When Cicciolina Headlined at the O’Farrell Theater

Cicciolina. The Mitchell brothers. The O’Farrell Theater. United for a one-time-only milestone engagement.

Some stories are about an event.

Fewer stories are about a poster of an event.

And there are no stories about a poster of a event that may never have taken place.

Perhaps this is that story.

So what happened? What didn’t happen? And how did it end up being an international diplomatic incident?

Confused? Relax, this is The Rialto Report.

With thanks to Pia Hinckle (look out for her forthcoming family memoir ‘Sorry for the Fuck You – A Father-Daughter Memoir of Drink Inc. and Catholicism’ and subscribe to her excellent Substack, Words and Water), to Jack Boulware (writer of the brilliant Substack, What Jack Boulware Fails to Realize, as well as many books, including ‘Sex American Style: An Illustrated Guide to the Golden Age of Heterosexuality’ (1997) and ‘San Francisco Bizarro’ (2000), and to Thelma, who started it all.

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Ladies and gentlemen. Let’s get ready to rumble. It was 1988, and the union the world had been waiting for was about to happen: a summit meeting between two powerhouses of the carnal arts, guaranteed to create salacious headlines from Acapulco to Zagreb, not to mention handsome swag for all.

In the red corner, from Europe, the ubiquitous Ilona Staller, aka ‘Cicciolina’ (translation: ‘little chubby one’). A Hungaro-Italian professional temptress with unfeasibly platinum-blonde hair and a willowy physique. The biggest hardcore sex star to emerge from the old continent since the golden age of Venus, Flora, and Priapus, and improbably, also a newly-elected member of the Italian parliament.

And in the blue corner, from the United States, the scurrilous Mitchell brothers. Veteran pornography pioneers, free speech absolutists, hirsute-yet-balding ex-hippies turned unofficial mayors of the smut capital of America, and owners of the most notorious skin palace in the wild west.

It was official: Cicciolina would fly to America and appear exclusively at the Mitchell’s O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco over the course of five consecutive sin-filled nights. It was a porno marriage made in heaven, a guaranteed instant sell-out.

Publicity was superfluous for such a momentous event, but – fuck it – a perfect poster to commemorate the occasion was commissioned and ubiquitously displayed anyway, its artwork from a legendary underground cartoonist, no less.

This no-brainer kairotic event would benefit everyone – everyone, that is, except the prudish City Mayor, the Pacific Heights Matron, Dianne Feinstein, and even her ire would be a desirable feature not a bug.

But how did the event come about?

Or rather, did it even happen in the first place?

The Mitchell Brothers at the O’Farrell

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Our lives before the internet had a specificity. We were here, or we were there. But we were never anywhere other than where we were. And that hic-et-nunc zeitgeist prized those whose stock-in-trade was immediacy and disruption – outsized individualists admired for now-outdated, arcane talents such as writing and provoking, rather than influencing, preening, or entitled narcissism.

Warren James Hinckle III was one such character. He was a political journalist based in San Francisco – or so stiff-collared history writers have you understand. The same scribes would then proceed to tell you that Hinckle, born 1938, had been the editor of Ramparts magazine, a sleepy publication aimed at a liberal Roman Catholic audience, which he’d reconstructed into a major galvanizing force of American radicalism during the Vietnam War era of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Blah, laudable blah, commendable blah. The tired potted bio of convention is no doubt factually correct, but ecstatic truth lies in the cracks of our existence and so it pays to dig deeper.

Photographs of Hinckle record a corpulent, perspiring, linen-suited curmudgeon with an expression ranging from unimpressed to exasperated. He sported an ever-present eye patch concealing a glass eye (a useful prop to entertain his daughters and their friends when he popped it out and flicked it between his teeth) and an ever-present dog (Bentley, a basset hound, for whom Hinckley held a pre-death wake at Stars restaurant, feeding him one last meal before the final visit to the vet.) He was Irish, to be sure, but think Brendan Gleeson as a pirate rather than Pierce Brosnan as a Bond.

Hinckle was a legendary figure in the city. Yes, he was arguably the town’s most well-known newsman but to call him a reporter is akin to describing ‘Behind the Green Door’ as an environmentally-conscious home improvement show.

