YOUNG,SEXY& WELLHEELED

By Les Wiseman
Twenty years ago the pubs were integrated. Now some are full of men again. Guess why?
own in Japanese town, you have to watch where you step. As you stand in a corner store at Powell and Dunlevy, waiting to buy a pack of cigarettes, a guy in navy blue eye bags and pinstripe nose will engage you in a one-sided conversation on the hopelessness of trying to get a job if you have been in the "joint" for the past six months. You offer him a couple of smokes, holding the door open as a long-haired fellow about 35 and legless, wheels his way past. Cheryl Ladd, peering up from the glossy cover of TV and Movie Star Parade, smiles cleanly unaware of this side of the tracks. Across the street, the amateurishly drawn green-and-orange silhouette of a woman beckons you through The Marr hotel's butcher block door. Inside, in the dark, Kiss's thunderous heavy metal music drowns out your depressed maunderings. In the center of the room, swathed in red and blue stage lights, a tall, slim woman with soft, straight brown hair down to her thighs, sways and sashays about the stage. Her face: the fragile cheekbones of a high fashion model. Her expression: serene, with that frail, ethereal melancholia that brings lumps to the throats of strong men. Youfumble for a seat, and a heavy pint glass of cold, frothing beer is set in front of you. Fishing a deuce from your pocket and waving the waiter out of your field of vision, you sip through the frosty foam, all thoughts of the ugliness beyond these walls a vaguely remembered chimera. You relax, and bless the day you were born. At least that's the way it has always affected me.
The Princes And The Showgirl: Marr Hotel owners Jack Cooney (left, inset) and Darcy Taylor transformed two low-key Powell Street beer parlors into glittering mini-show lounges featuring non-stop strippers. Onstage, one of the performances The Marr's Best of Burlesque charity benefit; $12,000 was donated to the Variety Club Telethon by the Vancouver Exotic Dancers Association.

at

Stars, Three-Pointed And Otherwise: Sam Sarich, co-owner of the Cecil and Yale Hotels, provides friendly competition for the cross-town Drake and Marr. Top drawer dancers (clockwise from top left) are Little Mary, Samantha, Susen, Tarren, Danielle and Topaz For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth, I wandered Lonely As a Cloud

On one wall hangs a sepia-toned archive photo of a bunch of rough looking rogues, posing in front of The Marr hotel in 1890 when it accommodated workers at Hastings Mills, then one of Vancouver's major industries. Today, co-proprietor Jack Cooney, whose family has owned the hotel since 1969, stands behind the bar, eagleeyeing his patrons, watching for the slightest sign of discontent. With some pride he says that The Marr possesses Vancouver's longest held liquor licence, but confesses that until recently he hated the place and wanted out. It had become a longshoreman's bar, near the dispatch hall and Richmond Transfer, and pension and welfare check days were especially ugly there. In 1976, he and partner Darcy Taylor acquired The Drake hotel, two blocks east on Powell Street. Their formula was simple: with no spare cash for major renovations, they vowed that every fixture would be clean. "Even if you were sitting on an apple box, it would be clean and painted," Cooney laughs. Two blocks west, at Powell and Main, Number Five Orange Street, owned by Leon and Harry Brandolini, had been

turning a good coin since 1975 by featuring continuous exotic dancers in a beer parlor format. The Drake, with its new stage, larger bar and better parking, had only one dancer, appearing hourly. It had fewer customers, too. Cooney and Taylor added dancers one at a time as their cash flow permitted, and business began to snowball as word spread that The Drake was happening. The washrooms were remodeled and kept spotless, and the hotel, hitherto as good a place as any to walk into for a quick broken nose, became known tor expedient dispatch of scrappers and boors. More and more three-piece suits were to be seen among the mackinaws, and more and more beer was sold. The upgrading continued: wallcoverings, upholstery, a $60,000 bar. Friends contributed the labor, and Cooney and Taylor paid them off a grand here, a grand there. Soon, a $35,000 sound system was pounding out the bump and grind beat. Despite marginal profits during this high capital outlay phase, they were sitting on a gold mine. "It took us about a year and a half before we were really rolling as far as being recognized as somewhere you could go to watch exotic dancers," says Cooney. While The Drake boomed, The Marr limped along as precariously as many of its patrons. In December 1979, Cooney took over The Marr, to be joined six months later by Taylor. The winning formula was applied again. In went $35,000 worth of sound equipment, graffiti-proof formica

