Picture this: a historic building in Nob Hill sits quiet and empty, waiting for someone to breathe new life into it. The Nob Hill Theatre, once one of the world’s most famous gay strip clubs, closed its doors back in 2018. Now, after nearly a decade of sitting vacant, the iconic venue at 729 Bush Street is officially on the market for $2.8 million, and the owners are open to lease arrangements too.

For 50 years, this place was legendary. The oversized sign above the entrance beckoned passersby with a cheeky “Touch our junk!” message, and the theater became a cultural fixture that even filmmaker John Waters couldn’t forget. Waters apparently spent nights sleeping in his car in the parking lot across the street when he first moved to San Francisco. That’s the kind of cultural weight we’re talking about here.

But here’s the thing: the space is “a theater in distress, but revivable”, according to Steven Gerry, one of the listing agents at Compass. The building still has its original theater seats, projector room, ground-floor stage, and even private pole-dancing rooms in the basement. It would need about $250,000 in renovations to reopen as any kind of entertainment venue. Gerry is hoping to find a new operator by summer.

The building’s history runs deeper than its recent strip club days. Before becoming an adult entertainment destination in the late 1960s, it was a grocery store, then the Melody Lane jazz club in the 1940s where Joe DiMaggio hung out, and later Club Hangover, a New Orleans-style Dixieland spot that hosted Louis Armstrong multiple times. The original owner only turned it into a strip club after his plan to screen international films flopped completely.

Historic preservation rules mean the famous sign, originally from the Fairmont Hotel in the 1980s, and the building’s faux stone facade must stay. Gerry, himself a gay man, finds the preservation of that “horribly ugly design” baffling, but such is life in San Francisco’s neighborhood preservation landscape.

Right now, interested parties are exploring options across the board: traditional theater, nightclub, comedy club, comedy club, or restaurant. Surprisingly, no strip club operators have reached out yet. The current owner, an orthopedic surgeon with an office nearby, abandoned his seven-year plan to convert the space into a medical-residential building due to rising construction costs and the city’s pressure to build denser and taller than he intended.

The Planning Department insists the city isn’t the real problem here. They point out they quickly approved a revised medical project in 2024 and that under new housing rules, a project like this could get approved in four months. Either way, this piece of San Francisco queer history is waiting for its next act.