The Lusty Lady is a pair of defunct peep show establishments, one in downtown Seattle and one in the North Beach district of San Francisco. The Lusty Lady was made famous by the labor activism of its San Francisco workers and the publication of several books about working there.
The Seattle Lusty Lady, known originally as the Amusement Center, was opened in the 1970s by two business associates, who soon after opened the other location in San Francisco. Originally, both Lusty Ladys showed 16mm peep show films only; in 1983 live nude dancers were added and became the main focus of the businesses. [1] Until 2003 they were both owned by the same company; in that year the San Francisco franchise was bought by the strippers working there and began to be managed as a worker cooperative. The San Francisco branch had already entered the news in 1997 when it became the first (and as of 2009 [update] only) successfully unionized sex business in the U.S. [1] [2] (The San Diego strip club Pacer's had seen a unionization effort in the early 1990s, but it was short-lived.) [3]
The Seattle branch closed in June 2010. [4] The San Francisco branch closed at 3 a.m. on September 2, 2013, on Labor Day. [5]
The Lusty Lady featured exotic dancers in a peep show setting on the main stage and in one-on-one booths.
The main stage featured several nude women dancing, separated by glass windows from the customers who each stood in their own booth, paying by the minute. The dancers were also available for more explicit private shows in the VIP and Private Pleasures booths. These were also glass-separated private booths where customers could give direction to the show and tipping was possible. Rates for shows varied by the dancer. The Private Pleasures booth also occasionally featured "Double Trouble" shows, with two dancers who might have performed a lesbian sex show. In addition, booths showing adult videos 24/7 were available.
Once a year, The Lusty Lady SF organized a "Play Day": the dancers came out from behind the glass, explained the operation of the club to customers, and allowed behind-the-scenes peeks. [6] [7]
Lusty Lady occasionally featured "art days", exhibiting erotic photographs and paintings in the hallways. In February 2002, both peep shows featured a video art exhibition called "Peepshow 28", with one channel in all video booths devoted to showing a sequence of 64 short videos exploring voyeurism, exhibitionism and sexuality. [8] [9]
Dancers were paid an hourly wage. (The top wage for dancers in Seattle in 2001 was $27 per hour, [10] the top wage in San Francisco in 2003 was $26 per hour. [11] )
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The Seattle Lusty Lady opened in the 1970s and moved to its final location at 1315 First Avenue in downtown Seattle near Pike Place Market in 1985. [12] The club was well known for its frequently changing and often amusing marquee announcements. [13] The Lusty Lady is immediately across the street from the Seattle Art Museum and the marquee often commented on current exhibits or the Hammering Man statue. Mimi Gates, stepmother of Bill Gates and director of the Seattle Art Museum, said "The Lusty Lady's marquee is a Seattle landmark." [14] Nirvana’s logo was also inspired by the happy face logo there, which said, "Have An Erotic Day!" [15]
In 2006, the building's owner, a Seattle family, refused a multimillion-dollar tear-down offer from developers of a new Four Seasons Hotel next door. The owners instead received $850,000 "for air rights to the views over their property". [14] Employees celebrated by posting on their reader board: "We're Open, Not Clothed!" [12]
In January 2010, police arrested a peeping tom in the Lusty Lady who had climbed up from a viewing booth into the ceiling crawl space overhead, then partly crashed through the glass ceiling above the stage. [16]
On April 11, 2010, the Lusty Lady in Seattle announced that it would close its doors for business in June 2010. The economic climate and the rise of Internet pornography were cited as reasons for closing. [17] [18] On June 28, 2010, the Lusty Lady marquee was removed from the Seattle location. It was acquired by the Museum of History & Industry and is now on display at their museum in the South Lake Union neighborhood.
In the wake of the Lusty Lady announcing its shutdown, the NPR program All Things Considered did a story focusing on the peep show's history and relationship to the broader downtown Seattle community. [19]
In March 2023, Andrew Conru, founder of Friend Finder Networks, bought the Lusty Lady's building for $3 million, calling the purchase "a gift to the city". He intended to redevelop it into a hotel, a strip club, a restaurant, a museum, a retail store, or some other concern, soliciting ideas from the public. [20] In June 2023, Conru's architect submitted plans to the city to raze the building. "Unfortunately for safety reasons it is a teardown. We looked at a seismic retrofit. It's just not going to happen," said Conru, who said that costs motivated his decision. [21]
The 1997 book The Lusty Lady by photographer Erika Langley documents the work in the Seattle branch of Lusty Lady. It includes photos by Langley (who had worked there as a dancer since 1992) as well as essays by a number of Lusty Lady dancers, who vary considerably in their attitudes toward their customers and toward their work. [22] In 2000, some of the photos were exhibited in the Seattle Art Museum, across the street from the Lusty Lady. [23]
Elisabeth Eaves, who had stripped at the Lusty Lady in 1997, completed graduate school and returned in 2000 to write a book about stripping in general and her experiences in particular, Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power, published in 2002. [24]
The Seattle Lusty Lady was featured in the 1992 film American Heart . The first murder in the 1996 pilot of the TV series Millennium takes place in a Seattle peep show modeled on the Lusty Lady. [25] Episode 18 (first aired 1997) of HBO's Real Sex series featured a visit to the Seattle Lusty Lady. [26]
The theater show My Time With the Lady is a first-person account about working at the Lusty Lady by a long-time janitor and bouncer. It opened in Seattle in August 2010. [27]
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The San Francisco Lusty Lady was located at 1033 Kearny Street, in the Broadway strip club district of North Beach. It was open 24 hours a day, though the live stage was closed between 3 and 11 am.
