“All strip clubs, for me, have been empty shells. Without the girls, it’s mayhem. With them, it’s Narnia”

Vienna-born, New York-based photographer Eva Zar likes to get amongst it. She’s slept with wolves, photographed trans women on horseback in the California desert, and documented 72-hour raves. In her ongoing series God Is a Stripper, she follows the next generation of strippers in NYC. Capturing them not just onstage and in their dressing room, but also in their bedrooms and doing laundry, Zar says the project is about the girls, not just the clubs they dance in. “I was interested in her world outside of the club. Her home, her commute, her life.”

With daydream-like intimacy and a soft focus—sort of like ‘What if Sofia Coppola was interested in baddies?’—Zar renders her subjects as deities, showing stripping’s sacred side.

VICE: Where did your love affair with strip clubs begin?
Eva Zar: I first became interested in strippers when I was doom scrolling TikTok. On my For You Page, a stripper was rating strip clubs in New York City. I immediately fell in love with her. I messaged asking, “Can I photograph you one day?” She responded, “Can you come by the club tonight?”

Tell me about the first club you went to. How did expectations stack up against reality? 
The first was in Queens. While waiting for one of the girls, the bouncer complained about his ex wife. I guess she walked away with the good couch in their divorce. He made me walk through a metal detector and sent me on my way.

All strip clubs, for me, have been empty shells. Without the girls, it’s mayhem. With them, it’s Narnia. They’re able to transform hollow stages into a hidden world that exists parallel to the one outside. I remember one of my girls, Laia, said, “This is a place where you learn to reclaim your sensuality and turn it into power. You learn to speak your truth without shame, transcending fears and transforming them into currency.”

One of the girls remarked that the way you capture them is very “romantic,” and it’s true. Some of the shots make them look like religious icons, almost. What approach did you want to take with the project?
I like that you view my photographs of the girls as iconic, that’s the goal. Strippers are often viewed as objects you can use at your disposal, they’ve certainly been captured that way many times. My goal with God Is a Stripper is to achieve the exact opposite. I’m interested in beauty, glam, magic. I love putting my subjects on a pedestal, making them look and feel like goddesses. In David LaChapelle’s words, “When you take a picture of something, you change the way it’s seen.” I think about that sentiment a lot. 

Tell me more about your thinking behind the title.
The word “God” is so loaded, often tied to organized religion. I think of it more as spirituality, connection, faith. In the strip club, I notice spiritual reminders everywhere. It’s a sticker on a locker that says “the universe is on my side,” a tattoo, a piece of jewelry. I want both the title to reflect and the photographs to visualize that. Many of the girls, myself included, believe in a bigger dream for all of us. We behave like it’s already true, no proof needed. 

“God” is also someone that’s an inspiration, something sacred. It’s important for me to define strippers just as that: icons who inspire through their persistence, strength, intelligence, beauty, and grace.

“I notice spiritual reminders everywhere. It’s a sticker on a locker that says ‘the universe is on my side,’ a tattoo, a piece of jewelry”

The project doesn’t just focus on what’s going on in the club, the camera lingers on the girls afterwards—capturing their commute, their homes, their trips to the laundrette. Why did you want to make that such a big aspect of it?
Totally. It’s always been about the girls first, the strip club becomes one of the backdrops we can play with. It’s like our own little movie set, except it’s real. My first question when thinking about strippers is always, “Girl, what does your life look like outside of these four walls?” I find that so fascinating—these girls live in two worlds. I want to photograph both.

Interestingly, there isn’t a strong aesthetic distinction between the photographs taken inside the club and outside of the club; the vibe is the same because the girls’ energy is what comes across the most.
Exactly, both worlds are part of her. What keeps surprising me is how quickly the girls can turn it on and off, like actresses. And honestly, some of my photographs are staged to some degree. There’s this tradition in documentary photography that you have to capture someone off guard, a candid moment, as an “attempt” to uncover reality. But think about it, we’re a social media-first society. This is reality. Her performance, her pose, the way she does her hair, make-up, nails for my camera… It tells us so much about who she’s trying to be and how she wants to be seen. Sometimes that’s even more honest.

Strip clubs in America often have a geographical reputation—Atlanta, Miami, etc. How would you describe the ‘character’ of strip clubs in New York City, if there is one?
I think what characterizes New York City also defines its strip clubs. It can be gritty and dark, but also very powerful and full of dreams. New Yorkers are true hustlers and we’ll do whatever it takes, no compromise. New York City can be the best and worst place to live in. If you don’t know what you want, it’ll eat you alive. Quickly, and without mercy. But if you know what you’re after, the impossible becomes possible here, those who create on their own terms are my biggest inspiration. Renèe said something that stuck with me: “It’s crazy how New York always puts the perfect people into your path at the right time… us meeting is New York unfolding in the way it always does.”

“What characterizes New York City also defines its strip clubs. It can be gritty and dark, but also very powerful and full of dreams”

Do you have a favorite shot in the project so far? Or a favorite moment?
Each photograph is very special to me, however there’s a moment: Renèe and I were driving up to Harlem. The sun was just setting, we’re on West Side Highway. It felt like one of those movie moments. You’re alive but somehow you’re living out a scene. We’re talking about life, drugs, dreams, clients, sobriety, love—everything and anything, like we’ve known each other forever. Anora by Sean Baker had just come out. I said, you know, I think Sean Baker would like our photographs, for him to see my work would be a dream. Sean is an artist I genuinely look up to, from Tangerine to Florida Project and now Anora. A couple weeks ago, Sean Baker followed my work on Instagram—talk about manifestation. 

Where do you think the project will go next?
I’d love for God Is a Stripper to become a book and an exhibition. It feels like the beginning of something special. It’s the largest body of personal work I’ve created so far and there’s still so much to photograph. In my dream, I’d like the work to live in print, on walls, in spaces where you can sit with it. A little universe we created together. As an artist, you have a longing to transcend and hopefully, my photographs can be that portal into an unseen world.

Follow Eva on Instagram: @evazar

The post The Strippers of New York City, 2025 appeared first on VICE.

I came back that night like I said I would. Joe, the manager, was at the front. We talked. I told him I wasn’t trying to make anyone look bad. I was just there to document something real.

He gave me a shot. And that’s how I fell into the world of The Madonna’s.

At first, I thought I’d just shoot a few portraits. One night, maybe two. But I kept coming back. Night after night. Losing hours under the lights. Watching girls work the pole while tourists blinked in slow motion, overwhelmed and underdressed.

I talked with the dancers in the back during smoke breaks. I explained my project. I was surprised but most of them were into it. Over time, I got to know a few of them. We’d hang out after work, drink together, do coke in the dressing room, trade stories about life and loneliness.

I was high more often than not. One night, I accidentally reloaded my camera with a roll of film I’d already shot. I thought I’d ruined everything. But when I developed it, I saw something kind of magical: double exposures of strippers’ faces layered with bright skies, waves, palm trees, old pastel buildings.

It looked like a dream, or a hallucination. Maybe both. What’s the difference?

“I accidentally reloaded my camera with a roll of film I’d already shot. When I developed it, I saw something kind of magical: double exposures of strippers’ faces layered with bright skies, waves, palm trees…”

THE METH DEALER

I landed in Miami in October 2018 with a vague idea and a half-dead phone. I’d made contact with a guy—I don’t even remember how—but he was a meth dealer. That was enough. I wanted to do a story about him. Follow his life, shadow his deals, soak up the strange rhythm of Ocean Drive from a different angle.

The beach was buzzing. Spring break energy: Heat pressing down like a sweaty palm, EDM and “Te Boté” pouring from open bars as sunburned tourists slowly liquified on the sidewalks.

When we met behind some cheap hotel he was shirtless, rocking gold-frame sunglasses, a battered pack of Coronas swinging from his shoulder. ‘Florida Man.’ We sat on the sand, drinking, facing the ocean. I started taking pictures.

One of his hands was bizarrely swollen, like a balloon. He told me he took a bullet trying to break up a fight a few months earlier. He said it so casually, like telling someone about a stubbed toe.

Then we were moving. He had regulars waiting. He was in good spirits, talking about how we were gonna party later. I told him I wasn’t into meth but I’d be down for a gram of coke to keep the energy up.

After a few handoffs, we sat on the strip of grass that separates Ocean Drive from the boardwalk. I had my little baggie by then, and we were chatting like kids who’d just scored candy. The night felt full of promise, and probably a little doom.

As we started doing keys, I noticed something buzzing overhead. I didn’t think much of it—until three police quads pulled up and boxed us in a minute later. Giant, hairless Miami cops.

First time getting busted by a drone. Welcome to the future.

I was sitting cross-legged, and managed to slide my bag into my sock and wedge it under my foot. Miracle reflex.

After a brief scuffle, they found about a dozen grams of crystal meth on my friend. He was already on probation and now he was toast. As for me, I played dumb. French dumb. “I not know these men,” I said. “I ask for cigarette. I just-ah arrive in Miami. They look nice, so we talk little bit.”

Broken English, wide eyes. Channeling my inner foreign exchange student. One of the cops waved me off. I walked away slowly, playing it cool, even though my heart was thundering. I hadn’t made it 50 feet before I heard the whistle.

Unbelievable. Snitched on by a dealer in Miami.