Warren Hinckle

Evidence for his unique brand of prodigy abounds: he helped create Gonzo journalism in 1970 by getting Hunter S. Thompson to cover the Kentucky Derby in an alcohol-fueled blur, and then paired the resulting scattershot impressions with illustrator Ralph Steadman. He was an editor with a sixth sense for a good story: and goddammit it, when no such story could be found, he once enlisted a friend to burn down a wooden guardhouse just to create one. He edited several magazines into oblivion (“giving your magazine to Warren Hinckle is like asking Roman Polanski to babysit your teenage daughter” said one associate). He was a shit-stirrer who would insert himself into the story: when he considered politics too important to be left to the politicians, he jumped into the fray and ran for San Francisco mayor (his slogan? ‘People before politics’; his campaign poster? a picture of his opponents surrounded by dog droppings with the question “Tired of the same old crap?”; his freebie giveaways? condoms with wrappers boasting ‘Hinckle for America’; and the result? he came fourth in a field of ten). He was an immodest debauchee who had the stones to write his autobiography when he was only 36. His reportage was muscular prose, when virility mattered more than virality. He was a drinker, public relations hack, and inveterate gossip. He hailed his extravagant failures as heralded successes. More than anything, he considered writing to be a vehicle for his personal beliefs, which invariably revolved around sympathy for the working man, the honest schmuck with no voice of his own.

As an ex-colleague described the Hinckle ethos: “We’re gonna take over the world, and we’re gonna do it early enough to knock off for happy hour.”

Oh, and Hinckle shared an office with Hunter Thompson at the Mitchell’s O’Farrell Theater.

Hunter Thompson at the O’Farrell

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Warren Hinckle had been a long-time close friend of Jim and Artie Mitchell.

Of course he was: they shared a hard-living, counter-cultural, iconoclastic world view. But sometimes, a lasting bond is even more rooted in a common enemy, and Hinckle and the Mitchells were united in a shared mutual hatred of one despised nemesis: Dianne Feinstein, the 38th Mayor of San Francisco, who reigned from 1978 to 1988.

As the first female Mayor, Feinstein faced several significant challenges during her time in office, from lifting the city up after the 1978 assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, implementing gun control, and navigating the AIDS crisis. But she opted for a different personal bête noire: Sex. Smut. Vice. Or more specifically, the Mitchell brothers and their beloved O’Farrell headquarters which she repeatedly tried to shut down. The Mitchells were such frequent targets of Feinstein-instigated police raids that the brothers retaliated by posting DiFi’s personal phone number on their theater marquee: “For Showtimes: Call Mayor Feinstein 558-3456.” On another occasion, her unlisted number was emblazoned across the theater frontage with the text, “For A Good Time, Call Dianne.”

Hinckle was full-time partner of the Mitchells in the Feinstein-sabotaging business, assuming the role of their unofficial Pravda, firing off news stories mocking her lack of success in shuttering their operations: “These porn dancers can be dangerous,” he wheezed. “One has to watch closely to make sure they don’t pull a concealed weapon from some orifice.” Feinstein’s reaction to this ragtag resistance ranged from comical (she once tracked Hinckle down at a function just to pour a drink over his head) to the ridiculous (after one pointed Hinckle column, Miss Goody Two-Shoes had Hinckle arrested. The charge? An expired dog license.)

But the Mitchell-Hinckle alliance was deeper than just being comrades-in-arms fighting Miss White Gloves. They were entwined personally too, as were their families. Hinckle would often take his daughters to the porn theater to commune with the Mitchells – either oblivious or willfully ignoring the tide of sex workers who traipsed past them to ply their bare wares. And when Hinckle’s daughter Pia celebrated her 21st birthday party, it was at the O’Farrell of course, where the brothers presented her a giant cock-shaped cake with her name on it. Their birthday gift to her was a pussy purse, adorned with pubic hair and stuffed with cocaine and a hundred-dollar bill. Later, she and a girlfriend watched a roller-skating gorilla fuck a Jungle Jane with a huge dildo on the main stage. When her friend fled in shock, Pia pondered an age-old existential conundrum: “Doesn’t everyone watch porn with their dad and Hunter Thompson?” (Pia’s long-awaited forthcoming family memoir ‘Sorry for the Fuck You – A Father-Daughter Memoir of Drink Inc. and Catholicism’ promises to be a rare treat.)

Warren Hinckle, still looking for that dog license

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Cicciolina’s engagement at the O’Farrell was lightning in a bottle, but wasn’t initiated by either la Staller nor les Mitchells. The genesis was in fact Warren Hinckle. Or rather, his daughter, Pia, an aspiring writer following in his oversized footsteps.

