Legendary S.F. stripper Carol Doda immortalized in new North Beach mural

North Beach has always been the place to worship Doda, at least since she began dancing topless there in 1964, leading famed Chronicle columnist Herb Caen to dub the neighborhood’s main drag Bawdway. Now, the painting by San Francisco muralist Natalie Gabriel transforms the outside wall of the Bodega restaurant at 700 Columbus Ave. into a shrine where the devotion can continue.

“I
love
the way it turned out!” said Lalo Luevano, the Bodega’s co-owner. He commissioned Gabriel to freshen up the wall around Thanksgiving, when it still had a pair of red lips painted by fnnch, the artist of Honey Bear fame.

Once Gabriel had decided to do a portrait, Doda quickly became the natural choice.

“Because where are the women?” Gabriel asked, noting that North Beach honors plenty of men — poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, sculptor Benny Bufano and writer Jack Kerouac, for instance — but few, if any, women. As she listened to music beneath a cloudless sky, selling the occasional Doda print ($75), Gabriel said she wants to get nearby Fresno Alley, where she has a studio, renamed for Doda.

“She was just really cool and really confident,” Gabriel said. “And she was for the people. I see her as a really strong, courageous female that did a lot.”

Doda’s confidence was evident back in 1964 when she admitted to The Chronicle’s John L. Wasserman that she wasn’t a particularly great dancer. “But a lot of great dancers don’t get the audience reaction that I do.”

And still does, judging by the number of selfies people took with the mural Saturday.

Doda’s famously enhanced “twin 44s” — her shelf-like breasts often described as “San Francisco’s other Twin Peaks” — feature prominently in Gabriel’s work. How could they not? Yet the viewer is drawn first to Doda’s face, her humanity, and a pair of penetrating, black-rimmed bedroom eyes that gaze rather than stare. Her ’60s-style bouffant envelopes Doda’s almond-shaped face and pouty, parted lips. And around that, Gabriel painted the hint of a halo.

Doda made history not only as the city’s first topless dancer, but as the nation’s first to do it legally. Her odyssey began on the night of April 22, 1965.

“An Army of S.F. Cops Battles Fun,” lamented The Chronicle headline the morning after police raided the Condor Club on Broadway, which still bills itself as the city’s hottest nightspot. It’s where, on June 19, 1964, Doda became the first to dance in half a bikini, attracting hordes to the Condor and outstripping the competition.

She was dancing atop a grand piano on the night of the raid. The plainclothesman who arrested her reported that the “suspect’s dance consisted of gyrating and making suggestive motions with her body.”

Which could explain why he felt the need to join her on top of the piano before taking her into custody. The officer was suitably named Kafka.

“Kafka stood firm on the piano, gripping the startled Carol Doda by one arm and looking terribly embarrassed,” said the unbylined story in The Chronicle.

Perhaps his face reddened at finding himself chest-to-breast with Doda’s newly enhanced, 44-inch bosoms and the “gauzelike drape” under which they lay. She was, after all, still in mid-act.

Just then, Doda “leaped from the piano, her towering bouffant hairdo tottering,” and made for her dressing room. She soon emerged, clothed and “with tears trickling down her cheeks.”

The charge: “lewd and dissolute” conduct.

“I wouldn’t do it if I were ashamed of it,” Doda told the judge.

He must have thought she had a point. In his acquittal message, Judge Leo Friedman said: “This is a free country. … No one’s pulling anyone’s arms to drag them into those places in North Beach.” He added: “I don’t consider the human body lewd or obscene.”

The courtroom burst into applause.

On Saturday, Phil Derdevanis wandered by the mural celebration in the alley outside the Bodega. He worked with Doda for 19 years, as a door barker, a bartender and finally as the Condor’s manager.

“She was the sweetest girl in the world,” said Derdevanis, as he looked approvingly at Doda — and she looked back. “She always asked about my parents. She was that kind of person.”

Luevano, the Bodega restaurant’s co-owner, said the people who work for him are so young, “chances are most are not gonna know who she is. But if they want to scratch the surface, they’ll know a lot more about our community.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com @Twitter: @NanetteAsimov