Забытые кабаре: История Lusty Lady и борьба за права работниц.

Defunct peep show establishments
the magazine containing the biweekly sex related column

The Lusty Lady is a pair of defunct peep show establishments, one in downtown Seattle and one in the North Beach district of San Francisco. The Lusty Lady was made famous by the labor activism of its San Francisco workers and the publication of several books about working there.

The Seattle Lusty Lady, known originally as the Amusement Center, was opened in the 1970s by two business associates, who soon after opened the other location in San Francisco. Originally, both Lusty Ladys showed 16mm peep show films only; in 1983 live nude dancers were added and became the main focus of the businesses. Until 2003 they were both owned by the same company; in that year the San Francisco franchise was bought by the strippers working there and began to be managed as a worker cooperative. The San Francisco branch had already entered the news in 1997 when it became the first (and as of 2009 only) successfully unionized sex business in the U. S. (The San Diego strip club Pacer's had seen a unionization effort in the early 1990s, but it was short lived.) The Seattle branch closed in June 2010. The San Francisco branch closed at 3 a. m. on September 2, 2013, on Labor Day.

The Lusty Lady featured exotic dancers in a peep show setting on the main stage and in one on one booths. The main stage featured several nude women dancing, separated by glass windows from the customers who each stood in their own booth, paying by the minute. The dancers were also available for more explicit private shows in the VIP and Private Pleasures booths. These were also glass separated private booths where customers could give direction to the show and tipping was possible. Rates for shows varied by the dancer. The Private Pleasures booth also occasionally featured "Double Trouble" shows, with two dancers who might have performed a lesbian sex show. In addition, booths showing adult videos 24/7 were available. Once a year, The Lusty Lady SF organized a "Play Day": the dancers came out from behind the glass, explained the operation of the club to customers, and allowed behind the scenes peeks. Lusty Lady occasionally featured "art days", exhibiting erotic photographs and paintings in the hallways. In February 2002, both peep shows featured a video art exhibition called "Peepshow 28", with one channel in all video booths devoted to showing a sequence of 64 short videos exploring voyeurism, exhibitionism and sexuality. Dancers were paid an hourly wage. (The top wage for dancers in Seattle in 2001 was $27 per hour, the top wage in San Francisco in 2003 was $26 per hour. The club was well known for its frequently changing and often amusing marquee announcements. The Lusty Lady is immediately across the street from the Seattle Art Museum and the marquee often commented on current exhibits or the Hammering Man statue. Mimi Gates, stepmother of Bill Gates and director of the Seattle Art Museum, said "The Lusty Lady's marquee is a Seattle landmark." In 2006, the building's owner, a Seattle family, refused a multimillion dollar tear down offer from developers of a new Four Seasons Hotel next door. The owners instead received $850,000 "for air rights to the views over their property". Employees celebrated by posting on their reader board: "We're Open, Not Clothed!" On April 11, 2010, the Lusty Lady in Seattle announced that it would close its doors for business in June. The economic climate and the rise of Internet pornography were cited as reasons for closing. On June 28, 2010, the Lusty Lady marquee was removed from the Seattle location. It was acquired by the Museum of History & Industry and is now on display at their museum in the South Lake Union neighborhood. In the wake of the Lusty Lady announcing its shutdown, the NPR program All Things Considered did a story focusing on the peep show's history and relationship to the broader downtown Seattle community. In March 2023, Andrew Conru, founder of Friend Finder Networks, bought the Lusty Lady's building for $3 million, calling the purchase "a gift to the city". He intended to redevelop it into a hotel, a strip club, a restaurant, a museum, a retail store, or some other concern, soliciting ideas from the public. In June 2023, Conru's architect submitted plans to the city to raze the building. "Unfortunately for safety reasons it is a teardown. We looked at a seismic retrofit. It's just not going to happen," said Conru, who said that costs motivated his decision.

The Seattle Lusty Lady was featured in the 1992 film American Heart. The first murder in the 1996 pilot of the TV series Millennium takes place in a Seattle peep show modeled on the Lusty Lady. Episode 18 (first aired 1997) of HBO's Real Sex series featured a visit to the Seattle Lusty Lady. The theater show My Time With the Lady is a first person account about working at the Lusty Lady by a long time janitor and bouncer. It opened in Seattle in August 2010.

The San Francisco Lusty Lady was located at 1033 Kearny Street, in the Broadway strip club district of North Beach. It was open 24 hours a day, though the live stage was closed between 3 and 11 am.

Several grievances led to the unionizing effort in 1997. African American feminist sociologist Siobhan Brooks while working at the club had noticed that African American dancers were discriminated against and filed a complaint. The precipitating event was the installation of one way mirrors in a number of booths (which also exist in the Seattle branch), resulting in some customers taking photos and videos of the show. Among the leaders of the organizing drive was the stripper Julia Query who documented the efforts on video, resulting in the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite!, written and directed by Vicky Funari and Julia Query. After a vote of the employees, the business was organized by the Exotic Dancers Union, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union, then a member of AFL–CIO, Local 790. Former Lusty Lady employee Siobhan Brooks commented in a 1997 article that "In some cases the media misquoted us as being the first strip club to unionize. But the first strip club to unionize was Pacer's in San Diego. However, Pacer's union, Hotel Management, Employee Management, Local 30, negotiated an open clause in its contract. Open shop means there's no requirement that employees join the union, so the club recruited workers and discouraged them from joining the union and were able to decertify the union."

After management cut hourly compensation at the San Francisco Lusty Lady in 2003, the workers struck and won, but the closure of the peep show was announced soon after. The subsequent efforts to turn the club into a worker cooperative were led by Donna Delinqua (stage name), a stripper and graduate student in English. Other cooperatives provided input, among them the worker owned San Francisco sex toy business Good Vibrations. The workers bought the club for $400,000, with money borrowed from the old owners. In 1996, the club had had a revenue of almost $3 million; by 2003 this had fallen by 40%. The monthly rent was $13,442 in 2003 and had doubled over the preceding three years. After the change in ownership, the union was retained, but some changes in management were instituted. While dancers had been regularly evaluated by managers before, now a peer review process was established wherein dancers evaluate each other. The team leaders are elected from among the dancers for six month terms. A dispute began in the summer of 2006 when a male employee wrote a confidential email to the co op board, reporting customer complaints about a show featuring heavy women. Another member of the board, a dancer, posted a printout of the message in the club dressing room, causing considerable consternation among dancers. Both board members were suspended. Two of the male employees have argued that the union should be abandoned as not useful in a worker owned cooperative. On Tuesday, August 20, 2013, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco announced that it would close its doors for business in just two weeks, on Monday at 3:00 am. September 2, 2013. The landlord, Roger Forbes (part of Deja Vu Consulting Inc. which by that time owned almost every strip club in San Francisco with the exception of Crazy Horse, Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre, and Nob Hill) refused to renew the lease after attempts to re negotiate the rent failed.

Rachel Aimee, "In Search of Stripper Solidarity," In These Times, vol. 36, no. 5 (May 2012), pp. 44, 42 43.