In 1987, Pia faced a personal version of the irresistible force paradox, aka what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? The unstoppable force was her boyfriend, an Italian waiter in the Bay area, who was returning to Rome and keen for Pia to relocate with him. The immovable object was her larger-than-life father, leaning on her to work on his mayoral bid (campaign headquarters: the O’Farrell Theater.) The Italian option won out, not so much out of undying young love, but rather as a chance to emerge from the imposing shadow cast by pater familias.

The overseas move was a success for Pia: she already spoke Italian fluently, and took an unpaid internship with the Associated Press where she learned about the newswire business, proved herself an assiduous researcher with the family knack for a good story, and soon converted her unpaid role into a full-time career. The job provided a front row seat for momentous events in the country’s history: the end of the Cold War and its impact on the Mediterranean country, the emergence of the rakish reprobate Silvio Berlusconi, and the innumerable scandals that reshaped the political landscape.

And then there was porn star Cicciolina, elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Radical Party, a uniquely Italian event that took up almost as much newsprint as the rest of the stories added together.

Cicciolina at the voting booth, 1987

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Cicciolina’s ascendance to the political class was bizarre though not entirely unsurprising.

Since she’d arrived in Italy from communist Budapest in her early 20s (where rumors circulated that she’d been groomed by the Hungarian secret service as a honeytrap spy – unsuccessfully, due to a propensity for becoming romantically involved with her targets), she’d blown through her adopted country’s sexual mores. She did this by cultivating, nay perfecting, a dumb blonde persona, characterized by an ethereal wardrobe of angelic, baby pink slips and elbow-length white gloves, and her head eccentrically crowned by a band of pastel flowers. She sported an ever-present, otherworldly maquillage of blue eye shadow, cherry-red lipstick, and prominent, dark eyebrows that contrasted with hair so yellowy-flaxen that its hue was previously unseen in the natural world. The look was completed by an ever-present teddy bear clasped in her arms. This virginal appearance contrasted with a strange, sultry-yet-hangdog expression that didn’t so much suggest “come hither” as much as it screamed “f^&$ m# @*%$ &^%$# *&@#$&^% with an alarmingly large spatula”. The confusing effect was that of a hyper-sexualized and promiscuous cuddly toy.

But Cicciolina was no bimbo. She had natural business acumen, played the violin and the piano, was an accomplished chess player, and effortlessly danced ballet, tap, and jazz. But she also realized these talents paled into monetary insignificance when compared to the immediate power she possessed when she inhabited an air of exaggerated sexuality. So in the early 1970s, she started a radio phone-in show, ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ where she invited men to call in and talk dirty on air. She referred to them (and their penises) as ‘cicciolini’ to avoid problems with the censor. The description stuck, and it became recognized as her stage name: ‘La Cicciolina’ was born.

Cicciolina, 1980

Numerous softcore sex films followed, before she created a scandal in 1978 for being the first to bare her breasts on live Italian television – on ‘C’era Due Volte’, a mainstream show that aired on RAI, the Italian state-run network. More bookings on TV shows and for magazine articles followed, together with a succession of breathless pop music hit singles. In truth, Italy, with its bizarre combination of Catholic conservatism and sexual permissiveness, was a fertile and welcoming home for Cicciolina’s brand of sexual grin and tease. To Italian men, she represented unadulterated, available sex. To women, she promoted an unfamiliar but welcome ideal: housework won’t kill you, but why take the chance?

Cicciolina was aided and abetted in her brand-building sexual career by Riccardo Schicchi. A short, nerdy, suitcase pimp, a shit-eating-grin of a man. Less Marcello Mastroianni more Roberto Benigni, Schicchi was smart enough to know that if he had a nickel for every woman who found him attractive, then… well, women would find him attractive. So he mapped out his adult life to accumulate money and women – in that order – and soon had plenty of both. Schicchi formed a company, ‘Diva Futura’, which managed wannabe porn stars and produced some of Italy’s first hard core sex films. His movies won awards, but awards are like hemorrhoids: sooner or later every asshole will get one, and his fledging efforts had limited financial success.

But Schicchi realized that a potential goldmine lay ahead of him: Cicciolina was, by now, a bona fide mainstream name, and if men could watch her actually doing the dirty in full, graphic detail, it would be a windfall for him. It was only a matter of time, and in 1983, Cicciolina produced and appeared in their first hardcore pornographic film, Telefono Rosso. It was a smash hit, at least in fuck film terms.

