crack whore sucking some guy’s dick a couple times so maybe I’m just imagining the disapproval. In fact on Halloween some young homeboy came in with his bicycle, who we dubbed “The King of the Mini Adult” from his cocky attitude. Some woman was listening to her walkman, blasted so loud it drowned out the feeble sound of the movie. She talked out loud to herself and whoever was in her way in between bouts of sitting on her boyfriend’s lap and kissing and singing. Finally The King started screaming, “Bitch, shut the fuck up! People are here to relax and maybe get their dick sucked, they don’t want to hear your shit!” Maybe you had to be there, but it was really funny. Every time I put down my 5 bucks I bug the Korean guy behind the glass about fixing the sound. He always waves me away.

ADDENDUM: The BUT (“B-movies, Underground & Trash) festival of Breda, Holland has announced their intention to build a facsimile of the Mini Adult in their spacious festival hall. In a tribute to all that was extraordinary about the Mini Adult experience, they plan recreate the interior of the cinema down the smells, feels, films and beer cans on the floor. The Mini Adult lives!

Screening:
Permanent installation during BUTFF afterwards in Breda Photo expo 26 sept. till 2 nov. 2008, same location