Several grievances led to the unionizing effort in 1997. African American feminist sociologist Siobhan Brooks while working at the club had noticed that African American dancers were discriminated against and filed a complaint. [28] The precipitating event was the installation of one-way mirrors in a number of booths (which also exist in the Seattle branch), resulting in some customers taking photos and videos of the show. [29] [30]
Among the leaders of the organizing drive was the stripper Julia Query who documented the efforts on video, resulting in the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite!, written and directed by Vicky Funari and Julia Query.
After a vote of the employees, the business was organized by the Exotic Dancers Union, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union, then a member of AFL–CIO, Local 790. [29] [30] The Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network (BAYSWAN) provided website support for the workers' unionization effort, which helped to garner public support for the workers as well as inquiries from other exotic dancers and sex workers throughout the country. [31]
Former Lusty Lady employee Siobhan Brooks commented in a 1997 article that "In some cases the media misquoted us as being the first strip club to unionize. But the first strip club to unionize was Pacer's in San Diego. However, Pacer's union, Hotel Management, Employee Management, Local 30, negotiated an open clause in its contract. Open shop means there's no requirement that employees join the union, so the club recruited workers and discouraged them from joining the union and were able to decertify the union." [32] [33]
After management cut hourly compensation at the San Francisco Lusty Lady in 2003, the workers struck and won, but the closure of the peep show was announced soon after. The subsequent efforts to turn the club into a worker cooperative were led by Donna Delinqua (stage name), a stripper and graduate student in English. Other cooperatives provided input, among them the worker-owned San Francisco sex-toy business Good Vibrations. [34]
The workers bought the club for $400,000, with money borrowed from the old owners. [11] In 1996, the club had had a revenue of almost $3 million; by 2003 this had fallen by 40%. The monthly rent was $13,442 in 2003 and had doubled over the preceding three years. [11] The club had a revenue of about $27,000 per week in the first half of 2006. [35]
After the change in ownership, the union was retained, but some changes in management were instituted. While dancers had been regularly evaluated by managers before, now a peer review process was established wherein dancers evaluate each other. The team leaders are elected from among the dancers for six-month terms.
A dispute began in the summer of 2006 when a male employee wrote a confidential email to the co-op board, reporting customer complaints about a show featuring heavy women. Another member of the board, a dancer, posted a printout of the message in the club dressing room, causing considerable consternation among dancers. Both board members were suspended. [36] Two of the male employees have argued that the union should be abandoned as not useful in a worker-owned cooperative. [35] On its website, the Lusty Lady describes a worker-owned business as "a rare and ideal situation" but "not without its challenges" and discusses how the workers address these challenges. [37]
On Tuesday, August 20, 2013, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco announced that it would close its doors for business in just two weeks, on Monday at 3:00 am. September 2, 2013. [38] The landlord, Roger Forbes (part of Deja Vu Consulting Inc. which by that time owned almost every strip club in San Francisco with the exception of Crazy Horse, Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre, and Nob Hill) refused to renew the lease after attempts to re-negotiate the rent failed.
Lily Burana, who stripped for a time at the San Francisco Lusty Lady, wrote about her experiences there and in other strip clubs in her 2001 book Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America. [39] Carol Queen also wrote about her time dancing at the Lusty Lady, in her 2003 book Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of a Sex-Positive Culture. Bernadette Barton interviewed dancers at the Lusty Lady in her 2006 book Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers.
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A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry. According to one view, sex work is voluntary "and is seen as the commercial exchange of sex for money or goods". Thus it differs from sexual exploitation, or the forcing of a person to commit sexual acts.
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner. The person who performs a striptease is commonly known as a "stripper" or an "exotic" or "burlesque" dancer.
A stripper or exotic dancer is a person whose occupation involves performing striptease in a public adult entertainment venue such as a strip club. At times, a stripper may be hired to perform at private events.
A lap dance is a type of erotic dance performance offered in many strip clubs in which the dancer typically has body contact with a seated patron. Lap dancing is different from table dancing, in which the dancer is close to a seated patron, but without body contact. Variant terms include couch dance, which is a lap dance where the customer is seated on a couch.