washrooms, upbeat nature photographs, historical scenes and mural photos of top dancers. A stage with hydraulically rising center platform and $12,000 worth oflights was installed. An enterprise that had been kept afloat by dipping into The Drake's profits doubled its business virtually overnight. The strippers packed' em in. This transformation from snake pit to renovated beer parlor cost about $200,000, but it was the investment of a further $175,000 that transformed The Marr from pub to show lounge and made it gold mine number two. Back at The Drake, meanwhile, another $210,000 is to be spent on new decor, a hydraulic stage, and a kitchen featuring quality hors d'oeuvre-style snacks to replace the cello-pack sandwiches. Beside Taylor's sullen, efficient aloofness, Cooney is the enthusiast, his aquiline features dead earnest as his speech warms to the tone he usually reserves for his other passions, hockey and boxing (he and Taylor own 20 percent of heavyweight boxer Gordon Racette's contract). "We're both very hot. We've got big egos, and as long as we've got the energy, we'd rather have people know our spots as being the number one spots in town. So we're prepared to lose a little profit and spend a little more money to put ourselves in that position. It costs us an awful lot of money to keep these doors open. "We're sitting on two hotels that do an exceptional amount of sales in liquor.

Cecil is a whole different animal than The Drake or Marr," he says. "The crowd is a lot more mellow, and the raunchier acts that work down there wouldn't work in this room. We want very clean shows, and there are some dancers who will never work here." ifteen years ago, Jeannie Runnalls began working in the back office of Isy's, the legendary supper club and later burlesque house, looking after books that Isy Walters had until then kept in his head or on loose scraps of paper. Today, sitting in her office on The Drake hotel's second floor, she handles about 400 phone calls daily as co-owner and major administrator of International Artists, the province's largest ,and highest profile booking agency for exotic dancers. International supplies approximately 200 female and 30 male strippers to some 105 hotels throughout B. C. The various venues and performers are categorized as A, B or C level (the dancers mentioned here are all A level, as are the Marr, Drake and Cecil, each of which utilizes International). "Dancers aren't your typical bank teller types, "Runnalls understates, noting that her agency has turned a lot of potential street people into business people. Talented dancers can come into town completely broke, be auditioned by Jeannie, usually in the working environment of the C-Ievel Yale, then booked around some of the B bars until they can afford proper costumes and music. Within weeks-if they already have their own gear-they can be earning up to $680 per six-day week for five shows on day shift, or $830 for six shows on night shift. The occupational amenities are good, too. Dressing rooms with showers, lockers, makeup tables and color TV are the rule in the top bars (Cooney provides personalized cover-up outfits for the trek from stage to dressing room) and popular dancers may take as much time off as they want with no fear of being unemployed afterwards. Nor are the dancers the only ones who benefit. Runnalls estimates that International Artists is now taking in $250,000 yearly, all with very little outlay.

Because of the way we run them, maintenance is an important factor: cleanliness, service. If you could come in and run it with two waiters, we'll have three; where you might have one bartender, we'll have two. In order to get people in here in the first place we have to have the dancers, and we pay the dancers the top price in town. When you look at the gross, it's very impressive: when you look at our net, my partner and I make a comfortable livingand that's about the size of it."

here are basically three parts to downtown Vancouver's strip bar success story, the third being The Cecil hotel at the north end of the Granville Street bridge. In contrast to Cooney's gung-ho intensity, Cecil coowner Sam Sorich adopts a relaxed, easy going image. Although the competition between them is constant and high pitched, it is friendly and Sorich readily acknowledges that the Powell Street bars' successes were behind his decision to turn a fairly low key bar into a high volume strip showroom. Like Cooney, Sorich came from a hotel-owning family, his father having been proprietor of Gastown's Europe Hotel from 1954 to 1978. He learned the business doing odd jobs, and waiting on table in the beer parlor, and attending college and BCIT courses in hotel management. He took over the Europe in 1975, and sold it in 1978.