The cop gave me the classic ultimatum: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you tell me what you’ve got, it’s gonna be much easier than if I find it myself.” I kept the act going. “Please, I just land. I not know what they are doing.”

The cop lost patience, pulling off my shoes, sniffing around my waistband, digging his fingers into my socks. Miraculously, again, he somehow missed the bag.

I walked away faster this time. At the next street, I sprinted like hell.

I could’ve ended up in jail my first night in Miami. What a fucking nightmare.

“It became just a story I told to friends or strangers during late-night conversations, somewhere between the eighth drink and the ashtray.”

The next day, with no real plan, I wandered around Washington Avenue. The sun was out. I was fried and floating, unsure what to do, until I passed by this weird building that looked like a set left behind by the Scarface production crew.

Art deco bones. Faded pink trim. Posters of peroxide-blonde women in barely there bikinis lining the facade. The Madonna’s. Totally old school, frozen in time.

A guy was smoking a cigarette at the door. We hit it off surprisingly quick. I told him I’d love to shoot some photos for a magazine—maybe backstage stuff, portraits, whatever. He told me to come back later when it opened and talk to the manager. His name was Joe.

And that’s how I fell into the world of The Madonna’s.

A BIT OF HISTORY

Before I move forward, it’s worth rewinding. The Madonna’s isn’t just a strip club, it’s a relic. A last gasp of sleazy glamor in a city that got too expensive for its own sins. The place was created by Leroy Griffith, a legendary showbiz outlaw who’s been fighting censorship, lawsuits, and city regulations since the 1960s. Griffith carved out a name as both a provocateur and a savvy businessman. Picture Larry Flynt, if he owned a dozen neon-lit burlesque theaters and had a tan that never fades. Griffith’s empire once included peep shows, adult cinemas, and clubs across the Southeast. But The Madonna’s was his Miami masterpiece.

In the 90s, riding the wave of Madonna’s cultural dominance, Griffith opened this club as a tongue-in-cheek tribute slash cynical business move. The name stirred up legal drama with Madonna herself but the buzz only boosted the place. Pink lights, glam dancers, and an atmosphere like one of her music videos gone sideways.

Today, The Madonna’s isn’t flashy like it once was. But it’s the only strip club left in Miami Beach. That’s right. In a city known for wild nights and barely legal everything, this is the last adult club standing. It also holds the only liquor license of its kind in the area, which makes it even more of a unicorn.

Griffith may be more low-key now—he’s 93 years old, after all—but he still pops into the club almost every night with his wife to check out the scene, like a grandfather ghost of Miami vice.

Watching people fall into the world of The Madonna’s.

THE STRIP SCENE

The visit in 2018 was to be the first of many. I couldn’t stay away. I shot more. Met new dancers. New managers. The club was always shifting, always itself. Until, eventually, I did drift away. Back to my normal life in New York. The film negatives sat in my drawer for years, like little memories fading as the years passed. It became just a story I told to friends or strangers during late-night conversations, somewhere between the eighth drink and the ashtray.

What I kept from this whole ride: a couple hundred photos, a handful of half-written memories typed into my phone with one eye open, and a voice memo of the club’s longtime manager, Joe Corvesa, telling me the story behind the angels of Miami Beach’s last standing strip joint.

“Every year, there’s a new batch of 18-year-olds. The older girls try to fight it with surgeries, fake everything. But you can’t fake one thing: skin. A man with money wants to feel young skin. That’s it.”

THE INTERVIEW

“To understand strip clubs, you gotta understand what they really are: a fantasy people pay to live in. It’s a business of illusion, lust, and survival. And once you’re in, it’s almost impossible to get out,” explains Joe, who’s spent two decades watching the strip club business morph from old-school burlesque tease into something far more intense.

“Twenty years ago, you couldn’t even touch the girls,” Joe tells me. “Honestly, it wasn’t a bad gig for the dancers. But then came the Eastern Europeans—Hungarians, Czechs, Slovakians, Russians. Beautiful, and they didn’t care if you touched them. For the same price, they offered more. Suddenly, American girls had to compete. And to compete, they had to allow touching. That’s how friction dancing became the new normal.”

Joe managed clubs in Queens and Manhattan before moving to Miami. “When I arrived? Man, it was like another planet. Fully nude. Friction. Private rooms where… Well, things happened that weren’t supposed to. Miami’s not a city—it’s a playground with a resort mentality.”

He’s seen people get sucked in from every angle—dancers, bartenders, even himself. “The money’s too fast, too good. Dancers tell themselves they’ll save up, go to school. But you’re making in a few hours what people make in a week—cash. No taxes. No rules. How do you go back to a ‘normal’ job after that?”

Joe lights another cigarette. “No dancer uses her real name. Jennifer becomes ‘Karen.’ And the longer she stays, the more she becomes Karen. ‘Jennifer’ fades out. Disappears. Every night, these girls see married men—doctors, lawyers, cops; guys with wives, kids, good jobs—coming in and chasing 20-year-olds. You think that doesn’t mess with your head?

“The worst part,” Joe says, “is time. Every year, there’s a new batch of 18-year-olds. The girls in their thirties try to fight it with surgeries, fake everything. But you can’t fake one thing: skin. A man with money wants to feel young skin. That’s it.

“One night, back in New York, I was managing a club. Mixed neighborhood, a lot of Orthodox Jews. This old rabbi comes in. He asks how much for a private room. I’m already shocked. Then he picks a girl—very dark-skinned, not what I expected.

“Two minutes later, the girl comes out, eyes wide like she saw a ghost. ‘Joe, oh my God, what am I doing?’ So I go in. The rabbi’s completely naked. Except for the yarmulke.

“I said, ‘Rabbi, what are you doing?’ He looks at me dead serious and says, ‘I know, but I can’t let this Black girl sit on my clothes.’ The clothes were more sacred to him than the act itself.”

Joe shakes his head. He now sees the world in layers that can’t be unpeeled. “You see a guy with his wife and kids walking by in the daylight. You pretend not to know him. But you saw him last week, asking to get slapped, asking to be humiliated. What happens in the strip club stays in the strip club. But once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to forget.”

Before we wrap, I ask him: Does he regret getting into this line of work?

He pauses. Long drag. “The money’s good. But sometimes, I wonder. I see what women will do for money, what men will pay for. And I ask myself—how do you trust anyone after this?”

Maybe you can’t. Maybe the best thing to do is to give in, and fall into the world of The Madonna’s.

Follow Vincent Pflieger on Instagram

This story is from the summer issue of VICE magazine: THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Subscribe to 4 print issues each year or buy the summer issue individually.

The post The Last Strip Club in Miami Beach appeared first on VICE.

At the turn of the millennium, the Gold was infamous. It was the number one strip club in the United States. Pro athletes treated it like their personal playground. In boom times, its owner Steve Kaplan was making around $30 million a year. And to top it off, the Gold was fully nude. At the time, most strip clubs in the United States were either topless or – in the rare cases where nudity was allowed – BYOB. In Atlanta, the rules were different: It was all on show and there were liquor licences to boot. 

In 1999, the FBI raided the club and, in a sweeping indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that the club was a front for prostitution, credit card fraud and money laundering. They also claimed that club owner Steve Kaplan and his associates were connected to the Gambino crime family. During the trial, the prosecution alleged that Kaplan and his employees paid club dancers to have sex with athletes and other celebrities. As part of a plea deal, Kaplan confessed to racketeering and agreed to close the club.

At the centre of the scandal, and one of the subjects of the new season of Sex Before the Internet on VICE TV, was Jackie “Diva” Cook (then Bush) – the Gold Club’s highest-paid dancer and one of Kaplan’s closest associates. Today, Cook is based in Nevada. When we speak over Zoom, she’s sporting a fuschia fleece and thick-rimmed glasses, and her dogs bark in the background. You probably wouldn’t guess that she once faced over 100 years in prison, but if anyone has had a life full of crazy highs and true-crime-style lows, it’s Cook.

In 2001, as part of a plea deal, Kaplan confessed to racketeering and agreed to close the club. For six brief months in 2004, it became a church, but its champagne-soaked reputation remains. We asked Cook to take us back to the Gold Club’s heyday. 

VICE: The Gold was synonymous with champagne, so I have to start by asking about some of the champagne tricks you did there.
Jackie “Diva” Cook: You try and spice things up when you’re in that environment. And your goal is to make the most money you possibly can. One of the tricks we did was pouring it down your back – like the crease of your back – and the guy would be at the back of you drinking champagne from your butt.

Sometimes that champagne was about five grand a bottle, right?
The most expensive bottle is the Millennium Bottle, which is $20,000. It stands about four feet high, and about two feet around. It took two big floor men with pliers to get the cork out. For each bottle of champagne that you sold, you got $100. That’s just regular size bottles. The bigger bottles, like if you sold a Millennium Bottle, you got $1,000.

Dom Perignon at one point had to cut us off because they couldn’t keep us stocked. The way they distribute in the United States, each business, liquor store or club only gets a certain amount of bottles. Well, our orders were doubling and tripling and they were like, “we cannot keep you stocked”. So we replaced Dom with Perrier-Jouet.

