Mitchell Brothers – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Corner of O’Farrell and Polk

The Tenderloin

This sweet and rather innocuous mural is on the side of Mitchell Brothers Theater. The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre is an adult club, opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O’Farrell remains one of America’s oldest and most notorious adult-entertainment establishments; by 1980, the nightspot had become a major force in popularizing close-contact lap dancing, which would become the norm in striptease clubs nationwide. The late journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a longtime friend of the Mitchells and frequent visitor at the club, claimed to be its night manager in 1985. He called the O’Farrell “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America” and Playboy magazine praised it as “the place to go in San Francisco!”

The Mitchell brothers opened the O’Farrell as an adult cinema on the site of a former two-story Pontiac car dealership. Upstairs they produced and directed the pornographic films they showed downstairs.

In February 1991, the theater entered the news after Jim Mitchell fatally shot Artie. Michael Kennedy defended Jim Mitchell and convinced the jury that Jim killed Artie because the latter was psychotic from drugs and had become dangerous. Jim Mitchell was sentenced to six years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and released from San Quentin in 1997, after having served half his sentence.

This original mural was painted in 1977 (Lou Silva with Ed Monroe, Daniel Burgevin, Todd Stanton, and Gary William Graham), 1983 (Lou Silva-solo), and 1990 by Lou Silva with the assistance of Joanne Maxwell Wittenbrook, Ed Monroe, Mark Nathan Clark, and Juan “Blackwolf” Karlos.

Notable visitors, while the murals were in progress, included: Melvin Belli, Marilyn Chambers, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship, Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune, Huey P. Newton, Hunter S. Thompson, and American actress Edy Williams.

The murals were sponsored in their entirety by Jim and Artie Mitchell.

The mural was repainted in April/May of 2012. This time the artists were John Wentz, Matt Robertson, Mike Poland, Lindsey Millikan, Craig Gillooly, Hana Ihaya, Jaqueline Moore, Janet Song, Wythe Bowarty, Karina Svalya, Emilio Villalba, Maurice Sampson, Jeremy Eaton and Joevic Yeban.