The Northstar Café bar, a little corner dive at the edge of Chinatown and North Beach, is a watering hole accustom to seeing the usual local crowd every week.

That changed when ten strapping young lads in purple-and-yellow polos and short black shorts strolled through the front door and prepared to take their shirts off for charity.

This was the scene last Thursday night as the SF State rugby team held the Boys of Rugby Charity Auction to raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

"We're whoring ourselves out for a good cause," rugby team member and charity organizer Antonio Garcia said with a laugh.

Garcia is a member of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team in Training, an organization invested in finding cures for leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and Hodgkin's disease. The event Garcia's LLS chapter is participating consists of a 100 mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe

"I needed to do some fundraising," Garcia said of the $2500 he needed to raise for the bike ride. Garcia, along with the social chair of the rugby club, came up with the idea for the Boys of Rugby Charity Auction to be held at Northstar Café, where Garcia bartends. The bar owners were "flipping out with excitement" when they found out about holding the charity, Garcia said.

Upon arrival, Garcia took the rugby players through the bar to introduce them to patrons and promoting the auction. Bar-goers were also encouraged to donate five dollars at the door towards Team and Training, and were given raffle tickets for prizes. Prizes included gift certificates to Starbucks, Fuzio and Golden Boy Pizza.

The Gators' Rugby team held the auction and a prize raffle in the bar's back room, a dark nook lit only by a neon Budweiser sign and a green exit light. Garcia acted as MC, running the raffle and encouraging the "auctionees" to take off their shirts and flex their muscles for the bar crowd.

"It was fun," team member and auctionee Hiro Suzuki said, "and a good way to make money."

Members of the women's rugby team also showed up to support their fellow club members and help the bidding process, although they said it was "was kind of funny since we play on a team with them."

Although the idea of the charity was to sell the players off to female bar patrons, all six auction candidates were bought by Garcia's family friend, Jose Flores.

"It's all in good fun," Flores said after donating $320 in donation money to the charity. "The whole idea of a good cause, you know, I'm there for it."

The LLS has given more than $600 million to blood cancer research since it was founded in 1949. The 60-year-old New York-based society has home offices in Cincinnati and Alexandria, along with chapters across the country.

And, like so many other things the team does, Gators Rugby hopes that the charity will show SF State that they are a sports team to be recognized and reckoned with.

"We want to show them that we're not just a bunch of hooligans that beat people up," Garcia said. "We're sophisticated guys with things to say."