More porn followed (including Carne Bollente (aka ‘The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress’, which co-starred the HIV-stricken John Holmes), and by 1987, Cicciolina was both a household name and a scandalous figure in Italy. It was her annus mirabilis: that year, she published her memoirs – ‘Confessioni Erotiche di Cicciolina’, she released her most famous song, Muscolo Rosso (bizarrely banned in Italy but a hit in Europe), and she stood for election to the Italian Parliament. (It was actually her second attempt to seek elected office – in 1979, she’d been a candidate for the Lista del Sole, Italy’s first Green party, before switching to the Radical Party in 1985.)

She announced her candidacy in front of the Italian parliament building while baring her breasts: “More pornography equals conscience, equals less repression, equals Radical,” she squeaked before embarking on an unconventional campaign: she campaigned to excited crowds in the streets, in piazze, and in live-sex strip joints. It was ostensibly a libertarian platform: against nuclear energy, against NATO membership, and pro individual rights. It worked: she received over 20,000 votes and was duly elected.

Her electoral success was celebrated by hundreds of youths who chased her to through the streets to a 17th century Bernini-sculpted fountain in Piazza Navona. The damage to the monument was incalculable, but the publicity was priceless. Her biography in the official parliamentary directory was reportedly double the length of that of the Italian prime minister, and probably the only one that referred to the films ‘Porno Poker’ and ‘Cicciolina, Il Giorno Dopo – Orgia Nucleare’ (aka ‘Nuclear Orgy – Cicciolina, the Day After.’)

Cicciolina had made it. She was front page, mainstream news around the world.

Cicciolina triumphs at the elections, 1987

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When Pia returned to San Francisco on vacation, she told her father and the Mitchell brothers about the Cicciolina phenomenon. Naturally they’d heard of Cicciolina’s exploits and were intrigued to learn the extent of her cultural impact. They figured it would be a coup to bring Cicciolina’s act over to the O’Farrell, so they suggested that Pia should become their agent in Rome; in exchange for a finder’s fee, she would reach out to Cicciolina, make her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and bring her back to deliver her titillating show to curious-and-aroused Yanks. Pia agreed. You can take the girl outta San Francisco, but you can’t take San Francisco outta the girl.

So Pia returned to the Eternal City and made initial overtures to Cicciolina and Schicchi. Cicciolina loved the idea as long as it could be done on her own terms. Pia remembers her as a shrewd and smart businesswoman: the porn star parliamentarian had retained the rights to all her films and music, and her live shows were well-publicized affairs selling out months in advance. The plan was agreed and sealed with whatever the porn-equivalent of a handshake is. Back in San Francisco, the Mitchell brothers put together a contract – $20,000, plus accommodation at the Donatello Hotel – and sent it to Italy. Pia ensured it was accepted, signed, and returned immediately.

The engagement dates were agreed for December 5th to 12th, 1988 to coincide with the Italian Parliamentary recess.

The only remaining formality was to get Cicciolina a performer’s visa, so Pia took her and Schicchi to the US embassy in Rome. It was a place she’d visited many times as part of her job as an intrepid reporter. This time the visit was different though: she was now effectively a porn rep, an agent of smut arranging a sex show back home. Her employer, Associated Press got wise: their young employee wasn’t just a reporter on an ongoing story, she was now part of a news event. That was a journalistic conflict of interests.

Pia felt more connected to her father than ever.

Pia and Warren Hinckle (courtesy of Pia Hinckle)

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The Mitchell brothers and Cicciolina had many things in common, and top of the pile was an understanding of the value of self-publicity. And an event this momentous merited a promotional poster to equal the occasion. The Mitchells turned to a member of their extended crew, the underground artist, Spain.

Spain (born Manuel Rodriguez – he became ‘Spain’ as a boy defending his Spanish heritage in fights with school bullies in upstate New York) had started drawing characters for New York publications like The East Village Other and Zap in the 1960s and 70s. His protagonists personified irreverent, profane, highly sexed, anti-war, anti-capitalist ideals, as exemplified by his counterculture superhero, Trashman, an urban guerrilla with a ruthless disregard for the lives of the rich and powerful. Spain’s fans included Al Goldstein, who, starting in 1976, commissioned numerous covers from Spain for his Screw magazine.

For the O’Farrell show artwork, Spain rendered Cicciolina perfectly, depicting her rising provocatively from San Francisco Bay, straddling the Golden Gate Bridge with the Roman Colosseum in the background, all rendered in the red, white, and green shades of the Italian flag. Wearing her ever-present floral crown and clutching a teddy bear, the poster bore the legend, ‘(She’s Got) Diplomatic Immunity – American Debut Performance.’

The poster was an unqualified triumph.

