The city is shutting down a Tenderloin massage parlor-cum-brothel months after suing its owners for selling sex there. It’s a business I knew from one of the most bizarre experiences of my reporting career.
City Attorney David Chiu sued Empire Spa in July and announced Tuesday that his office had reached a settlement with the owner, Ricky Lee, who must pay the city $200,000. He is banned from owning, managing, or working at a massage or personal services business in California for 10 years.
The settlement also fines the property owners $75,000 and prohibits the use of the property as a massage parlor or spa for a decade.
The spa has been closed since July 25, according to the city attorney’s office, but the settlement all but guarantees that Empire Spa is gone for good.
Neither Lee nor property owners Richard and Deborah Bocci responded to a request for comment.
Hearing about Empire Spa’s demise, I’m reminded of the experience I had there just five days after the lawsuit was filed (no, not that kind of experience).
The first and only time (I swear!) I visited the spa at 428 O’Farrell St. was strictly for journalistic purposes. The city attorney had said the parlor was a public nuisance, thinly masking alleged crimes. An undercover inspector from the Department of Public Health had seen seven women wearing lingerie and see-through clothing, including one who said “you can massage me,” motioning the act of sexual intercourse with her hands, the city’s lawsuit said. A police officer who investigated on another visit claimed a woman offered sexual acts in exchange for money, according to Chiu’s office.
My editor at the time was a sadist, so I was dispatched to the spa on July 16 to talk with employees.
It turned into one of the stranger assignments of my career.
Empire Spa on O’Farrell St. must permanently close as part of a settlement between the owner and the city, who said the massage parlor was operating as a brothel. | Source: Thomas Sawano/The Standard
Identifying myself as a reporter, I asked a worker wearing a flowing, cream-colored dress who greeted me in the lobby about the city’s lawsuit. She claimed to have no knowledge of it. Seemingly nervous, she offered to give me a tour. I asked if I could photograph the massage rooms, and, to my surprise, she consented.
Each of the 10 massage rooms across two floors contained a massage bed, a generic painting — usually a landscape or a geisha — and a “spa essential oil energy stone” inside a labeled suitcase. I saw no used condoms, as a DPH inspector had found during a Feb. 26 inspection, according to the lawsuit.
After the brief tour, I was heading toward the exit when absurdity ensued. A woman clad in a tight red dress confronted me; another threatened to call 911.
“You can’t leave unless you delete the photos,” she said, blocking the exit.
She repeatedly demanded that I erase them, saying her colleague had thought I was a city inspector, despite the fact that I had identified myself as a journalist.
During the 10-minute exchange, she stood by the door as two other women stood to either side of me. One tried to grab my notebook. After I agreed to delete the images, one said “someone from the business” was en route to meet me and invited me to sit and wait near the entrance. She did not identify the person who was coming.
Feeling unsafe, I gave them my business card and left.
An hour later, around 7 p.m., an unknown number rang my phone. A man who identified himself as a San Francisco Police Department officer said he had been called to Empire Spa in response to a report that someone had taken photos inside without permission. He asked me to confirm whether I had deleted the photos, which I did. He thanked me and ended the call.
I contacted the SFPD to confirm whether an officer had contacted me but received no response.
That was the last time I ever set foot in the Empire Spa. Now no one can go there again, for business or for pleasure.
