Many years after a bouncer was infamously killed by a piano throughout a sexual interlude, tragedy has as soon as once more struck the legendary Condor Membership in San Francisco. The overall supervisor of the historic topless bar was lately shot exterior of his Santa Rosa dwelling, and his killer, for now, stays a thriller.
The Santa Rosa Police Division is investigating the murder of Mark Calcagni, 60, who was discovered mendacity unresponsive on Brookwood Avenue close to Birdsfoot Approach at 6:25 a.m. Friday. His was shot a number of instances, and the motive behind the assault is unknown.
On Wednesday, the division was nonetheless trying to find a suspect and a homicide weapon, stated division spokesperson Sgt. Patricia Seffens. Anybody with details about the incident, or close by residents with safety digicam footage, are urged to return ahead.
The Condor Membership acknowledged “the tragic loss of life of our beloved common supervisor Mark Calcagni” in a Wednesday assertion, saying that his sudden passing has been met with shock and sorrow.
“Mark’s reminiscence — his heat, generosity and dedication to neighborhood — will endure,” stated the membership. “On behalf of everybody at Condor Membership, we ship our deepest condolences and stand in solidarity with these mourning this extraordinary loss.”
The Condor Membership, which started offering grownup leisure in 1964, payments itself because the oldest topless bar in America and the birthplace of topless leisure.
It has collected its fair proportion of colourful tales over the course of six a long time in enterprise.
Maybe most notable is the notorious 1983 piano incident, when bouncer Jimmy Ferrozzo and his girlfriend, unique dancer Theresa Hill, had intercourse on a white piano that, throughout exhibits, was lowered from the ceiling by cables. However the couple unintentionally hit the “on” swap, and the piano rose to the ceiling, fatally crushing Ferrozzo within the course of.
The piano was first made well-known by unique dancer Carol Doda, who made her nightly entrance atop the instrument. Doda was credited with broadly popularizing topless dancing, along with her dazzling onstage persona, and gained worldwide fame by means of her act within the Sixties and the ’70s.
In 1965, the membership was raided by police, and Doda was arrested for indecent publicity. The membership’s then-owners, Gino Del Prete and Pete Mattioli, had been charged with “working a disorderly home,” in line with reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle. They had been all acquitted later that yr in a case that established that topless bars just like the Condor Membership didn’t violate California’s obscenity legal guidelines. Doda died in 2015 at age 78 on account of issues associated to kidney failure.
Calcagni helped maintain historical past alive as common supervisor of the Condor Membership, which in 2022 turned the primary grownup leisure venue designated as a legacy enterprise by town of San Francisco.
“He [Calcagni] was a extremely nice man,” Wolfgang Welch, common supervisor of close by Vainness nightclub, advised Gazetteer. “He all the time spoke so extremely of holding the neighborhood and the household as sturdy and tied collectively as he might; he was all the time a ‘prepared to take his shirt off to provide it to another person’ type of man.”