Spain

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Back in Rome, it was now late November 1988, just two weeks before the start of Cicciolina’s stint at the O’Farrell – and Pia and Cicciolina were encountering issues obtaining the performance visa. This was hardly unexpected. Navigating Italian bureaucracy is like scrolling through an endless iTunes terms-and-conditions agreement: it’s ugly, vaguely threatening, and bears little relationship to the product you’re trying to get. The problem this time however lay not with the Italians but rather with the U.S. Consulate in Rome, who, in late November 1987, announced a delay to the visa hearing.

“Seasonal circumstances beyond our control,” bleated the Thanksgiving-oriented excuse from the U.S.-occupied palazzo in Rome.

“This is nothing more than artistic discrimination at its rankest,” protested an indignant Jim Mitchell back in America. “It is a denial of due process to her many fans in San Francisco,” he continued – before adding helpful context: “They’d never delay a visa for Pavarotti.”

Pia Hinckle pushed for a quick resolution but the delays continued, now explained by the “pending submission of further information regarding the purposes of (Cicciolina’s) trip.” Cicciolina complied, insisting it was an important “cultural and tourism mission.”

The impasse was kicked upstairs to the George H.W. Bush-government State Department back in D.C. where a spokesman contradicted his compatriots in Rome: “Stripping is not, in and of itself, sufficient reason to deny a visa to our fine country,” he belched, before retreating behind the caveat, “but the decision is solely that of the American embassy in Rome.”

But by now it was Natale in Italy, together with its over-wrought nativity scenes, execrable mountain-bagpipe music polluting town squares, and excessively-long office shut-downs. Administrative processes ground to a freezing halt, and Cicciolina’s December engagement at the O’Farrell was officially off.

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For the scrappy, fighting Mitchells, ever-undeterred, there was no such thing as an insurmountable opportunity. It was now time to escalate the conflict and roll out Plan B.

Firstly, they would force the U.S. Rome consulates’ hand by petitioning the Immigration and Naturalization Service in San Ysidro, CA. They’d found a horndog official there who was a regular at the Mitchell’s Ultra Room and willing to expedite the visa approval in exchange for free O’Farrell tickets.

In addition, the Mitchells would detonate the force of their Comms Office (aka Warren Hinckle) to do what it did best: pen a series of sarcastic newspaper articles highlighting the hypocrisy of state-run, heavy-handed, free-speech-interfering bureaucracy.

And they would merely postpone the Cicciolina carnival into January 1989, penciling in five evenings between January 19th though 24th, still within the window of the Italian Parliamentary break. Spain obligingly fixed the event poster to accommodate the date changes.

The new plan seemed to work: Agent Porn Hound in the San Ysidro State Office came good and approved the papers (kindly noting that Cicciolina was “particularly pre-eminent in her field”) and the documents were express-dispatched to the U.S. Embassy in Italy with just two days to spare. All that was needed now was the rubber-stamp from Rome. Cicciolina and Riccardo Schicchi snapped into action and booked their air tickets to San Francisco and prepared for opening night.

And then… nothing.

No visa, no explanation, no communication, no nothing. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but this was ridiculous. The restless porno duo was stuck on the tarmac in Italy, all undressed up and nowhere to go.

Back at the ranch, Warren Hinckle hit back, writing a coruscating Op Ed in the San Francisco Examiner under the heading, ‘Pin-Striped Prudes Prevent Porno-Parliamentarian’s Peekaboo Performance.’

Phew, pfft, pow!

Hinckle proceeded to puff persistently: “There is no basis for denying Staller a visa. The delays can only be logically attributed to a yen for sabotage, either out of bruised male egos or the congenital Puritanism of State Department careerists.” He went further, suggesting the embassy was confusing Cicciolina with “the female embodiment of Yasser Arafat, Daniel Ortega, and the IRA chief of staff.”

Warren Hinckle means business

Each day, an embarrassed embassy official in Rome stated there were still “ongoing problems” – giving an entirely different reason each time for not issuing the visa. Jim Mitchell claimed that, as an honorable parliamentarian, la Staller should surely have diplomatic immunity entitling her to travel anywhere, anytime, for any purpose, but it cut no ice.

Finally, on January 19th, the day that Cicciolina’s new O’Farrell engagement was due to start, Jim Mitchell enlisted his next line of attack – the combined diplomatic forces of legendary ecdysiasts, Tempest Storm, Marilyn Chambers, and Morgana Roberts aka The Kissing Bandit. He got this trifuckta to sign a letter of protest, which he addressed to Maxwell Rabb, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, and published it in the International Herald Tribune. The next day, Cicciolina was promised a meeting with the ambassador in Rome – but not until later in January, several days after the proposed American shows.

