A (18:50)

Jordan, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your story with the Spook. The original score for that piece was by Lauren Newsom, was produced by Zoe Ferrigno. And now our next story hits close to home. For reals, it all goes down at the Condor Club, a legendary nightclub just a few miles away from the San Francisco Spook catacombs at kqed. And yes, the Condor Club is a real, live adult establishment. And as such, this story includes mentions of actual nudity, actual sex, even some strong language, sensitive listeners and such. You know, naturally, with all that on offer, of course, our own Zoe Ferrigno decided she needed to pay the club a visit. I'LL let Zoe take it from here.

C (19:53)

Sa.

B (20:21)

It's a Sunday night and my fiance Pete and I are in north beach walking up Broadway. Most nights of the week, this street is totally lit up with neon signs. But tonight, almost all of them are dark. There's no glowing gangster outside of big owls, no blonde bombshell in front of the hungry eye. Even the bright green snake outside of the Garden of Eden has the night off. From the looks of it, there's only one club open in North beach tonight and the 50 foot tall Neon sign that says Condor in big gold letters is as bright as ever. Inside, the Condor Club is dark and very loud. There are Christmas decorations hanging on the walls and football is playing on the TVs. It kind of feels like just your average neighborhood bar, except for one. The dancer up on stage in a silver bikini top hanging upside down on the stripper pole. The truth is, the Condor isn't just a neighborhood bar, even if it feels that way sometimes. It's one of the oldest strip clubs in San Francisco and the very first topless bar in America.

E (21:41)

I was really excited to work there, honestly, even if I wasn't dancing, because it's an iconic spot.

B (21:49)

That's Rachel. She started working at the Condor as a bartender in 2019.

E (21:56)

The building itself is like over 100 years old, so when you go in, it has like a very like old school burlesque vibe, which I really liked. The stairs are still made of hardwood, the railings are still made of hardwood. The wallpaper was like super detailed and ornate paisley with like these deep reds and gold. And then you just have pictures of dancers who danced there throughout the years. There's just history there. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if it opened as a museum one of these days.

B (22:31)

Rachel started out working the day shift at the club.

E (22:35)

In the beginning, it was intimidating. The girl who was training me during the daytime, she was very charismatic and a lot of people loved her. She had a lot of regulars that came in just for her. So I was just like. I felt like I had like this huge role to fill, you know, Rachel.

B (22:52)

Knew if she was going to win over the crowd, she was going to have to put in some extra time before her shift. When the club was dead.

E (23:04)

I came in and I was setting up the bar and I was practicing making drinks so that I could get faster at it. And I went to go grab a bottle and then I noticed that the Hennessy bottle was out of place. It was just like slightly scooched towards the edge and I noticed that because I'm one of those people where I'm like, it needs to be in, like, a perfect little place. Like, it needs to look neat. And so I went and I pushed it back. And then I got down off the ladder, and then I started cleaning the bar and cutting fruit and just doing downtime stuff that you do as a bartender at the bar. I look up and that damn bottle is by the edge again. And I'm just like, what the hell? Because I made sure that I pushed that thing back. And then I went and I did it again.

B (23:58)

And it kept happening. Whenever she was there practicing in the deserted club with the empty stage, I.

E (24:06)

Would push it back, and then it would be slightly out of place again. And it was just that one bottle of Hennessy. It was really annoying.

B (24:19)

After a few weeks on the job, Rachel was starting to get the hang.

E (24:23)

Of things because we had a lot of beer drinkers. I would keep bottles of beer on ice. So I remember I was taking some Bud Lights, putting them on the ice. It's very early, so, like, no customers had rolled in yet. The band hadn't come in yet. And I heard what sounded like footsteps. It sounded like somebody was just darting up the stairs. I thought it was my manager. But then about five to 10 minutes later, it sounded like somebody was running back down the stairs. I was like, all right, what's going on? Did something happen? So I decided to investigate. So I went upstairs and I looked around. My manager was not up there. I came back down. As I'm coming down the stairs leading up to the private rooms, he comes up from the basement stairs, and I'm like, I just heard somebody running up and down the stairs. I thought it was you. And he was just like, oh, yeah, that's the ghost. I've heard it, too, in my head. I was like, you know, people like to blame things that they can't explain on ghosts. Or he's just trying to scare me. That was what was going through my head. So I brushed it off and went back to work.

B (25:59)

It was another dead afternoon, and Rachel was all alone in the club again. Up on the stage, my manager told.

