Palomino! watch: More on The San Francisco Porn Fort

I mentioned some of the protest and agitation over the conversion of an old Mission District National guard Armory into a bondage-porn studio the other day. There's more to the story; it seems that this use of the building went through several channels within San Francisco city government and, unlike several other potential uses, got the nod:

Over the years, developers suggested turning the 1914 building, which is a mile from City Hall on the edge of the Mission District, into a church, storage space or an apartment complex. But proposals kept getting shot down, many of them falling victim to the city's powerful Planning Department and a thicket of zoning rules. Developers joked that the 200,000-square-foot Armory, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was cursed.

It turns out there was an easy way to preserve the Armory that doesn't run afoul of San Francisco's planners: make pornography there.

...

Real-estate developers need special permission to build, say, condos or a church. Making films -- even dirty movies -- is OK. Tim Frye, a city planner who helps oversee the Mission neighborhood, says he found no reason to block the sale of the Armory to [whips&chains film company] Kink. "Film production is a very sympathetic use" of the building, he says. "What happens in there is a private matter."

Even Swingin' Mayor Newsom wasn't particularly happy about that:

Last week, Mr. Newsom announced plans to hold a community meeting to discuss use of the Armory and revisit city-planning rules. "I'm not going to moralize it, but I don't think this is the appropriate place" for a porn film studio, says the mayor, who recently admitted to having an affair with his re-election campaign manager's wife. "This is a city with a housing crisis, and now here we are with an adult studio near schools?"

He's got a point there. Housing in San Francisco is hard to find and expensive, but they couldn't get it together to build them in this old armory? And what does it say about a community that finds it easier to turn down a permit to put a church into a neighborhood, but greenlights a slap-and-tickle studio? Was the church really going to damage the armory in some way that the Porn Fort won't?

San Francisco values: soon to be America's values. Thanks, Nancy Pelosi!

Video at the link, by the way. No, not that kind. It's a WSJ reporter interviewing the pornographer and touring the site.