A peep show or peepshow is a presentation of a live sex show or pornographic film which is viewed through a viewing slot.
A strip club is a venue where strippers provide adult entertainment, predominantly in the form of striptease or other erotic dances. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, and can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style. American-style strip clubs began to appear outside North America after World War II, arriving in Asia in the late 1980s and Europe in 1978, where they competed against the local English and French styles of striptease and erotic performances.
Elisabeth Eaves is an author and journalist born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Siobhan Brooks is an African-American lesbian feminist sociologist known for her work with African-American women sex workers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in women's studies from San Francisco State University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from New School University in New York City. She is currently Professor of African-American studies at California State University, Fullerton.
Deja Vu Services, Inc., is an American company that operates nearly 200 strip clubs in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Canada, and Mexico.
The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre was a strip club at 895 O'Farrell Street near San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. Having opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell was one of America's most notorious adult-entertainment establishments. By 1980, the nightspot had popularized close-contact lap dancing, which would become the norm in strip clubs nationwide. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a longtime friend of the Mitchells and frequent visitor at the club, went there frequently during the summer of 1985 as part of his research for a possible book on pornography. Thompson called the O'Farrell "the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America" and Playboy magazine praised it as "the place to go in San Francisco!"
Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network (BAYSWAN) is a non-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area which works to improve working conditions, increase benefits, and eliminate discrimination on behalf of individuals working within both legal and criminalized adult entertainment industries. The organization provides advice and information to social service, policy reformers, media outlets, politicians, including the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution and Commission on the Status of Women (COSW), and law enforcement agencies dealing with sex workers.
The Condor Club nightclub is a striptease bar or topless bar in the North Beach section of San Francisco, California The club became famous in 1964 as the first fully topless nightclub in America, featuring the dancer Carol Doda wearing a monokini.
The Las Vegas Dancers Alliance was an organization of adult entertainment workers in Las Vegas founded in 2002 by Andrea Hackett in response to regulations adopted by Clark County, Nevada that criminalized lap dances. It grew to include 1,000 members from strip clubs throughout the Las Vegas valley including Crazy Horse Too, Spearmint Rhino and many others. Despite its size, L.V.D.A. was unable to bring about substantive changes to the law or the adult club industry as a whole. Part of the blame fell on dancers unwilling to participate in rallies, meetings and events. However, much of it fell on club owners who colluded with local law enforcement to intimidate dancers. Another factor was attacks from the left and a lack of assistance from established unions. The Huffington Post wrote a hit piece on Hackett at the height of L.V.D.A's influence which the Nevada State Democratic Party linked on their website. Unwilling to alienate their left wing allies, the Teamsters, who had promised to help, rescinded their offer. SEIU followed suit. This spelled the end of L.V.D.A.
Big Al's was one of the first topless bars in San Francisco and the United States since the mid-1960s. It was the first full nudity bars in San Francisco. It is next to the Condor Club, where the strip-club phenomenon began; and as of 1991, claimed to be one of the largest porn stores in San Francisco.
The legal status of striptease varies considerably among different countries and the various jurisdictions of the United States. Striptease is considered a form of public nudity and subject to changing legal and cultural attitudes on moral and decency grounds. Some countries do not have any restrictions on performances of striptease. In some countries, public nudity is outlawed directly, while in other countries it may be suppressed or regulated indirectly through devices such as restrictions on venues through planning laws, or licensing regulations, or liquor licensing and other restrictions.
Erika Langley is an American photojournalist and writer.
Melissa Gira Grant is an American journalist. She is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Playing the Whore, and co-editor of the ebook Coming and Crying.
Mary's Club is the oldest strip club in Portland, Oregon, and among the oldest in the United States. In 1954, Roy Keller bought the business from Mary Duerst Hemming, who owned and operated Mary's as a piano bar beginning in the 1930s. Keller initially hired go-go dancers as entertainment during the piano player's breaks, later hiring them full-time because of their popularity. Topless dancers wearing pasties were introduced in 1955. The club also featured comics, musicians, singers and other acts. All-nude dancing began in 1985, after a judicial ruling against City of Portland ordinances banning it in venues which served alcohol.
Lilly Marie Rodriguez, known by her artist name Isis Rodríguez is an American contemporary painter who uses the cartoon as a conceptual tool to discuss issues that focuses on the empowerment and liberation of women. Combining classical realism with contemporary influences including tattoo art, graffiti, and especially cartoons, her works bridge traditional distinctions between high and low art, creating a hybrid style that expresses new possibilities for female identity and spirituality. Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie Smith highlight Rodriguez as one of the few female artists to ever discuss the sex industry in her work, and Sherri Cullison includes Rodriguez among the most noteworthy American women artists of the 20th century.