When Sorich and partner Grant Lew bought The Cecil two years later, it already had a stage where a dancer did two shows per day. Sorich quickly hired a designer, and kept the place open as $160,000 worth of renovations were undertaken. At its official "re-opening" in March 1981, The Cecil featured a 13-foot-diameter stage with mirrored ceiling, good sound system, proper stage lighting, and such cosmetics as carpeting, wallpaper, tables and couches. Booking eight dancers (four day, four night) from the town's top agency, International Artists, and paying them top wages had the desired effect. Word spread that the Powell Street axis had been extended, and soon The Drake and Marr raised their wages to keep top dancers. "One of the things I want to stress," Sorich stresses, "is the competitive edge that dancers give us over other hotels and neighborhood pubs. They can't compete. On an average day we'll gross $6,000 in liquor sales; during the Stripathon we pulled in $10,000 in one day. As far as our business goes we are certainly in the top 10 in liquor sales of what could be called 'bar hotels' in the Lower Mainland." Once again, much of this revenue is directed to constant upgrading. Sorich also notes that The Cecil and its neighbor, The Yale, which he purchased in July 1981, are close to B.C. Place, which should be good for future business. As the owner, Sorich can choose which dancers will perforfu on his stage. "The

n the west side of the 1000 block Richards Street is one of burlesque's last strongholds, Joe Philliponi's legendary Penthouse Cabaret. As you walk toward the Gold Room show lounge, taking in the autographed pictures of ecdysiasts past, you double-take on the darkly handsome hostess. Backstepping a few feet, you check out the large photo of a woman wearing only pasties and G-string. Same face. As for the rest, the flesh-andblood version is dressed very businesslike. After eight years of retirement, though, she returned to the stage for a single performance on New Year's Eve 1981, and the crowd went wild, giving her a standing ovation. Joe Philliponi smiled in the background, had a drink and remembered; MARCH/82 VANCOUVER 31

