The Zanzibar Tavern in Toronto, Ontario, is an adult entertainment nightclub and local landmark found on Toronto's Yonge Street strip. It is one of Toronto's oldest nightclubs, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. The venue's name is a cheeky reference to the shortest war of history; between the African Sultante and the British Empire.
Cooper was born to Jewish parents Harry and Bessie, who ran a business in Kensington Market. When he turned 18 years old, he ran his own shop on the Danforth, where he met his future wife, Annette. At the end of the 1950s, Cooper and his uncle purchased the Zanzibar Tavern from a previous owner. [1]
Zanzibar Tavern was opened in 1959 by David Cooper, who said: "You used to be able to hit 12 strip bars between Bloor and Queen." [2] The bar originally opened as a live music venue, one of several on Yonge Street, between Gerrard and King, in the 1950s and 1960s. It featured jazz and blues in the early 1960s, before becoming the multi-media "Zanzibar A-Go-Go" dance club featuring rock and roll and go-go dancers. [3] During this time, the bar also became the first to advertise for topless girls after many regular go-go girls refused to go topless. They hired six of the girls who responded and repurposed the uniform to be topless, with red pasties and a red collar. [4] This helped the bar's transition into a strip club during the 1970s, reflecting the transformation of the Yonge Street strip from a live music centre in the 1960s to a centre for the sex industry in the 1970s. [3]
In 1967, local newspapers christened the Yonge Street strip "Psychedelic Avenue" as Zanzibar competed with other bars in a "war of the watts". Upon recalling the time, Cooper said he was creating a "Twenty-first Century total environment with "stroboscopic" lights, mannequins and closed-circuit cameras that would take photos of the dance floor and project them on the wall. [1] Throughout the decade, Zanzibar has featured such diverse acts as burlesque act Annie Ample in the 1980s, who called the strip club "her favourite place". [5]
In 2006, David Cooper's son quit practising divorce law and took over the running of Zanzibar. [2] The establishment suffered serious damage to its facade in June 2010, during the G20 summit when Black Bloc anarchists vandalized Yonge Street during the 2010 G-20 Toronto summit protests. [6] They received nearly $6,000 in compensation. [7] In the same year, the club garnered attention again when a librarian from nearby Ryerson University took clandestine photographs of dancers and wait staff on breaks on the bar's rooftop which were then published on Torontoist, a local news blog. Cooper responded to the photos saying the women felt that their privacy was violated. [8]
In 2017, Zanzibar received a notice of violation for advertising their services on a 78-inch LED television that faces Yonge Street at ground level. Cooper argued that Zanzibar has advertised in its front window for about 60 years and that the 2010 sign bylaw that prohibits storefront video advertising should not apply retroactively. [9]
The Zanzibar has appeared in numerous Hollywood films such as The Incredible Hulk. [10] It was also on a few episodes of Degrassi (season 6, episodes 18 and 19). [11]
It has also featured in unusual lawsuits, including one involving a man who sued his wife, a former Zanzibar stripper, for knowingly infecting him with HIV. [12]
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.
Church and Wellesley is an LGBT-oriented enclave in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is roughly bounded by Gerrard Street to the south, Yonge Street to the west, Charles Street to the north, and Jarvis Street to the east, with the core commercial strip located along Church Street from Wellesley south to Alexander. Though some LGBT-oriented establishments can be found outside this area, the general boundaries of this village have been defined by the Gay Toronto Tourism Guild.
Queen Street is a major east–west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east–west avenues of Toronto's and York County's grid pattern of major roads. The western section of Queen is a centre for Canadian broadcasting, music, fashion, performance, and the visual arts. Over the past twenty-five years, Queen West has become an international arts centre and a tourist attraction in Toronto.
Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs or other venues where music is played. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s at the French bar Whisky a Gogo, located in the town of Juan-les-Pins. The bar's name was taken from the French title of the Scottish comedy film Whisky Galore! The French bar then licensed its name to the West Hollywood rock club Whisky a Go Go, which opened in January 1964 and chose the name to reflect the already popular craze of go-go dancing. Many 1960s-era nightclub dancers wore short, fringed skirts and high boots which eventually came to be called go-go boots. Nightclub promoters in the mid‑1960s then conceived the idea of hiring women dressed in these outfits to entertain patrons.
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.
Pasties are patches that cover a person's nipples and areolae, typically self-adhesive or affixed with adhesive. They originated as part of burlesque shows, allowing dancers to perform fully topless without exposing the nipples in order to provide a commercial form of bare-breasted entertainment. Pasties are also, at times, used while sunbathing, worn by strippers and showgirls, or as a form of protest during women's rights events such as Go Topless Day. In some cases this is to avoid potential prosecution under indecency laws.
Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Previously located above a storefront at 598A Yonge Street for much of its history, the store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street, in the heart of the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.
Carol Ann Doda was an American topless dancer based in San Francisco, California, who was active from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was the first public topless dancer in the United States.
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 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 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.
Public protesting and demonstrations began one week ahead of the 2010 G20 Toronto summit, which took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on 26−27 June. The protests were for various causes, including poverty and anti-capitalism.
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.
Three Sisters Tavern, sometimes abridged as Three Sisters and nicknamed "Six Tits", was a gay bar and strip club in Portland, Oregon, United States. The bar was founded in 1964 and began catering to Portland's gay community in 1997 following the deaths of the original owners. The business evolved into a strip club featuring an all-male revue. Also frequented by women, sometimes for bachelorette parties, Three Sisters was considered a hub of Portland's nightlife before closing in 2004.
The Carriage Room was a strip club in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The bar and restaurant closed in 1988.
Le Strip was a strip club in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Whilst the club is now closed, former dancers; escorts; bouncers; and promoters of the club, an 18-year-old or older establishment, and the last legal all-ages one of its kind, have expressed an interest within local media of a historical retrospective provided by the City of Toronto concerning the history of licensing of adult clubs and dancers in the city.
Terry Koumoudouros was a Greek-Canadian strip club owner who paved the way to legalise naked dancing in Toronto. With his brother, he was the co-owner of two House of Lancaster strip clubs.
The House of Lancaster is the name of both a current strip club in Toronto that opened in 1983, and a former strip club in Etobicoke that operated from 1982 to 2017.