Let’s wind it all back. How did you get started working at the Gold Club?
I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, originally, and I worked at a couple of the smaller strip clubs there. This book came out every year, the Entertainment Guide. It’s all the strip clubs in the country. The Gold Club would always make the cover, because it was the best strip club in the United States – well, practically in the world. We would see this, me and a couple of the girls, and we were like, “Can you imagine if we ever got to go work there?”

At the time, my fiancé was visiting down in Atlanta. He flew me down so I could come and visit. I said, okay, I’m going to go audition. I went in there three times and walked out because I was just too nervous. Then the fourth time, my girlfriend drove me over there. She’s like, “Now get in there and go get that job”.

When I walked in, I guess I looked lost. The manager Norby, he was like, “Can I help you? Do you have an appointment?” I said: “No, I just got up enough nerve to come do it”. He takes me back to the dressing room, introduces me to Rose, the house mom. She’s like, “Just relax, sweetie, you’re beautiful.” The manager walks up, he’s like, “Okay, drop your sundress” – just straight in. I drop the dress. He’s like, “Turn around”. He looked at me, he turned to Rose, and he goes, “Give her any night she wants”.

Can you paint a picture of the Gold in its heyday?
Mix Las Vegas with Studio 54 in New York, and the Copacabana from New York, and you had the Gold Club. The club was set up as a Vegas-style showroom. We had a huge stage. We had skits that we did throughout the night. There were four times a night where we all had to put on tuxedo jackets, our bow ties, and you do a full walk down so the men can see all of the women that work in the club that night.

At first it was a little overwhelming. But after I got acclimated, I realized this is no different from what I was doing back home. It’s just on a grander scale. And once I got comfortable, the sky was the limit.

The club had a reputation for lots of celebrities coming in…
Anybody who’s anybody has been through that club. And I’m talking senators, congressmen, singers. Michael Jordan. Just everybody. When people downstairs on the main floor would hear that Madonna, Dennis Rodman, the Lakers are upstairs [in the VIP rooms], then guys are like, “Ooh, I want to get a room. Maybe I could get close and I could see them there…”

How much were you earning when you started out, and how quickly did that change? I’ve heard a story about a guy who gave you 50k one night…
It was weird ‘cause when somebody gives you that type of money, you’re still sitting there going, “Did that happen?” My first real night on the job, I made $900 and it blew my mind. Back in Milwaukee, I was lucky to make $150 in a night. 

But I realized the potential. So what I started doing was watching the VIP girls. I wanted to see how they were maneuvering, to get where they were. Once you can get a couple guys to take you up to VIP, you’re allowed up there more often, just to walk around. Once I figured that out, I was like, see you guys! When I first started doing VIP rooms, my rate was $1,000 an hour. And that’s just for me to walk in the door. That doesn’t include buying a membership and buying champagne and food and other girls – that was my base.

By the time we got indicted, and I was done dancing, I was making between $2,000 and $5,000 an hour. That’s a lot of money.

The club even had its own currency – how did you keep people willing to splash the “Gold Bucks”?
Guys could order that on their credit cards. It made it easier than having to go to the bank and get a large sum of cash to bring in with them. There were nights where a guy would call American Express to raise his limit on his credit card because he wasn’t ready to leave yet. In one year, I sold $359,000 worth of champagne. I found that out in the courtroom when we were on trial. The prosecutor stood up and he’s like, “Don’t you think that’s a little excessive? Don’t you think she’s manipulating people?” I’m thinking to myself, no. Like, what are you gonna do? It is what it is. 

The guy who gave you $50k wanted you to wear jeans with no underwear. What other kinds of requests would you get from bigwig clients?
I had an oil tycoon from Texas, and he liked me to dress like a librarian with my hair up in the bun, the glasses, and the sweater with the skirt. He didn’t want me to take my clothes off, he just wanted me to dress like a librarian. I had another guy who liked me to dress up as a businesswoman, like I’m a lawyer or something with my briefcase and the slim pencil skirt with the suit coat.

Very Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi! Steve Kaplan took you under his wing, right? What was that like?
It was crazy, the night that Steve took me under him, and announced it to the entire club. He was like, “Walk with me”. So we go upstairs, we walk over to the DJ booth. Steve gets on the microphone and he’s like: “Listen up! Diva is no longer just Diva. She can come and go when she pleases. Nobody can fire her. You can’t tell her what to do. She can fire you.” The adrenaline and the ego boost was just ridiculous. I felt untouchable at that point.

Steve, for me, was the epitome of what a club owner should be. He was so empathetic. If you came to Steve and said, “Hey Steve, I didn’t make enough money to pay my rent,” he gave it to you. He did that for me a few times, when I first started out. 

You’ve already mentioned the trial, but what happened on the night of the FBI raid? Did you know you’d been under investigation?
It was a strange night. It didn’t feel right. I was like, “I’m going home”. I made a little bit of money. I was tired. I was drunk. I got to the edge of the parking lot to head out, and I look in the rear view mirror and all I see are men in black with these big AK-47s, gas masks on, storming the building.

I was like, “Oh my god, the club’s being robbed”, because on a nightly basis we had over $150,000 in the safe. I came through my front door and my phones are blowing up. It was Steve. He’s like: “The clubs being raided by the FBI right now. They’re at the office in New York. They’re headed to your house… But don’t worry. We all have lawyers. Everything’s good.”

The reason they came after me, is I was the closest to Steve. So they figured if they came after me, they would get him to fold faster and we’d be done. But the indictments were superseded three times. The charges were so wild, they were so ridiculous. They just kept adding more and more. I was looking at 177 years in prison.

All the phones had been tapped. Steve came to me one day, like, “I think we’re being watched by the feds”. Every time I answered my phone it would click three times, and I would hear this weird noise, and then I could talk to whoever’s calling me.

Well, there’s a clear sign that something’s going on!
Steve’s like, you’re not doing anything wrong. You legally work in a strip club. What are they going to do to you for that? But you have to prove that you’re not guilty… And it’s gut wrenching. They tried to say that I was a prostitute, and that I had people like Dennis Rodman paying for sex. Like, excuse me, I dated him for a whole year. 

How did it all end?
It went on for us for almost four months. Steve was paying everybody’s lawyers fees, right? My lawyer alone, Bruce Harvey, was $2.4 million for those two years. [Steve] got to the point where he was just tired of everyday the same thing – people getting up there and lying, getting proven to be wrong. He paid a $5m restitution and he did 13 months in prison for us, so that everybody could walk away. I don’t have a blemish on my record. You would never know that I was indicted.

But the Feds seized your assets – they took all your money?
I lost everything. I lived a good life, and I didn’t ever anticipate anything like that happening. I was just talking to someone who asked: “How do you go from that lifestyle to a basic life?” It’s called being humble, and the humility that you have to have within yourself to recognize, as quick as you can get it, you can lose it. But you can get it back again.

Clubs like the Gold don’t really exist in the same way anymore. How did you feel when the club closed, and how do you feel about it looking back?
Walking in that last time was bittersweet. It was painful because you’re looking at 400 people that just lost their jobs. Single moms like me, you know. It didn’t just affect us. It affected our family. It was just a sad day. When we walked out, we went across the street and sat in the car.  And we watched them walk up with the chains, and chain the doors shut and put the sticker on the front door. It was surreal. 

So much has changed since then – the birth of social media, for starters. What do you think about the way the internet has changed the adult industry?
If we had had all that back then, it would have been a whole lot of men in trouble with their wives! It was the era of privacy. We had a back staircase that we used to bring some of the big celebrities up through. Everybody’s been through there though, everybody. Keanu Reeves, Jerry Springer, just everybody. There’ll never be another club like the Gold Club, ever.

The new season of Sex Before the Internet premieres Tuesday, January 23 at 9pm on VICE TV.

The post I Was the Highest-Paid Dancer at America’s No. 1 Strip Club appeared first on VICE.

The people you don’t often hear from, however, are strippers themselves – how they feel about their industry, their thoughts on punters or why they started working as a dancer in the first place.

Wanting You to Want Me aims to rectify that. Authors Bronwen Parker-Rhodes and Emily Dinsdale met while working at a strip club in the UK and were instantly drawn towards each other and the idea of capturing the “complicated beauty of this world”, as Parker-Rhodes puts it.

The duo’s collection of anonymous real-life stories from strippers working across London are accompanied by Parker-Rhodes’s photography, which transports readers into the beating heart of the club and the intimate dressing room areas where dancers gossip, get ready and hang out. “We want the reader to feel like they’re among friends,” Dinsdale explains.

“We wanted to illustrate that there isn’t just one single experience of being a stripper,” Parker-Rhodes adds. “It’s much more complicated and nuanced.”

Read on for an edited excerpt, out now on Hardie Grant. The names of clubs mentioned have been redacted as per the book.

Poppy: ‘I didn’t know anything about stripping’

My first stage show was… I didn’t know anything about stripping. I was wearing a bowler hat. I may as well have had a cane. So awful! I was doing high kicks with my hat. My mum always took me to dance classes when I was younger, so all I had in terms of dance technique was jazz, tap and musical theatre. So I really gave it some theatre on stage. And I think a lot of people must have been laughing at me. I thought I was great; you know like you do when you’re 18. But when I think back to my initial stage show – in fact, my stage shows in the first couple of years – I mean, they must have been awful. They must have been so funny to watch, proper comedy gold. I remember the audition song because it was always the same for everyone, it was that, you know, No diggity, I like the way you work it. So there I was doing the hat thing and the high kicks to “No Diggity”.

