Marathon Pundit: San Francisco: The price of vice?

Yesterday in my California Collision series, I wrote about some suspicious massage parlors in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the North Beach neighborhood has an abundance of strip clubs.

And the San Francisco Chronicle tells us something may be going on there too.

Soon after Heaven Mini Theatre opened on Broadway in October 2007, police officers told owner Peter Lambertson "we can make things easy for you if you make things easy for us," Lambertson wrote in a sworn declaration filed recently in San Francisco Superior Court.

"We understood this to mean that he was asking to be paid," Lambertson wrote.

On several other occasions, "patrons who identified themselves as off-duty officers asked to be 'comped' on 'extras,' which is slang for receiving sex for free," Lambertson wrote. "They were told those services were not available and were asked to leave."

Police officials rejected the accusations as a desperate attempt by a beleaguered owner running an alleged front for prostitution.