More Hinckle ire followed: in his next article, ‘Cicciolina’s Story: G-Strings and Red Tape,’ he mix-metaphored how the U.S. Embassy in Rome had “rudely slammed the Golden Gate in her pretty face.” Sidebar: Hinckle also added that Cicciolina had once “famously micturated upon a group of paparazzi sitting in the front row of one of her stage performances.” (Reader: don’t worry – I had to consult the dictionary too. ‘Micturation’ is apparently the same as, er ‘watering the petunias.’ Can we please just proceed now?)

And as usual Hinckle ended up becoming part of the story: he ordered Marc Libarle, his ex-brother-in-law and San-Fran-attorney, who happened to be vacationing in Italy at the time, to drop his festive plans and intercede at the embassy. “You can never come home until you bring the ‘little fleshy one’ with you,” Hinckle threatened in his column.

With the deal on the verge of collapse, Cicciolina did what she always did: she took to the streets to protest. And to show off her chest. On Friday 27th January, 1989, she mobilized the press and appeared in front of a wintry U.S. Consulate on Via Veneto where she opened up her coat, bared her frozen assets, and held up a sign asking, “Why is the United States afraid of Cicciolina’s breasts?”

“This is really upsetting her,” reported Hinckle in yet another column. “The other day on the phone she was crying. They made the ‘little chubby one’ cry! The rats!”

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Cicciolina assured everyone she would not give up. It was no longer about a simple strip show, this had now become a human rights issue. But the truth was that the deal was dead in the water. She had to return to her day job in parliament.

The U.S. embassy said the official reason for all the delays was Cicciolina’s failure to list her history of arrests on the visa application. As for the irritated Mitchells, they had to concede they’d finally exhausted their options: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a dumb fool about it.

So what had been going on behind the scenes at the U.S. embassy during this period? Who were the actual killjoy villains in this whodunit, or rather this who-sabotaged-it? Was it a local embassy decision to kick the visa application into the long grass, or did government officials back in the U.S. lean on them to secure this disappointing outcome?

In 2025, I reached out to embassy personnel whose names I found in newspaper articles from the time, and learned that perhaps the truth was actually closer to home: I was told that the U.S. embassy had been contacted at the time by senior figures in the Italian government, mortified at the prospect of the porno-parliamentarian representing their country in America. They reasoned that the salacious publicity storm that would ensue in the Land of the Free would rain ridicule and scorn on Il Bel Paese. Italy was emerging from two decades of high-level scandals – political corruption, banking fraud, terrorism, even football bribes for heaven’s sake! – and they were now doing everything they could to invite new international investment and to rehabilitate the country in the eyes of the world. In their opinion, no one – not a sleazy San Francisco strip joint nor a promiscuous Hungarian hooker – was going to stand in their way. And so the U.S. embassy obliged and stalled on the visa.

The following year, Cicciolina went on to endure a brief marriage to American artist Jeff Koons, with whom she had a son. In 1992, she ran for parliament again – this time on a platform of environmental protection, a ban on weapons manufacturing, and ‘love parks’ where young couples could make love openly without fear. She was not re-elected. After that, she would remain in the public eye for a variety of exploits, even offering to have sex with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in exchange for peace (not together, it is assumed.) Neither is thought to have accepted the offer.

Cicciolina and Jeff Koons, contemplating the frustrations of administrative bureaucracy

So where does this leave our story?

Perhaps all that truly remains from her aborted residency at the O’Farrell is Spain’s poster. It hangs in front of me as I type this, Cicciolina winking lasciviously at me, reminding me of simpler times. A glorious artifact that is as already unfashionably and irretrievably dated as your writer.

I think about Spain. In the twenty years that followed the O’Farrell debacle, his vital art continued to tell tales of revolutionaries taking back the streets, often violently, from plutocratic forces of repression and corruption. Admired by the likes of R. Crumb, his electric, subversive vision preceded the gentrified graphic novels that are so popular today. “I was cool before it was cool to be cool,” he liked to say. He died in 2012. And, just like Warren Hinckle, who passed in 2016, and the Mitchells, he is much missed.

2025 needs their collective, anarchic, anti-authoritarian vision more than ever. Even if it does fail to produce a San Francisco sex show for the ages.

Spain

Warren Hinckle, with Bentley

Artie and Jim Mitchell

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Screw covers, by Spain (courtesy of Screw Magazine Cover Art):

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