I had a guy at [redacted]. I was 18 at the time, so any money was big money to me – it was the easiest £50 ($70) I ever made. He told me he was a vampire and he had loads of rings and medallions on, he looked more like a vampire slayer if anything. He drank his bottle of beer, gave it to me and said, Fill it up with piss and I will drink it all and give you £50. So I went straight to the bathroom, I filled it up and then I watched him stare into my eyes and glug it down – then he gave me the £50 and I was like, Sweet. Easiest £50 I’ve ever made.

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The reason he told me he was a vampire was that he liked menstrual blood, so he asked me if I was on my period and if he could have my tampon, but I wasn’t on. I love weird people like that.

One of my favourite clients used to come in on Wednesday daytime. Do you remember Mr. Magoo? Fred, the really old guy? He had big glasses and he was just proper filth. He was really old, like maybe nearly in his nineties. He’d come in every Wednesday and spend his pension money. He never gave me loads, but I will always remember him because he was so consistent. Every Wednesday. And all he wanted to do was, basically, you know that little private room? The one that was a singular private booth? He would sit at the end and I’d just lie on the floor with my legs spread doing my Kegels, making my pussy move. And I’d do that for maybe three songs and I’d get £60 ($80) out of it, then he’d always offer me a little mint. At the end, he’d be like, Do you want a Mento? As a character, I’ll just always remember him, even though I never made loads of money out of him.

Chiqui: ‘On the stage with a happy crowd is my most favourite place’

The first place I danced was [redacted] in Shoreditch. For me, the pub scene in London suited me better than the big clubs. It was not the most glamorous place on earth, it’s far from that, but that kind of dodgy environment somehow suited me better than a big club with leopard-print carpet and a hundred girls on a shift. So yeah, I started there and the money was okay actually, back in the day. This was in 2003. Also, let’s remember that I come from South America, so whatever money I was making, to me it was a lot.

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I was coming from working in hospitality, doing bar work and stuff. So when I made money at, maybe compared to the big clubs it was nothing, but for me it was a lot. Even though the place was horrendous, it’s the only place where I really truly found a huge variety of dancers. You had big ladies, Black women, Asian girls, you even had this Bangladeshi dancer, too. So now when I look back at it, I regard it with love and compassion because of how fucking cool it was to have such a variety of girls. It’s actually one of the most diverse strip clubs I ever worked at. In fact, there was this dancer who was maybe, like, 70 years old, Mona. She was great. And I haven’t seen anything like it since then. After that it became pretty white and a lot of this doll-ish kind of look.

When I was working full time, the last thing I wanted to do was date anyone. I was so exhausted from having this chat, Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been here? You have those conversations 10 times a night in a club, so when you have time off you’re emotionally exhausted. Also, you’re being deeply performative so much, it sometimes becomes blurry when you’re actually acting and when you’re not. You’re being flirty and sassy and loving for six, nine hours a night. Now that I haven’t been dancing for well more than a year with the whole pandemic, I finally had the energy, so I went out with a guy for seven months. But the thing is, you see them so clearly, you become a lot less patient with men. I even struggle to sleep in the same bed with a guy, you know. I fuck and then I need to go home.

Maybe it’s also an age thing. I’m almost 40 now, so I guess your limits are a bit stricter but, yeah, it definitely makes you tell the good men from the bad men. I always say to guys what I do for a living straight away, and I feel like how they treat a marginalised group of women says a lot about them. I always say it pretty much on the first date. I’m like, This is what I do and it’s not going to change, because it’s such a big part of my life.

I look younger than my age, but I’ve never lied about it. Sometimes you get the ones that get really freaked out because they want the really young-looking girls, which I always found a bit creepy. But I’ve also found, for example, if there’s a father and a son, the father will go with a younger stripper and the son will go with me. I think at some point I became a source of experience for younger guys. They feel really attracted to that. So I get the occasional 20-somethings because they see you as this goddess of knowledge. But sometimes with older guys, you know, the decent ones, they feel more comfortable having a dance with me than with someone who’s 21.

I want to see more older women on stage. I want to start running workshops with women in their forties, fifties, sixties. Because I feel sexier than ever, you know, with all this wisdom and knowledge I have now. And I think it’s really cool to start breaking boundaries about who’s allowed to be sexy on stage. I’m like, Fuck it. I’m gonna be sexy on stage forever. And every time I see another woman with her tits out on stage, I’m like Fucking good for you. Let’s do it.

What’s the feeling of being on stage? I think to be honest, that’s my happy place. Out of everything in life, my most favourite moments are when I’m on stage in front of a good crowd. More than sex, more than eating, more than travelling – and I love travelling, I love going to new countries – but not even that, no. Oh, I just want to be on the fucking stage. And I want people to be having it! There’s nothing like it. That is the thing that makes me the happiest. More than anything, like even spaghetti Bolognese, which I fucking love. On the stage with a happy crowd is my most favourite place.

Wanting You to Want Me, by Bronwen Parker-Rhodes and Emily Dinsdale (Hardie Grant, £16.99) Photography © Bronwen Parker-Rhodes

The post Photos and Stories from the Secret World of Strip Clubs appeared first on VICE.

Last weekend multi-coloured dollar bills emblazoned with the image of Lucia Blayke – founder of Harpies as well as London Trans+ Pride – rain down from the ceilings of their new east end location. On stage, sweat-soaked dancers flex their arsenal of pulse-racing moves at a lava-like pace up and down the pole. Hips undulate, hair whips and flicks, a packed out audience of writhing admirers erupts into applause.

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This release has been a long time coming for Blayke and the Harpies family, many of whom have struggled both financially and emotionally throughout the pandemic as nightlife ground to a halt. However, the club’s return hasn’t come without a fight.

Harpie’s first launched in the height of 2019’s blazing summer, when Lucia sent a powerful announcement out that she’d be taking London’s outdated strip scene by storm. “Harpies will centre bodies of all genders and sexualities,” they said at the time. “But especially trans+ strippers as we aim to celebrate trans+ bodies loud and proud, to kill the shame thrust upon us by cis society!”

The concept resonated far and wide. Less than a year into the game, Harpies had locked down a spot on the London Fashion Week official schedule performing after Burberry and Vivienne Westwood. Personal invites poured in from trans women in India who were fans of Harpies and wanted to organise a multi-hotel show. A world tour was in the works. Then the pandemic struck.

Thankfully support from online streams kept most of the Harpies family going, but not everyone was as lucky. With little to no financial support from the government, sex workers found themselves without an income and without the luxury to follow the restrictions that were put in place. Sadly, the community lost some trans women in the process.

It felt like Harpies was finally rising from the ashes when plans to return to a new location in Soho – the birthplace of sex and hedonism in London – were announced in August. But they were met with yet another roadblock when the notoriously strict sexual entertainment licensing and the even more stringent Westminster council could not meet eye to eye.

Still, Lucia is no stranger to adversity, defying limitations and putting up a fierce fight when it comes to pursuing her dreams. And after some negotiation they found a new home for at The White Swan in Aldgate. Now not only is Harpies feverishly back in action but the dancers are booked and busier than ever.

High off the hype of Harpies second coming, VICE caught up with Lucia and Harpies alumni Hellikisto and Barbs, as well as Harpies new-gen Bawbiey, to talk about revolutionising the industry and what it feels like to be back stripping it all off together.

VICE: Hi everyone! How did it feel to be back on stage?

Barbs: It felt incredible to be back at Harpies. I was there at the beginning, when Lucia was just talking about it. So it’s just been really beautiful to see how Harpies has grown. It’s such a needed and unique space. We’re like this little family. You have to come to feel the queer, trans sex magic in that place, and in that party!

Hellikitso: I felt so grateful to see so many faces old and new. I felt sexy, I felt hot and it was just super reaffirming that this is exactly where I need to be. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever would have found the confidence I have now in myself if Lucia hadn’t approached me as this little shy gay boy walking around in heels and asked me to dance.

When was your first time on stage, and were you nervous?

Lucia: Unbelievably so. The good thing was that all of us were trans and none of us had danced before, so at least was that we were all shaking together. I was so scared I’d drank and done whatever I could get my hands on!

The first lap dance I ever did was for a guy and a girl. I jumped up and spun around this pole but it was in an archway with a chandelier and hit one of the lightbulbs with my head! I carried on dancing but all this blood started trickling down my face. The couple were like ‘Oh my god you’re bleeding, let’s go get you an ambulance or some help’ and I was like ‘Sit back down! You will enjoy this!’ I just carried on dancing. In the end, she finally ran off to get me a bandage and he threw in an extra £100 as a tip. He said it was the most entertaining lap dance they’d ever seen in their whole life.

Hellikitso: I was incredibly shy, but as soon as I slide down the pole and my track came on I just came alive. I was able to immerse myself in the music and it was the best high that I’ve ever felt.

How has stripping impacted your perception of your body?