E (26:06)

Me that he wanted me to start cleaning the mirror that's behind the pole on the stage, because no one was cleaning it. And it's just filled with fingerprints and lipstick stains because sometimes the girls would kiss the mirror. So I'm up there with the Windex, and I'm wiping it down. I'm minding my own business. And then as I'm wiping away these fingerprints I see a man standing behind me. That's when I got startled. He was very tall, very big and he had a beard. He was wearing a full on like black suit, white button up shirt with a red tie.

B (26:53)

It was the kind of outfit that the bouncers wore.

E (26:57)

And he looked like my old co worker that I had at my old club. And I was like, oh, did he come by to say hello and turn around and no one's there. It was literally like a split second. Like I saw it in the mirror and I kind of got excited and I turned around and no one was there. And I was like, what just happened? I got scared. I was like, is somebody in here? Like, who was that? I looked around and I was like, maybe somebody from the night shift maybe came in to pick up their paycheck or something. No, no one was there. And then I remembered like boss said it was haunted. Is this what he was talking about?

B (28:15)

Up on the same stage where Rachel saw the man behind her in the mirror, another dancer is finishing her set. There's a guy in a suit up there with her using a push broom to sweep up all the cash. On stage, Pete and I get up and make our way into the club's other room to get drinks at the bar. We see the stairs that lead up to the private rooms where Rachel heard the disembodied footsteps. And then towards the back of the club, we notice that part of the floor is glowing. We walk over and see that set into the floor is a baby grand piano. It's underneath a layer of plexiglass and illuminated by hot pink lights. There's a clear stripper pole coming up out of the plexiglass that goes all the way into the ceiling. It turns out that this piano plays of a piece. Big role in the history of the club.

E (29:17)

I was bartending at nighttime. It was very, very busy. Very loud music playing. I was very stressed out because there was a lot of people and I have to deal with this doordash order because one of the dancers had ordered food.

B (29:34)

Rachel grabbed the takeout bag and started heading for the back room. But before she got there, she ran into another dancer.

E (29:43)

Her face is like super pale white. When I noticed they were looking up at the ceiling, I turn around, I look up. I was expecting to see something wild going down on the second floor in the private rooms because that's what happens when you work in a nightclub. That's what I was expecting to see, something wild. But when I looked up, I saw this black shadowy figure of A woman, hourglass shape, pinned up hair with her hand on her hip, just, like, descending from the ceiling, like, down to the floor. And it was dark, but I could see was plain as day. And then as soon as it hits the floor, it just dissipates. It was like a raindrop hitting the floor. It was, like, poof, gone. I was super shaken up. I had chills. I was freaking out. But the dancer next to me, she was, like, really freaking out. She was like, oh, my God, did we just see that? I was trying really, really hard to keep it together, but I couldn't stop shaking. Just the way she was posing, just the way that her body was shaped. There's no doubt in my mind that that was Carol. Absolute Carol.

B (31:23)

As in Carol Doda, the iconic topless dancer who made the Condor Club famous and who turned north beach into a hub of sex and controversy in the 1960s.

D (31:37)

Yours was the first topless show.

C (31:39)

First topless, and the first to be in trouble. I was the first one to go to jail for three hours.

D (31:43)

You did go to jail for three hours. What was that like?

C (31:46)

It was very terrible. I don't particularly like it.

D (31:50)

What I would like to know, what is the performance at the Condor? What did it consist of?

C (31:55)

Oh, it consisted of a piano, a ceiling, and a body coming out of the ceiling on the piano with this wild rock and roll music. And it would. It was like an elevator. It was like going up and down on an elevator, and it would hit the stage, and I would go into one of my routines. Mostly rock and roll dancing, you know, the contemporary.

B (32:23)

Carol performed her signature moves, singing and dancing topless on top of the piano. Six times every night. And each time, the crowd in the Condor Club would go wild.

E (32:37)

When I saw the silhouette come down from the ceiling, like, that was her platform where she had her piano, where she would come down. Like, that was her spot. She passed away in 2015, so pretty recent. But I wouldn't be surprised if she felt very spiritually and emotionally connected to that place.

B (33:01)

But the legacy of the piano that now sits encased in plexiglass beneath the floor goes beyond just Carol Doda.

E (33:14)

So back in the early 80s, this floor host and a dancer decided that now that the club was closed, that it was a good idea to do the nasty on top of a piano. Why they thought that that was a good idea, I don't know. But as they were, you know, being intimate on top of the piano, it malfunctioned and it just smashed against the ceiling and it crushed the man, his girlfriend, the dancer, she was able to survive, but, yeah, the floor host. Yeah, he did not survive, unfortunately.

