Spectator (magazine)

Spectator was a  weekly newspaper published and distributed in San Francisco from 1978 until October 2005. The magazine in tabloid format featured sex- and BDSM-related stories and advice as well as numerous advertisements for phone sex, strip clubs and other sex-related businesses. Since the paper was in part distributed through coin-operated news racks, freely accessible to all ages, state law required that it not contain any hard-core pornography.

Publisher and owner Kat Sunlove was interviewed for Wendy McElroy 1995 book XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography. She relates how The Spectator originated in 1978 as the sex portion of the earlier free-speech paper Berkeley Barb. In 1987 the Spectator's employees bought the paper.