Barbs: The biggest rush I get from dancing at Harpies has to be the confidence I get and the validation that my body, my gender and the way I express myself is valid and sexy and gorgeous. Even if it may be out of the mainstream of what we’re conditioned to believe is “sexy”. Harpies is a space that’s really allowed me to be my true self, be free and embrace my femininity. Also, who doesn’t love getting loads of money chucked at them? That’s probably the biggest rush!

Bawbaiy: Stripping has helped me feel and also want to be more healthy. I’ve met so many dancers who take care of themselves, eat healthily and focus on self-care and so it’s inspired me to do the same.

Lucia: I didn’t have breasts when I started stripping, and that really was something that used to make me feel insecure. I struggled a lot. But when people started giving me their hard-earned cash, I thought ‘They took the time to make this money, so that they could give it to me and admire my body’ and that finally taught me ‘Oh wait, actually, I probably can’t be that repulsive and ugly if people are parting with their money to see it’. That really was a token of self-worth for me at the beginning. Combine that with the confidence you get from all the applause and clapping and now I want to get naked everywhere! I used to have no ego before Harpies and be humble. Now, because of Harpies, I’m in love with my body.

Speaking of tits, Lucia you have a brand new beautiful pair that made their grand debut at Harpies. How did that feel?

Lucia: Like a fucking goddess! I love tits, they’re such a symbol of fun! As soon as a room full of people partying see a pair of tits they suddenly know there are no rules anymore. I suddenly feel like I have this weapon on my chest that will make a room go wild. They’re money well spent!

What would you say is the most important skill you have to posses in order to run a strip club?

Lucia: Empathy, if you can call that a skill. You need to make sure that you always view these dancers as human beings. They’re not objects. A lot of dancers come in using aliases, and that can become complex for the owner to think of them outside of this character. You have to remember, stripping is an acting job as well as a dancing job. Some girls might pretend they’re more stupid than they actually are, they might make up stories to play a part, like ‘I’m saving up to put my kids through university’. So you have to remember who they are outside of these personas. You have to be open-minded, observant and be able to read people. That includes the dancer’s emotions, as well as the customers who walk through the door. Are they good people? Are they accepting people? Are they rich people? Are they easy to sell dances too?

What’s the most important skill for a stripper to have?

Lucia: I look for an abundance of energy. It’s not just necessarily confidence, they have to have a fire. I want a dancer that’s able to go up on stage and make the whole room go silent. It’s not even about looks, having the perfect body, or being gorgeous. You can be the hottest person in the world and have no presence when you walk into a room. You can be someone who is conventionally unattractive and totally command a room – that’s who I want performing at Harpies! It’s all about the energy you give off. You have to have a flame burning underneath you that gives you the gull to know what you want, and also how to go out and get it.

Do you look for trained dancers or athletes?

Lucia: I’ve had so many professionally trained dancers come into auditions. They’ve moved their bodies in amazing ways, but I’ve been so bored. I don’t want to look at you in a strip club and think ‘Wow, you’ve danced since you were a child.’ I wanna look at you and think ‘This person is hilarious! This person is insane! This person is mysterious!’ I wanna be so intrigued that I can’t take my eyes off you.

Hellikitso: You don’t actually don’t have to be athletic at all to be a stripper. You don’t have to be twirling and doing mad tricks that people are doing on Instagram. If you feel good when you step on that stage, everything else follows. Get up there and own it! Sell everything you got and I promise you, people will buy it!

What drives you to continue being a stripper at Harpies?

Barbs: I’m so humbled to be a part of Harpies and to have this experience. Some of my fondest memories are stripping. Even when I’m old and looking back. I’ll think, ‘I was a stripper with all my other amazing queer mates and we were absolutely smashing it!’

Bawbiey: I had a trans sister, Elie Che, who passed away last year and I would not be doing this if it wasn’t for her. Whatever I’m doing in this industry and on stage, it’s for her. It’s still just the beginning for me, I’m only 20-years-old, so I’ve got a long way to go. But I’m thanking Lucia and all my fellow Harpies [dancers] for the experiences they’re giving me and the wisdom they’re sharing. I feel so strong and so loved. Dancing at Harpies and being surrounded by all these fierce strippers, as well as having my mother’s support behind me to do it, has helped me find that same strength in myself. This is my dream.

Hellikitso: You don’t have to conform to anything if you’re a stripper. No matter what you’ve gone through, just channel that and let it all out on the stage. I’ve witnessed how stripping has helped so many people with traumas heal, it’s a very good tool for that.

What’s the first song you’ll give a lap dance to?

Lucia: Private dances are my favourite. I find them so intimate. I love that feeling of being sensual with sex. I love all that build-up before and all the teasing. The actual act for me is not nearly as much of a rush. I want to want it, I don’t want to have it!

In the past, we’ve always had to dance to whatever the DJ was playing in the club. It used to piss me off, but we can change that now. The first song that I want to give a lap dance too is “Glory Box” by Portishead. I really want to play with it, especially as a trans woman. When [Beth Gibbons] sings the lines “I just wanna be a woman” – that will get a guys dick so hard!

What else can people expect from Harpies’ return?

Lucia: When you walk into Harpies, you can expect to be there with people who have wanted it more than ever. Strippers are going to get up on stage and dance like it’s the last time they’re going to dance in their lives. Customers are going to party like it’s the last party of their lives. DJs are going to play like mad. Everybody will pour more power, energy and passion into the night than they ever did, because we lost this amazing thing once before, and we could lose it again.

No one knows where the world is headed. If we lose Harpies, then we lose the chance to revolutionise the stripping industry. I always knew that Harpies was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I didn’t think I could appreciate that club more, but I do now. I’m going to give it everything I’ve got to keep it going and give every fibre of my being to relish this amazing thing we’ve all created together!

@TracyKawalik

Photos by Roxy Lee unless otherwise stated.

Interview: @luciablayke, @hellikisto, @barbs.co.uk, @bawbiey

The post The UK’s First LGBTQ+ Strip Club is Back and Bolder Than Ever appeared first on VICE.

Stacy, 27, whose real name and workplace are not being used due to concerns over her employment, told VICE News she’s almost certain she got the virus from work, because patrons were “demanding all kinds of contact from me.”

“They’re willing to break all the rules and wanting to take their masks down and wanting me to take my mask down and asking for a closer and closer touch,” she said. “It did just feel like a lot considering we’re in the middle of a fucking pandemic and I had to still ask people not to put their mouths on me and lick me.”

Stacy said her club put in a number of measures to mitigate transmission of the virus, such as requiring everyone to wear masks inside, but those rules weren’t always enforced.

She said she was repeatedly pressured by customers to take off her mask during private dances, where she makes most of her money, and that dances were not physically distanced.

While Stacy qualifies for CERB, the federal government’s relief program for unemployed Canadians, and lives with a partner with whom she splits rent, she said the same doesn’t apply to all strippers.

Ontario has ordered all strip clubs to close, after a patron and employee of Toronto’s Brass Rail tested positive and an outbreak at the nearby Club Paradise, where six workers and one customer were diagnosed with the virus. The city found the Brass Rail was not following physical distancing guidelines and that most patrons left fake names or numbers for contact tracing.

Reactions from within the industry have been mixed, though in general, those who spoke to VICE News said strip clubs are being singled out, while nightclubs, bars, and restaurants have remained free of sweeping bans and casinos have been allowed to re-open. Dancers, club owners, and sex worker advocates were also critical of comments made in the media by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor John Tory, which they described as stigmatizing.

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When the Brass Rail incident happened, Ford said “I feel sorry for people when they go to their house and tell them that they were at the Brass Rail.”

Tory told CP24, “It’s ironic that small theatres that can’t open for performances yet these places are open for what they offer – and I’m not making a judgment on that I am just commenting on the nonsensical nature of that.” He also questioned, “why do these places have to be open?”

In an email statement, Anna Miller, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, said “outbreaks in strip clubs have posed challenges as contact tracing logs are often incomplete.”

Lawvin Hadisi, a spokesperson for Tory, said the mayor was “not passing judgement or in any way stigmatizing people.”

Hadisi said Tory’s concern was also related to contract tracing and “the amount of time that public health officials were tied up trying to track down hundreds of people, the vast majority who have provided false contact information.”

In Stacy’s view, as COVID-19 cases in Ontario surge, other nightlife venues should be subject to the same bans as strip clubs. Despite wanting to get back to work, she said her experience has made her worried about re-exposing herself and her family and partner to the virus.

Maija Ellis, who goes by the alias Mona Lott and dances at a few strip clubs around Toronto, has had a different experience.

“This is discrimination,” Ellis, 28, said of the closures.

For the most part, she said management and customers have been compliant of the new rules, which have included physically distanced private dances, frequent cleaning, indoor masks, and temperature checks and symptom reporting at the door.

Ellis said she also qualified for CERB but due to the nature of sex work, including cash payments and being self-employed, not all of her colleagues will be able to take advantage of the government relief program, which is soon transitioning to the Employment Insurance program.

“It pushed a lot of women to be working in areas that maybe they wouldn’t have been doing before… cause they took the livelihoods literally out of our pockets,” she said.

Ellis described Tory’s comments as hurtful.

“It’s really not nice to feel the person that is supposed to be supporting all of the citizens of the city and helping us get through this really trying time is marginalizing us,” she said. “Why not have a place open that’s safe and clean for us to go?”

