One of the massage rooms, er, spaces of sacred communion, at the new Ocean Spa, complete with poster showing temple prostitute and client in ancient Greece.

Last week, the San Diego Police Department shut down the Ocean Spa massage parlor in Kearny Mesa, after an extensive investigation revealed that it was the site of frequent exchanges of money for sexual favors. Police reported that some of the illegal acts that were going on inside were so loud that they disrupted services at a church that occupied the building’s next-door unit. But while that juxtaposition proved outrageous enough to get the police to take punitive action, it also sowed the seeds for Ocean Spa’s comeback as The Ocean Spa Temple, a church modeled after the ancient Temples of Aphrodite, wherein men sought to commune with the divine through acts of sexual intercourse with women who worked in the temple as facilitators. The men would then leave donations to the temple, donations which, as Ocean Spa Temple owner Suzi Scarab notes, “are entirely tax deductible, since they are charitable gifts to a church. But other than that, we really haven’t changed much. We’ve always specialized in taking men to paradise. The city’s action here just makes it official. I should note how grateful I am to our religious-minded neighbors; without them, I doubt the idea would have occurred to me!”