Features Jun 5, 2019 at 4:00 am

The statewide ban on alcohol sales in strip clubs needs to change, exotic dancers say.

Pete Gamlen

Comments

1

I thought WA strippers couldn't strip either, so it was bikinis and soda

2

We call ourselves liberal, but have the most backwards laws regarding drinking and strip clubs of any city in the nation...
This is America, the land of the free. Let us drink a beer or glass of wine and look at boobs. This isn't 1950 unless you think it should be.
The single biggest problem though, is zoning. Zoning has monopolized strip clubs into the hands of 1 owner who calls all the shots. Suppresses wages and hurts workers. It is a disgrace.

3

When I lived in Medford Oregon, it was the opposite. You could get a drink, but the ladies were not allowed to strip naked.

4

On the other hand, when I visited Portland Maine, you could drink and the ladies could be naked, but my friend's buddy, a High School teacher, had to stay outside because students in his class he taught, worked there.

5

Seattle is one of the most difficult and least lucrative cities to not be a stripper.

6

I am willing to sacrifice my evening this Friday in order to conduct fact-checking research on this article.

7

It’s one of the few things about Seattle that makes me want to move to Portland. Not because I particularly enjoy strip clubs, but because this kind of nanny state bullshit makes me feel like I don’t live in a real fucking city.

8

Yeah, the Portland places are way better!
Plus, Portland has (or had) the food carts.

9

Just get rid of the strip clubs altogether and let people go to Portland.

10

"Both Angelique and Aubrey have worked in clubs across the United States,..."

I moved to Seattle and the drivers suck!
I moved to Seattle and the weather sucks!
I moved to Seattle and the people freeze me out!
I moved to Seattle and the trees blow down and my power goes out!
I moved to Seattle and the houses are expensive!
I moved to Seattle and the beer's too hoppy!
I moved to Seattle and the morality laws are arcane and illogical and prevent me from making the kind of living I used to elsewhere!

I'm adding it to the list.

11

A minor correction: Deja Vu started in Seattle but definitely isn't a "local chain" anymore. They're all over the US and even have some international ones. I recently learned this when I was very surprised to see one on a recent business trip to downstate Illinois. Yet they don't get put on the list of great business empires that started in Seattle for some reason.

12

I'm guessing it is a lot like porn. Some women make really good money, while the vast majority don't make much at all. In the case of strip clubs, the article nails it. Unless you are willing to perform sex acts, you will have a hard time making much money. That is basically their business model, which makes it different than in Portland (or any other city that sells booze). In those cities, the dancers are just an attraction, not that different than a band.

13

Why would I pay to sit in a club, drink soda and not see tits and ass?

If religious fundamentalists don't ruin everything, feminists are always there to try.

14

Seattle! Hot bed of puritanism. Whether it's SWAT teams advancing on massage parlors or preventing ladies from their choice of how to spend their rent-paying energy. I wonder how much longer before they put an end to baseball on Sundays.

15

@10
I moved to Seattle and the Mariners are in last place!

16

I'm torn about this. On one hand I wouldn't want Seattle to end up like Portland, where you can't walk two blocks in any direction without coming face-to-face with some lurid strip-club signage (I'm not a prude and some clubs do make an effort to be tasteful about it but most are REALLY tacky and the overall visual effect is degrading to women). On the other hand I'm sure Portland offers a better environment for the dancers, who deserve a living wage and decent working conditions just like everyone else. If state and city lawmakers would take this issue seriously, I'm sure they could find some middle ground between these two extremes.

17

@16 That's a gross mischaracterization of Portland that wasn't even true 20 years ago. Having lived here that long, it kinda blows my mind to find out that Washington even has these stupid laws. Prohibitions only exacerbate the issues they propose to resolve. Figure it out.

20

If a stripper needs a drink to take her clothes off she is in the wrong career, I say.

21

"At Deja Vu, a chain with a near-monopoly in the downtown Seattle area, dancers are charged $120 to $180 a night... "

Capialism at its Finest.
We've come a loooooong way, BABY.
Time to Ratify the ERA.

@4 -- high schoolers were stripping (naked!?) in a club that sold alcohol?
Whoa -- them Mainers are pretty Free thinkers....

Gone are the days of yesteryear, when the Crew'd go to the strip club after work and work up a little more testoserone along with mucho Boozo and everyone'd try to impress their buddies with how lavish they could be (if only their wives knew) (they knew) with their hard-earned wages.

It was a lot of fun but too spendy for me.
I had better places to waste it.

22

The bill, which Governor Jay Inslee signed into law in May, will also establish an adult entertainer advisory committee within the Office of Labor Standards, half of which will be made up of dancers. It may well have been the first law in the state made for exotic dancers by exotic dancers themselves.

What?! Isn't it supposed to be captains of Industry who're required to be represented in any kind of Advisory Committees? The workers? Are you fucking Kidding me?

This stinks to High Heaven of Democratic Socialism.

I Like it.
Oh, the Humanity

23

The 1st paragraph @22 was a quote from Katie.
Someone forgot the little ''s.

26

@25 -- at a cost of $120-$180 -- PER SHIFT -- it seems like they might have rather Significant business expenses to write off, when they report. Let's hope they are allowed to do so.

If not, let's hope this bottom-up Advisory Committee can make it so.

Here's also to hoping these working women do
seize the means of production and open up
a Stripper's Co-op of their own.....


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