Ownership

Who owns San Francisco's eight strip clubs

Behind the names on Broadway and Market Street is one small group of owners, a Seattle bookkeeper and a stack of trusts and shell companies. The filings show how it fits together.

Built from Cal ABC licence files, state corporate registries, assessor records and bankruptcy schedules. Scroll to follow the money from the club to the people.

Serves alcohol, toplessFully nude, no licenceClosedStated in a filingArithmetic or allegation

North Beach

Five of San Francisco's eight open strip clubs sit within two blocks of Broadway and Columbus: the Condor, the Hustler Club, Vanity, Centerfolds and Garden of Eden. Open clubs are marked in grey, closed ones in red. Roaring 20's, next door to the Condor, closed years ago; Little Darlings ran out of the Condor's own building at 312 Columbus.

South of Broadway

The other three open clubs are spread across the Tenderloin and South of Market. The Crazy Horse is at 980 Market Street; a block west is the site of the Market Street Cinema, which closed in 2013 and has since been demolished. The New Century is two blocks north on Larkin. The Gold Club is on Howard Street, a few blocks east, and is the only one of the four with a liquor licence.

The whole city

Pulled back, the whole set: seven buildings in two blocks of North Beach, four more strung along Market Street and Howard. Of the eight clubs that are open, four serve alcohol and four are fully nude.

From map to chart

Lined up, the same eight clubs become the bottom row of an ownership chart. Everything above them is the paperwork between the name on the door and the people who profit.

One company per club

Each club is run by its own company. The four licensed clubs had to file ownership questionnaires with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The other four did not, so for them the public record stops at the company name and its manager.

S.A.W. Entertainment

The Condor and the Hustler Club share one licensee, S.A.W. Entertainment Ltd, a California corporation formed in 1982. Its stock has changed hands six times.

Who holds the S.A.W. stock

The share register filed with ABC in 2022 puts the stock in three revocable trusts: Carouba 58.3 percent, Jason Mohney 33.3 percent, Eric Forbes 8.3 percent. The last figure is a quarter of Roger Forbes's former third, bought as part of a $900,000 sale in December 2021.

Gold Club

Gold Club SF LLC is 65 percent owned by JRJ-SF, a Nevada LLC with the same three seats: the Carouba trust, the Jason Mohney trust and Frisco & Seattle Group, which is itself 75 percent Carouba trust and 25 percent Eric Forbes trust. Two Massachusetts investors, John Basile and Richard Furnelli, hold the other 35 percent through Alaska LLCs; the 2022 form was hand-corrected to swap their shares.

Vanity

Vanity's 2025 licence went to BT California LLC, split in thirds between the Carouba trust, Frisco & Seattle Group and JSSMB, a Nevada LLC of four Mohneys: Jason 40 percent, Mary Beth, Sharla and Stephanie Couch 20 percent each.

The people

Three people sit behind every licensed club: Joseph Carouba, Jason Mohney and Eric Forbes. At S.A.W. and at BT their look-through split is about 7 : 4 : 1. Carouba is also the manager of record of every company on this page, including the four unlicensed clubs, whose owners appear in no filing.

The buildings

Six of the eight buildings are owned by LLCs named after their street addresses. Their only person on file is the manager: Carouba for the Gold Club, Vanity, Crazy Horse and New Century buildings, Eric Forbes for the Hustler Club and Garden of Eden buildings. The Condor and Centerfolds rent from outside landlords.

The back office

Two more companies sit alongside. SFBSC Management, run by Carouba, was the lead defendant in the 2014 dancers' class action as manager of the clubs. Consolidated Bookkeeping in Seattle, run by Eric Forbes, keeps the books; its phone number appears on the bookkeeper's line, BT California's headquarters and two landlord LLCs.

Closed clubs that still matter

Little Darlings, Market Street Cinema and Roaring 20's are closed, but Little Darlings of SF LLC is the sworn 100 percent owner of New Century's company and was sole member of the Market Street Cinema company through its 2006 bankruptcy.

The whole web

Every company, trust, building and person, with the connections the filings support. Click a club to trace its owners upward, or a person to trace everything they reach downward. Percentages are the figures printed on the filings; dashed lines are arithmetic.

What the paper trail does not show

The four fully nude clubs have no liquor licence and so no ownership form. The registry shows only that Joseph Carouba manages their companies. New Century's company swore in its 2022 bankruptcy that it is wholly owned by Little Darlings of SF, LLC, whose owners are not on file. In 1998 an ABC investigator wrote that Harry Mohney and Roger Forbes each held half of the Centerfolds and Garden of Eden LLCs. That is an allegation, and both men are absent from every current filing.

Open threads

Harry Mohney is barred by condition from the Hustler Club and Condor licences; the 2025 Vanity licence carries no such bar. The ABC lookup for the Condor still lists Roger Forbes, who sold out in 2021. JSSMB is inactive in the Nevada registry yet signed a 2024 questionnaire. Who owns the six landlord LLCs, and who owns Little Darlings of SF, are answerable from Nevada annual lists and the Assessor-Recorder, and have not been pulled.

Sources

Cal ABC files 47-133379, 48-255351, 47-406226, 47-665887 (ownership questionnaires 2022 and Dec 2024); S.A.W. ABC-243 share register; OpenCorporates officer records, July 2026; PropertyShark parcel owners; In re Bijou-Century, N.D. Cal. Bankr. 22-30126; Roes v. SFBSC Management, N.D. Cal. 3:14-cv-03616; DataSF business registrations, September 2026. Percentages on edges are as printed on the filings; the alcohol / fully nude split is inferred from licence status. Map: OpenFreeMap, OpenStreetMap contributors; property outlines are Assessor parcels via DataSF (Parcels, Active and Retired); the Little Darlings outline is approximate (dashed) and the Market Street Cinema outline is the 1075 Market Street building that replaced it. Club photographs supplied by the author.