Party Proves Even San Francisco Can Blush

Politics: Live sex acts staged during birthday bash for one of the city's top political operatives threaten campaign for stadium.

Immediately after the party, Davis told reporters he had no regrets. "Most people said it was the best party they'd ever been to," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "And it wasn't anything compared to the after-party at my house."

And then there was the entertainment, all in the flesh: Male and female strippers. A 300-pound sadomasochist performing a live sex act. A leather-clad woman carving a pentagram into the back of a scantily clad man--and that was before her act really took off.

Every political bright light in the city turned out last weekend for the 50th birthday party honoring Jack Davis--one of the most powerful and feared operatives in San Francisco. Mayor Willie Brown, 49ers' President Carmen Policy, Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan, Sheriff Michael Hennessy, the president of the Board of Supervisors, even an assemblywoman celebrated this milestone with the man who is running the ballot effort for a $525-million stadium complex.

SAN FRANCISCO — What began as the party to end all parties has mushroomed into a scandal of sex and politics that has embarrassed the city's power structure and jeopardized the San Francisco 49ers' hopes for a pricey new football stadium complex.

But by the time the fake smoke had cleared and the roasted pig had been eaten, the bash had shaken a city that prizes flash and tolerance and Davis was not answering calls.

The affair at the San Francisco Mart on Market Street has made the Bay Area ponder where the line should be drawn between taste and licentiousness. It has harmed Davis' carefully cultivated aura of invincibility and put the June 3 election on the stadium--already close--in real jeopardy.

Even for a city that prides itself on living on the edge, it was just too much. Fat Jack's birthday bash is all they are talking--and worrying--about here in the capital of flamboyance.

"It's a heartbreaker for us. It's a heartbreaker for our city," said Angela Alioto, a former supervisor. "Every old-time San Franciscan in this city has called me in the last 24 hours. . . . We work hard for our internationally known image of tolerance, diversity and avant gardeness. But this is about being in the sewer."

Sure, this was home to the Summer of Love and now is the site of some of Gay America's flashier spectacles, including the annual Exotic-Erotic Ball and the largest leather community celebration in the world, presided over by a county supervisor.

Sure, this is the place where less than two years ago, a San Francisco mayor lost a close bid for reelection by stepping naked into the shower with two Los Angeles disc jockeys as a campaign stunt.

But Jack Davis and his weekend bacchanalia have really taken the birthday cake, vaulting this local political consultant and gay activist into the national spotlight, causing normally tolerant stomachs to turn and tongues to wag.

Brown, who hired Davis to run his mayoral campaign, was deluged with press questions about the party at his regular Tuesday briefing. The mayor, a strong backer of a new stadium, tried to distance himself from the event, while avoiding direct criticism of Davis.

Brown said he came to the party early and left before the entertainment began, and "I can't even visualize how something like that would occur." But he insisted that the wild events "should have nothing to do with the campaign."

Policy had no comment on the party and 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo was not there. Both men were said to be appalled by the political fallout.