B (33:58)

Over time, Rachel came to wonder if that was the large man in the bouncer suit whose reflection she saw behind her that day in the mirror.

E (34:07)

Apparently, he had a beard like that was his nickname, the beard.

B (34:12)

This theory intrigued me, so I started looking into it, and I found out that there's evidence that the beard, whose real name was Jimmy Ferrozzo, may actually have been murdered by the mob. And then his death was staged to look like an accident. We probably won't ever know what really happened. Just like we'll never know whether Rachel saw the beard that day or the spirit of some other guy who just really loved Hennessy.

E (34:45)

To me, it's like a lot of different spirits that are there. Even though I was there for only several months, I could definitely just feel a lot of different energy because there's just so many different people that have come and gone from that place since the 60s. And a strip club is a very emotionally charged place. There's a lot of different emotions and, you know, people are experiencing a bunch of different things. I feel like their energy just sort of lingers.

B (35:28)

It's about 10pm at the Condor Club. There's a little break in the entertainment, and Pete has wandered off with his drink to the back of the club to check out the piano one more time. He's standing right over it in the same place where Jimmy Ferrozzo met his end and where Rachel saw what she believes was Carol Doda's ghost. There's another dancer about to take the stage, but I think it's time to go. I want to get my fiance out of here in one piece.

A (36:07)

A big, big thank you to Rachel for sharing her story with the Spoot. And thank you to the wonderful staff at the Condor Club for their hospitality. Spooksters. If you want to learn more about the history of the Condor Club and the woman who put it on the map, there's a wonderful documentary you should check out. It's called Carol Dota. Top us at the Condor. You can find out more about it in our show notes. The original score for that piece was by Doug Stewart. It was performed by Doug Stewart and Casey Butler. It was scouted by Paulina Creaky and produced by Zoe Frigno. Now, let me tell you a tragic story about these crossroads, about this Shadowland. Because the truth is this. Some people, they don't know the way. They've never heard or spooked. They don't know There's a community of spooksters trying to cast light on the doctor. They wander alone and afraid and if you find solace, respite connection from hearing real people sharing their real stories, take a moment right now. Do me a favor, let somebody know. Send them the spook story they need to hear. Tis the season. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Call em use a stamp. That's the only way we can keep this journey alive. Now if you yourself, you have spoken to a fairy, the magical kind. I would love to hear about it. Spooked@snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. He's got the special incantation from Spook Legal Reading that no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. Spooked he's brought to you by the team that goes to adult establishments for the food. Except for Mark Ristich. He just likes the conversation. The road to Spook Studios runs through shadow and light, time and space, only to intersect with KQED in San Francisco. Don't seek to find it, lest it seek to find you. On Team Spooped, the union representative, producers, artists, editors and engineers, our members of the national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications workers of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51, all of that.

E (38:38)

And.

A (38:40)

Davey Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Eric Yanez, Teo Dakot, Marissa Dodge, Myles Lassie, Elliot Lightfoot, Su Yi Chu, Evan Stern, Eve Jeffcoat, Eshel Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart. The spoof theme song is by Pat Mesini Miller. My name is Ken Washington, and Philip K. Dick once said that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. And I feel recently that my tenuous grip on whatever reality is is slipping even more. All of us that have heard something, seen something, felt something that couldn't be, we know that if we insist that we saw, or we experience what we saw, or we experience that if we turn away efforts to rationalize it away, refuse to pretend, refuse to make nice, then it might not go so well for us. People might have to be called, papers might have to be signed, and we can't have that. So we do pretend. We do make nice. We didn't see what we saw anymore. It's easier that way. And I wonder if living that lie has had a consequence, an unforeseen consequence. I wonder if, when we refuse to acknowledge our own reality, does it make it easier to ignore someone else's. We tell ourselves the contradiction isn't real. In order to get along. Sure, it's cool. If one person has half a trillion dollar and another person can't afford to purchase their children a sandwich. Sure, the real criminal is the guy who picks tomatoes for the sandwich she can't afford. Sure, the full might of the military needs to be deployed against our own citizens. Sure, sure. Or could it be that once we tell lies to ourselves, it's easier to embrace the lies of someone else? I don't see monsters at the gate. Sure we won't be next. Sure, sure, sure. Never ever, ever Never ever, never turn out the lights.