Depending who you ask, the Exotic Erotic Ball was either a celebration of free expression in the pre-internet era or an excuse for dirty old men to grope with abandon. But for a time, it was the hottest ticket in town on Halloween weekend.
A costume party, burlesque show, and swingers’ convention rolled into one, it was an annual San Francisco tradition that ran for 30 years.
“It was certainly a unique event,” said Paul Nathan, who served for some 20 years as the ball’s host, emcee and entertainment director.
From its beginnings as a clothing-optional party in the late 1970s in a Tenderloin penthouse to its spectacular flameout ending in multiple lawsuits and criminal charges, the ball worked hard to live up to its moniker as “the wildest party on earth.” It was the world’s longest-running adult-themed gathering until the Folsom Street Fair passed it up a few years ago.
The ball’s precursor was a 1978 party in the Hyde Street apartment of Perry Mann, who planned it as a campaign fundraiser for his friend and business partner, Louis Abolafia, who was planning a run for president in 1980 as the Nudist Party candidate. (Abolafia, who may have coined the phrase “make love, not war,” died of a drug overdose in 1995.)
The following year, they moved the ball to California Hall on Turk Street, and the Exotic Erotic Ball was born.
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One early guest, Susan O’Neill, described that first ball to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in 2004: “It was black-tie optional, so people showed up with black ties and that was it. People used to be in corners doing strange things.”
Even in the pre-smartphone era, not everyone was on board with having their exhibitionism recorded for posterity. An aspiring actress from Marin County filed a $10 million lawsuit against Penthouse in 1983 after it published scantily clad photos of her at the ball, though a judge later dismissed the suit.
The event expanded rapidly despite such controversies. In 1989, thousands attended the ball just days after the deadly Loma Prieta earthquake, carrying on a San Francisco tradition that the Associated Press likened to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. That year, a reveler named Larry attended in a costume that consisted of his name and phone number scrawled on his stomach in felt-tip pen.
Around the turn of the millennium, the ball moved to the Cow Palace in Daly City to accommodate the thousands-strong crowd that paid close to $100 a pop and spent weeks planning ball attire ranging from gold lamé to R-rated police uniforms. In a 2007 Fox News segment on the event, a shocked correspondent noted that ball goers’ costumes had “pieces missing, lots of parts hanging out everywhere.”
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The event gained such notoriety that Mayor Willie Brown twice proclaimed an “Exotic Erotic Ball Day,” and in 2004 organizers added an Exotic Erotic Expo the day before the ball where people could browse products ranging from psychic readings to classic adult movies. Some warned that the push to commercialize the ball was a nail in the coffin for the self-proclaimed “celebration of flesh, fetish and freedom.”
Efforts to capitalize on the ball’s success elsewhere fell flat. Exotic Erotic balls in New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles flopped, and organizers never quite managed to crawl out of the financial hole from the losses.
With chaos mounting behind the scenes, organizers canceled the 2010 ball less than 24 hours beforehand, infuriating ticket holders. The ball tickets were eventually refunded, but hotel bookings and some other charges were not.
Promoter Howard Mauskopf was ultimately sentenced to 30 days in jail as part of a plea bargain for writing bad checks and using a phony credit card to pay the band and other vendors.
That was the end of the Exotic Erotic Ball.
Long gone also is the San Francisco that spawned it. But there are many who insist the city could never have become a Halloween party destination without it.