She thinks strip clubs should remain open unless they commit violations, the same approach that’s being used with bars and restaurants right now.

As for contact tracing, she said one solution would be to have patrons register online, the same way one would making a reservation for a restaurant.

Sam Cohen, owner of Guelph, Ontario strip club the Manor, said he’s spent $20,000 renovating his club to ensure physical distancing is taking place, putting up new stages that are six feet away from patrons.

“We just had an inspection last week and everything was fine and then all of a sudden they shut us down,” Cohen said, noting that Guelph hasn’t had the types of spikes in COVID-19 cases seen in the Toronto area. Yesterday, the city reported no new cases.

He said one way to ensure accurate contract tracing would be using IDs to cross-reference the names people are putting down, or even asking them to call a phone as a means of getting their number.

Over the weekend, Toronto shut down three restaurants on the notorious King West strip for various COVID-19-related violations, including serving buffet-style food and pressuring staff to work while ill. The businesses will be allowed to re-open once they are compliant.

“Why are we different than any other kind of bar or nightclub?” Cohen asked. “We’re an easy target.”

Ellie Ade Kur, a board member at sex worker advocacy group Maggie’s Toronto, said it’s “insulting” that the city licenses strip clubs but the mayor is making remarks “wouldn’t be acceptable in any other industry.”

“The city is making money off of these spaces and yet the mayor is publicly making remarks… characterizing them in ways that are riddled with stigma.”

She said the province and municipalities should be consulting with strippers on how best to keep their workplaces clean and safe.

“A lot of them could have poked so many holes into this plan, including the fact that if you leave a binder out for people to write their names and email addresses, you’re not going to get valid contact information.”

Ade Kur said one of the challenges facing strippers is they are considered independent contractors and not employees, and therefore aren’t given the same benefits as employees. She said efforts to unionize are often met with dancers being blacklisted or fired.

Maggie’s raised $130,000 earlier in the pandemic to assist sex workers who were homeless, paid in cash, or otherwise unable to access relief funds. She advised dancers who are currently facing hard times to get in touch with Maggie’s for support.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter

The post Strippers Say the Covid-19 Ban On Strip Clubs Is Discrimination appeared first on VICE.

Humanizing the lives of sex workers is showrunner Katori Hall’s entire premise for the new series, which is based on the play that the Memphis-born playwright and actress produced in 2015. With P-Valley, Hall uses the strip club setting as a device for telling the stories of the dancers often relegated to the background. In zeroing in on the lives of exotic dancers, it accomplishes what Hustlers—last year’s film adaptation of a New York magazine story about a group of New York City dancers who drugged and scammed the men of Wall Street—failed to do: expose how the power dynamics of race, gender, and class create a world where people are working to survive by any means necessary.

“When I pitched P-Valley, I remember not even being able to get inside of the room at certain places,” Hall told VICE. “People were very hesitant to even consider a show centered around exotic dancers set in a Mississippi strip club. I think Starz quickly realized that this isn’t a show about [tits and ass]. It’s a show about human beings.”

In the pilot, we find Hailey, one of the show’s main characters, fleeing from a disastrous flood and an abusive husband in Houston. She finds a suitcase with a few things she needs to start a new life—designer clothes, a new ID—and signs up for Amateur Night at The Pynk, where we meet fellow dancers Gidget, Keyshawn, and Mercedes. P-Valley is a vehicle for not just Hailey’s story, but the stories of all the club’s lead dancers.

Although the series is written by women and centers women, the men of Chucalissa—the fictional city set in the Mississippi Delta where The Pynk resides—are equally as important. Lil Murda, an aspiring rapper who uses the strip club as a testing ground for his music, is everyone’s favorite patron. Murda’s breakthrough single “Fallin'” is undoubtedly the song of the summer (in both the show and in real life), and Murda is aware that if the girls in The Pynk can’t dance to his music, no one will.

But not every patron uses the club as strategically as Murda does. For some regulars—like Corbin Kyle, whose family descended from cotton plantation owners—The Pynk is a place of solace and escape, the only place where he feels that he can truly be himself. Corbin is the black sheep of his family—both figuratively and literally. Born of an affair between his father and the Kyle family’s Black maid, Corbin is proof of his father’s infidelity. And while his half-brothers Wyatt and Wayne—the two other heirs to the family fortune—want to sell the Kyle land to a company with plans to build a resort and casino, Corbin is determined to lease the land instead. Although he’s white-passing, Corbin sees his share of the land as a way to establish his own legacy as a Black man with ownership, as well as a means to finally tap into the benefits of the Kyle name that he’s never been able to access. The matter is further complicated because if Wyatt and Wayne’s casino deal goes through, they have their sights set on the very plot of land that is home to The Pynk—an area which Black landowners and entrepreneurs have been historically relegated.

The planned deal to bring a new casino to Chucalissa could close the club’s doors for good. But it isn’t until episode three that Hailey asks the $6-million-dollar (the amount that the Kyle brothers stand to make) question: “What does that do for the people who live here?”

The Pynk is a portal to another world, which is why Corbin doesn’t mind shelling out his inheritance in its private rooms. The cost of admission to The Pynk transcends money; its currency is the opposite of privilege, and the people who work there have created a system that rejects the necessity of being born white, straight, male, let alone all three.

For Uncle Clifford, the non-binary owner of The Pynk with a personality as flamboyant as the club’s neon purple lights, the club is not just a financial lifeline, but an important piece of family history. Growing up in Chucalissa, Uncle Clifford was treated as an outsider by locals for carrying her feminine disposition in the frame of a Black man. But now, she’s affectionately known as “Mayor of The Pynk.” (Dancers at The Pynk use the pronouns “she/her” for Uncle Clifford, but the show’s antagonists frequently misgender her.) She is as vulnerable as she is strong, a surrogate mother to the dancers who call The Pynk home.

Like the Kyle family, she has a long history with this land, though her family’s lack of generational wealth has made it difficult to keep it in the family. Before it became The Pynk, the building was once home to Ernestine’s Juke Joint, named for and owned by her grandmother, played by Loretta Divine; before that, it was a cotton mill that belonged to Ernestine’s parents.

“There is such a thing as inherited debt as well as generational wealth,” said Nicco Annan, who plays Uncle Clifford. The Pynk’s waterfront location makes it prime real estate for the new casino, but Chucalissa’s Black-owned establishments are valued significantly less than property owned by white residents. “The Jenkins are getting half of what the Trumps are getting, if you know what I’m saying,” Annan said, reciting one of Clifford’s memorable lines.

When Uncle Clifford isn’t trying to level the playing field in Chucalissa, she’s one-half of television’s new favorite will-they-or-won’t-they couple. Lil Murda, a hypermasculine, grill-wearing aspiring rapper with a tough exterior who has a penchant for making it rain in the club, is not interested in any of the dancers; his heart is set on Uncle Clifford, for whom he even wrote “Fallin.” Because of stigma, their romance is limited to romps behind locked office doors and outings in the woods at night, and when Murda wants to make their relationship public, Clifford’s answer is simple, yet heartbreaking: “Where you gon’ take me? I advise you take me nowhere.”

In 2017, a study from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that when it comes to violence against the LGBTQ community, Black people make up 60 percent of homicides. “The reality is no matter how sweet Uncle Clifford is, there is a huge amount of homophobia and violence against the LGBTQ community in the South, North, and worldwide,” said Annan.

Hall says creating a fictional city gave her the freedom to express everything she wanted to say about being Black and Southern. According to her, Chucalissa is what happens if Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi had a baby. “The people there are fast talkers, they’re hustlers—but they’re also deeply connected to their roots,” said Hall.

The story of Chucalissa—a plantation-turned-factory town that fell upon hard times—mirrors the history of many Black communities in the South. “Because of globalization, so many of the factory jobs were decimated,” said Hall, whose parents had themselves experienced unemployment as a result of these same forces. “So you have this population of people who were undereducated but also didn’t have access to jobs that could kick them over to the middle class.”

This reality is just one way the show stresses the need for Chucalissans to survive despite the odds. “We do not shy away from the fact that people are living in this impoverished region and trying to live their life by hook or by crook. This is a show about survivors. Women who are survivors. Men who are survivors. Queer folk who are survivors.”

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The theme of survival shows its face in The Pynk in a multitude of ways, but especially in its depiction of motherhood. The story of Mercedes, who has been dancing at The Pynk for seven years, and her mother Patrice, a devout Christian, offers a multigenerational story of the complicated nature of being a mother. When Patrice judges Mercedes for being a dancer, Mercedes reminds her of their traumatic past, which is alluded to but never explained. Now that Mercedes is in charge of her own destiny, she is trying to break the generational curse by saving up $20,000 to open a gym for her dance troupe and establish a steady income to regain custody of her own daughter. And while Patrice is a so-called saved woman with aspirations of being the lead pastor in the pulpit, she’ll stop at nothing, including robbing her own daughter and marring Mercedes’ celebrity-like status around Chucalissa, to make that happen.

“[Patrice] thought she was a waste, and that broke Mercedes’s heart,” said actor Brandee Evans, who calls her character, Mercedes, an “emotional gangster.” “She has all these people who look up to her as this Queen Bee, and the one person she wants validation from isn’t giving it to her.”

