Boys Toys normally features limousine service, a business center, an executive and a pastry chef, imported wines - and beautiful women charging $20 per lap dance. Former stockbroker and club owner Ralph Amato has poured over $3 million into the club, hoping to make it the anchor of a national chain and online sex empire.
For now, though, he's having to fight off a local group's hounding. Aaron Peskin, president of Telegraph Hill Dwellers, has pestered San Francisco's Board of Appeals to take action against Boys Toys, arguing the club lacks the necessary permits to operate. Amato, however, has managed to persuade the board three times to delay action on Peskin's complaints.
Amato applied for and got a place-of-entertainment license in 1999, saying he was opening a restaurant and bar offering "other entertainment," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He changed his plan to apply for an adult entertainment license when instructed by the city planning department that that would force public hearings.
But Peskin says Boys Toys violates a San Francisco law blocking strip clubs from opening within a thousand feet of existing strip clubs and requiring new permits if it expands an existing building. "(Boys Toys) should never have opened," told the Chronicle. "Now, they are playing for time, hoping we go away. We won't."
