Hayward, CA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

The ordinance opens with a legislative finding that adult entertainment activities carry objectionable operational characteristics which, when concentrated, have a deleterious effect upon adjacent areas, and that locating them near facilities used by minors risks exposing children to adult material. It defines six categories as adult entertainment: adult arcades (viewing machines for five or fewer patrons), adult bookstores (a substantial stock of sexually explicit books, magazines, or periodicals), adult gift stores (a substantial stock of sex-oriented instruments, devices, or paraphernalia), adult motion picture theaters, adult theaters featuring live performances, and sexual encounter establishments, though the last excludes licensed medical, psychological, or psychiatric sex therapy.

Any of those uses is barred within 500 feet of a residentially zoned parcel, a school primarily attended by minors, a church running religious education classes for minors, a public park or playground, a museum, a library, or any other adult entertainment activity. Separately, the code bans publicly displaying photographs or illustrations of specified sexual activities or specified anatomical areas in a way visible from outside the building where they're placed. Businesses that became nonconforming when these rules took effect had to close or come into compliance by September 19, 1980, except that a use made nonconforming solely by the 500-foot buffer from another adult business could seek a variance to continue operating if it were bound by a lease signed before that date running more than two years, or had sunk enough money into the leasehold or improvements that a longer wind-down period was needed to avoid undue financial hardship.