Hall said one of her favorite scenes from the season features Keyshawn, a dancer who just returned from maternity leave and shows up bruised to work almost every day because of her abusive boyfriend. “You see Keyshawn backstage nursing her bruises, but she’s also nursing her child,” Hall explained. “Breasts are for making money, and breasts are also for nourishment.” By showing the full spectrum of motherhood, P-Valley opens a dialogue about the judgments surrounding parenting, and questions who gets to be considered a “respectable mother.”

The beauty of P-Valley is that by exploring the humanity of each of these characters, Hall is challenging taboo topics and perceptions about our judgments when it comes to sex work, relationships, and the spectrum of sexuality.

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J. Alphonse Nicholson, who plays Lil Murda, says that the role and his character’s relationship with Uncle Clifford made him aware for the first time of the place of privilege he’d operated from while navigating the world as a straight man. “The fear that comes with being out was so eye-opening to me,” he told VICE. “People are always asking, Why people don’t come out? But you realize people’s lives are in danger and that they can be murdered just for loving who they want to love.”

Hall says the writer’s room is proud of how they’ve used P-Valley to translate the tenderness of Black love and intimacy, particularly for the queer community. “We know what they’re up against because Uncle Clifford articulates it very clearly and firmly,” she said. “And yet, despite all the dangers, there’s a possibility of deep love, almost soulmate love.”

Overall, Hall emphasized that the show’s most critical message is that “Black people, in general, are worthy of love. They’re worthy of protection, respect, and being seen for their humanity.”

Kristin Corry is a Senior Staff Writer for VICE.

The post ‘P-Valley’ Is About More Than a Strip Club—It’s About Survival appeared first on VICE.

The owners of the Cadillac Lounge, Club Fantasies, Desire, and Foxy Lady all agreed that all outdoor seating would be eight feet apart or separated by a sheet of plexiglass or “other appropriate, non-porous physical barrier”; performers and patrons would be required to wear masks at all times; the stage itself would be surrounded by plexiglass; and no physical contact between performers and patrons would be allowed at any time. (They also pledged to clean the stage between performances—probably something that should’ve happened during the Before Times.)

“Adult entertainment might not be everyone’s favorite sector of the economy,” they wrote. “But it is a constitutionally protected industry that generates millions in income to those who work for these clubs, and substantial local tax revenue which pays for the things we care about most in our city.”

The Board of Licenses approved their plan, giving all four clubs the go-ahead to move forward with outdoor stripping… but nobody really seems into that, like, at all. Additionally, the performers are concerned that their income will significantly decrease since “side dances” (a.k.a. lap dances) are still off the table.

“They won’t make enough money for themselves,” Frank DeLuca, the owner of Club Fantasies, told the Boston Globe. “I can’t tell them to come in. It’s up to them, because they’re independent contractors.” (He also estimated that two dozen customers came to the club, learned that lap dances weren’t happening, and left.)

He only had one dancer who was interested in returning to perform outdoor dances. The others are hopeful that they’ll soon be allowed to open for indoor shows at 50 percent capacity, and will be able to find a safe way to allow the dancers to sort-of interact with the patrons.

“That’s all we can do right now, which I don’t understand why when they can have massage parlors open,” he told WPRI. “Our entertainers, we can have them wear gloves and a mask and have them do a side dance. They’re not going to catch anything standing in front of the guy.”

Not every state has had to keep their adult performers outside on the patio. Ryan Carlson, the director of operations for Deja Vu Services, told VICE that that group has been able to re-open its clubs in Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas. “Sadly, Las Vegas still hasn’t allowed adult clubs to open,” he wrote in an email. “It’s strange that the entertainment capital of the world has not yet followed suit.” (Little Darlings regulars will still have to wait for their next “coronavirus-free lap dance.”)

Carlson said that Deja Vu is “aggressively implementing” new safety procedures, including an hourly deep cleaning, “strictly enforced” social distancing, and mandatory masks for all employees. Patrons of the clubs are not required to wear face coverings, but he said that Deja Vu both encourages it and will provide free masks.

He said that “a few states” have limited lap dancing, but unless they’ve been told otherwise, those performances are still permitted. “Lap dances will always exist until the end of time. There is no other act that can replicate the thrill of an intimate, erotic experience in a fun nightclub environment,” he said. “The government cannot easily—or rightfully—prohibit two consenting individuals from engaging in a lawful business transaction.”

That could be why some Deja Vu clubs have already come close to breaking their all-time weekly sales records. “I am confident that our clubs are among the safest businesses that one can patronize during this ‘pandemic,'” he said, putting a set of sarcastic quotes around that last word.” We endure greater scrutiny than virtually any other industry except medicine and banking, so you can expect that we will religiously follow all CDC guidelines and go above and beyond for our guests’ safety.”

The post Strip Clubs Are Forced to Get Creative to Reopen Amid Coronavirus appeared first on VICE.

Yet this Friday night also marks another important milestone. On May 1, the state of Utah, Salt Lake County, and Salt Lake City all lifted many of their pandemic restrictions in the same arbitrary and haphazard manner that they implemented them. Since many of the area’s adult entertainment establishments are classified as bars under state law, Salt Lake County became one of the first regions in the country to explicitly allow its collective half dozen strip clubs to open.

VICE visited three Utah strip clubs in their first week of reopening to get a sense of what the new normal looks like.

It’s 9:20 p.m. and the sun has just sunk below the horizon on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The parking lot of Trails is full and a line is starting to queue outside. From the outside, the venue looks like any other popular hip-hop club, with a DJ playing Drake, Future, Tyga, Post Malone, Blueface, and Rihanna.

Groups of ethnically diverse patrons aren’t standing in line but rather in clumps, strategically placed six feet away from other groups. And while venues such as Trails used to have strict dress codes regarding hats and facial coverings, everyone in line has their face covered. Some wear medical grade N95 masks. Some wear makeshift Western-style bandanas. A large majority wear high-end ski balaclavas, a subtle nod to a ski season that was abruptly cut short due to the pandemic.

A bouncer in an N95 mask pulls double duty, checking IDs before taking temperatures. (Those with temperatures above 99 are denied entry.) Once all members of a group pass the temperature scan, the group is escorted to a table as the bouncer recites the rules of the new world:

1. Stay six feet apart from dancers, employees, and other patrons

2. Your mask must remain on at all times except when you are drinking

3. Do not come within six feet of the stage other than to place your money around the edge

4. Once you have placed your money on the edge of the stage, you must immediately return to your seat

For strip clubs in Salt Lake County, the crisis hit hard and fast, just as it did with many small businesses, but with one major caveat: strip clubs (as well as casinos) were not eligible for small business loans, a practice that many in the industry decried as unfair.

An employee at Southern X-posure, another Salt Lake City strip club, points out that the club, like others in the area, was ineligible to receive assistance despite paying federal, state, and local taxes, as well as other fees such as a liquor license–and despite the fact that business had come to a screeching halt before they were officially forced to shut their doors.

“We didn’t have much business the last two weeks before the shutdown because they [the government] was telling everyone to stay home,” she says.

Inside Trails, the LED lights surrounding the stage shine extra bright due to the absence of patrons sitting around the “tip rail” (the counter immediately next to the stage). At the end of each performance, a masked employee dutifully uses a Swiffer to remove the dollar bills from the stage (where they will then be counted and handled by a separate gloved employee) while another sterilizes the performing area in preparation for the next masked dancer.

All dancers, despite being at least six feet from patrons, are required to wear face marks.

There is a poetic irony as the callipygous, surgically perfected women danced to Future’s hit song “Mask Off” as the DJ periodically reminded patrons to keep apart and wash their hands.

Adapting to these new measures was the only shot many of the women had for gainful employment as Utah’s unemployment numbers continue to skyrocket and a federal independent contractor assistance program is still in the process of being cobbled together.

The performers, despite being unemployed for almost two months, were ineligible to receive unemployment benefits due to their independent contractor status. “The pandemic hit everyone so suddenly,” says Steph Mercedes, dancer manager at Trails. “However, most people who lost their jobs were able to apply for unemployment benefits, which is something that we could not do being independent contractors, so the financial stress was extreme.”

Ten miles away from the glittering lights of downtown Salt Lake City, The Bears Den in Magna also opened its doors. In a squat, unassuming building in the middle of Utah’s desolate landscape, the venue largely caters to the blue collar workers at the nearby Rio Tinto Kennecott copper mine.

“The Den,” as locals affectionately call it, is currently the only bar in operation in the city of Magna as the others were deemed structurally unsound following a series of earthquakes that ravaged the region in March and April.

There’s no Vegas-style DJ or flashy LED lights at the Den, but rather wood grain-paneled walls and strings of Christmas lights. The Den is not located in Salt Lake City limits, so the rules are different here. Dancers must still wear masks and are not allowed to touch the cash, but patrons do not have to wear masks.

The bouncer, however, like the one at Trails, has still assumed a new role. He dutifully records names and phone numbers of everyone who comes in.

“In case of an outbreak,” he explains, his voice muffled behind his paper medical mask, which is clearly too tight on him.

As the sole dancer, a pale thin woman with grown-out blonde highlights, performs on the bar’s small stage to a series of country songs and 80’s classic rock, a bartender makes drinks behind a plexiglass partition, obediently changing her gloves between rounds of drinks.

The crowd, clad in camo patterns, cowboy boots, and Harley Davidson-branded wear, shift their gaze between the performer and the TVs behind the bar, which broadcast a NASCAR race and Fox News. Two patrons proudly show me their Punisher-branded facial masks while another flaunted his N95.

Morgan, the bartender, estimates that the club is about 60 percent fuller than usual, a similar approximation provided by staff at Trails.

“People have money to spend. They just got their stimulus checks and they think that they’re getting ready to go back to work,” she says as she wipes down a pool stick before giving it to a new group of players.

For David, a 50-something auto mechanic and regular at The Den, returning to the bar means not just returning to a sense of normalcy, but also supporting a local small business that he says is important to the community.

“I’m not scared of getting sick,” he says as he pulls out a stack of dollar bills to pay the masked performer as she sprays a copious amount of sanitizer on the stage between Luke Bryan songs.

“I’m not that old, and I might as well get it over with. If it’s going to happen, let it happen. But I’m being safe. I’m washing my hands. I’m doing this social distancing,” he says as he gestured to the appropriately spaced tables.

“But people need to make money. The government didn’t help us, so we have to help each other.”

While all three clubs’ attendance numbers seem to be up, many of the dancers say they have noticed a significant drop in their tips.

“Talking to customers when we are off stage is really a vital part of job,” says Steph Martines, the dancer manager. “Since we don’t do lap dances, talking to customers is really where customers feel important in our club.”

A woman who gives her name as Sass, who has been a dancer at The Den for more than a decade, is glad that she doesn’t have to wear a mask when she speaks to me. Her brown hair is cut to a sensible shoulder length and her short nails are manicured and unchipped. Despite her no-nonsense appearance, she lights up the room as she speaks, periodically pausing to wave to patrons who haven’t seen her in over six weeks.

She claims that despite the increase in attendance and overall revenue, she has only made about 60 percent of what she normally makes in a good day—a decrease that she attributes to the face mask requirement.

“The money is different when they can’t see you smiling,” she explains as she counts out her earnings from her earlier day shift at the club.

For the clubs and the dancers, the future remains as murky as it does for many Americans.

Olivia, a dancer at The Den, stresses that she enjoys her work, but is also working on a back-up plan and plans to go to school again to work on her phlebotomy certification.

Martines emphasizes the importance of business and having a savings account and building it up as much as possible, a sentiment echoed by Sass.

“Invest in yourself,” she tells me with the enthusiasm and experience of a mother who has spent years giving pep talks to her children.

Sass is already investing in herself. She is currently working on obtaining her B100 contractor’s license, a construction license which will allow her to work on any above-ground structure.

“Everyone still builds, even during the pandemic, and there aren’t many women contractors,” she says, noting that she hopes her gender might lead her to a better chance at getting a bid on a project.

While Olivia concurs with the idea of saving, she also urges others to support their local small businesses in their communities by “coming in, tipping, and having a good time.”

She asks if I can ask the state and federal government to not shut down her livelihood again. Before I can respond, she interjects with another thought.

“But making sure that people take the necessary precautions to stop the spread of the disease is important. So I hope the precautions have worked and keep working,” she adds.

For now, club owners and employees appear to be navigating the new world order while also maintaining a precarious balance between playing party host and health code enforcer. Everyone I speak to stresses the importance of remaining vigilant and doing their part to stop the spread of the virus.

At Trails, a burly bouncer walks over and gently reminds two women not to stray too far from their table, slightly dampening the typical conviviality that accompanies the establishment on any given Friday night in mid-spring.

And just as one patron is about to show me yet another action-hero inspired face covering, a fight breaks out in the parking lot of the bar, causing several people to forgo their social distance—and suggesting that even the most carefully maintained precautions sometimes fail.

The post Inside the Newly Reopened, Socially Distanced Strip Clubs of America appeared first on VICE.

“We’re out of work and most of us face barriers to accessing sufficient state support, so we put our heads together to design our dream strip club – but online,” says Grace, one of the performers. “Without bosses setting the rules, we can create a safer space, wear what we want, do what we want, invite DJs we trust, and share profits fairly.”

Dancers will be performing on Zoom, where the event will be DJed by Queer House Party (a DIY event happening every Friday during lockdown). “There is a historic understanding and solidarity between queers and sex workers as a result of a shared experience of marginalisation,” says Harry, one of Queer House Party’s DJs. “Lots of our community are also sex workers and the intersection on being a sex worker and queer is usually a precarious and dangerous one.”

Like many workers, strippers were being forced to go into work before the lockdown even when it was unadvisable. Many strip club bosses wanted to keep earning money from house fees (the money strippers pay to work), even though there were few or no customers, and many workers were finishing shifts having made little or nothing – or even in debt to the club. Some were fined for not coming into work when unwell.

Strip clubs have now been forced to close, but many dancers – working in a stigmatised sector, misclassified as independent contractors, with scarce workers’ rights – have struggled to access government income support.

“I slipped through the cracks for self-employed income support, so there’s nothing for me except Universal Credit, which is a lengthy process, and I need money now,” says Gemma. Like many out-of-work strippers and other sex workers, Gemma has started doing online sex work to make some money. In response to this, some strip clubs have set up accounts on online platforms such as OnlyFans in order to keep making money from strippers’ labour.

Unlike mainstream virtual sex work and club-run accounts, the CYBERTEASE event has been created by and for strippers. “This is so different to a normal club set-up, where management takes a cut of our earnings and charges us to work,” says Gemma. “In our club, we decide what’s best, rather than having management – often men who’ve never worked in clubs other than as bosses – tell us.” Gemma adds that making the virtual club a profit-share co-op is “a symbol of solidarity with each other.”

Organiser Queenie says that where regular strip clubs can be “an individualistic environment”, organising CYBERTEASE has felt like “a supportive environment, because we’re all working towards a common goal”.

She says that planning the event has made her reflect upon the kind of club she’d like to work in. Dancers have come together “with different ideas and experiences, to present the kind of strip club experience we’d like to see.”

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“My strip club utopia would be a venue run by strippers and sex workers,” Queenie explains. “There wouldn’t be any policing of body types. It would be diverse and exciting, and it would be safe.” She says the ideal strip club would be “more creative” because it wouldn’t be dictated “to meet one rich man’s narrow idea of what’s sexy”.

However, working online isn’t something all strippers and sex workers are accustomed to, or even have access to. The event’s organisers have been talking a lot about staying safe and maintaining boundaries online, but for workers who do have online sex work as an option – like those participating in CYBERTEASE – it may be new and potentially uneasy territory.

“We’re used to working in-person, where, yes, you show a customer your body, but they can’t ever see that again except in their memory,” organiser Carmen Ali (aka April Fiasco) explains. “There isn’t a record of it.”

Gemma says that in the mainstream online sex work she’s had to transition to, she’s “been forced to do things that I’m personally uncomfortable doing”, and that she’s “very stressed” about the fact that online work can live on the internet forever with less control over who might see it. She feels that organising a collective-run event has felt better than using established sex work platforms, though. “I don’t feel alone in this,” she says. “We’re in control and we have safety in numbers, so I feel much more comfortable”

As is always the case with online work, the centre of power lies with the tech giants running the platforms. Zoom has been criticised in recent weeks for being less secure than its founders made out, with no end-to-end encryption and easy-access for trolls.

“It would be amazing to run our own online platform,” says Grace, “so we’d feel safe knowing for sure what happens to our data, and controlling access to our space – but as it is, we don’t feel we have any option but to use Zoom for its functionality.”

Transgender activist, musician and writer Evan Greer says that sex workers online face additional threats because of criminalisation and harassment. Greer is currently running a campaign with Fight for the Future to get Zoom to fix its shortcomings and keep users safe.

“It’s much easier for a viewer to record a Zoom video than to have their phone out in a club, and since Zoom calls are not end-to-end encrypted, law enforcement agencies can and will demand access,” she says. “It’s not okay to just say, ‘Zoom isn’t secure so if you use it, it’s your fault if something happens’. The reality is that enormous numbers of people in all kinds of industries have no choice but to use video conferencing platforms like Zoom in order to continue working and supporting themselves during this crisis.”

“If any image of us gets out, the blame instantly goes to us – like, well what did you expect?” Gemma says, illustrating how rape culture is often replicated in online spaces for sex workers. “That’s not how we should be looking at it. We should be looking at the person that breached the other person’s privacy and boundaries, whether that person was violated physically or online.”

The union has been a lifeline for many sex workers at this time of crisis. Branch organiser Louise Wells says that COVID-19 has the potential to “shake up traditional kinds of work and industries”, and that in the strip club industry, “which is pretty antiquated in how it’s run, there’s not been a massive shake-up in a very long time”.

Wells feels that, in running CYBERTEASE, strippers are challenging the status quo by “cutting out the bosses who make money off dancers’ labour,” and “solidifying the kind of comradeship that does already happen between a lot of dancers against the odds.”

“It’s so important to have a group that’s got your back,” says Queenie. “Especially at a time like this, as a community that doesn’t have a lot of protection in society in general.”

@sophiekrosa

The first CYBERTEASE event will take place on Saturday, April 11th.

The post Strippers in the UK Are Hosting a Virtual Strip Club appeared first on VICE.