Between January and February 1970 the Cafe Kobenhavn audience included a few police officers who thought they had seen obscene performances. Provincial Court Judge David Moffett acquitted the nightclub and its employees~ of all charges. "Following the decision,'; said the Vancouver Sun, "four other clubs in Vancouver decided to take it all off."
after all, this was Dee Dee Special, the striptease dancer who inaugurated the Gold Room 14 years ago. She is grandmother today, which is all she will ~eveal of her age, and her daughter, Daniell~ Dean, carries on the tradition at The Perlthouse: the glamorous sequined costumes, the belief defYing tassel twirling, the bathing in a giant champagne glass, evena performance involving two live cockatoos! An East Coast dancer since 1953, Dee Dee was just the seasoned veteran Philliponi needed to get the Gold Room hopping when she came to B.C. in 1967. Under her guidance, two other dancers and a nine-piece jazz band were hired and thus was launched an entirely different strip world than that of the modern-day beer parlors. The Penthouse uses no booking agency, Philliponi preferring to import acts from his travels around the U. S., especially Vegas. A strong believer in G-strings, he permits only a brief exposure of total nudity in the Gold Room. Upstairs in the Mirror Room, though, lunching businessmen are entertained by more revealing performances, if on a less grand scale. Three years after Dee Dee got down to her pas ties and G-string at the Penthouse, 32 charges of presenting an obscene performance were laid jointly against four administrative personnel and four dancers of the Cafe Kobenhavn, a coffee housecum-bottle club at 968 Main between the American and Ivanhoe Hotels. Billing itself as "the funkiest little dive in Vancouver," the Kobenhavnwas run by fellows who rode motorcycles and did nice things like transporting 30 veterans from Shaughnessy Hospital down to drink complimentary beer while ogling young women cavorting nakedly to the sounds of a live rock band. The Kobenhavn ushered in the contemporary style of stripping devoid of Vegas trappings. Occasionally, the audience would include the young Jack Cooney, then unaware how such entertainment would later affect his life. On the evenings of January 25 and February 16 and 17, 1970, the audience also included a few undercover police officers who decided that they had seen obscene performances. On September 12, Provincial Court Judge David Moffett acquitted the nightclub and its employees of all charges, and shortly thereafter the Vancouver Sun reported, "Following the decision, four other clubs in Vancouver decided to take it all off." And later on in court, well, everybody thought That a summer run in Gaol would be proposed, Butthe Judge said, "Patricia, Or may I say Delicia; The facts of this case lie before me ... Case dismissed ... this girl was in her. working clothes!!"
Chris de Burgh, Patricia the Stripper
0 who are these sirens who lure men away from their mock-chickenloafon-white sandwiches to beer bars, and so enchant them that lunch hours blend into entire afternoons? You cannot tell the players without a program, according to the timeworn adage, and the mini-profiles that follow are of ten of Vancouver's best known showroom strippers. Tarren is The Scarlett O'Hara of dancers. Often in flowing, ruffied gowns, she radiates confidence from the stage, a haughty, distant presence until she smiles, full harlequin lips flashi):lg under heavy lidded eyes. She recalls being embarrassed at seeing her first stripper, yet now is one of the actively political dancers concerned with improving their image and relationship with the community. Her substantial gymnastic ability is demonstrated when she scratches her noSe with her toes. Frankly, it makes you give a damn. Danielle came recently from Sacramento by way of Oklahoma; where she first danced in grungy, biker-owned bars, and has nothing but praise for the quantum leap in working conditions, costumes, makeup and professionalism of Vancouver dancers. She has gained local star status perhaps from her trademark bondage cuffs and collar-which she mentions are more than mere onstage accessories-as much as from her habit of locking her eyes on privileged audience members, thus ensuring their future attendance. Whatever, she is one of the most riveting performers. "It's fun to tease," she says with a sly grin. "It's fun to have the men's attention, and I feel like r m in control." Topaz, the New Romantic dancer, came from Ottawa to the original Number Five Orange Street, then moving to the top-line circuit when that room changed management. "When I was little, I used to dress up all the time," she says with a throaty chuckle that contrasts sharply with her demure femininity. "Stripping gives me a chance to do it all day long, and get paid for it." Offstage, she generally wears black leather, jet black hair framing her pale face, and haunts new wave nightclubs or plays her bass in such local punk bands as Two Lovely Children and Braids and Arthur. A local art collector, she will attend art school next year while continuing to dance, inspired as she was by the slave dancing girls in John Norman's Chronicles of Counter-Earth. Cherrie is sequins, legs, eyelashes to Las Vegas, and a blur of synchronized

5
.

he Drake had been spruced up for about six months when, in March 1979, Leanne drove by its Powell Streetfacade.and, as she recalls it, let out a loud "Yecchh!" But she had been booked to perform there, the money was good ... so on with the show. Who couid have guessed that the chemistry of dancer and bar would make their names synonymous, or that the mention of either would spur a Pavlovian "Let's go!" reaction in so many? Up from exotic dancing in California, Leanne merely converted her floorwork to Vancouver standards by removing her G-string, which resulted in a much bolder show than Drake patrons had seen before. And so "pink" dancing hit Vancouver. Over a thunderous ovation, the disc jockey'S voice came through the speakers: "That was Leanne, and I think she's going to be a star!" The other dancers, appalled, refused to talk to her and moved their gear into another dressing room, but audiences were at her feet. When she added baby oil to her act, every seat in the house filled up early for her regular Friday five o'clock oiler. Nude posters came out of Leanne, Susen and Cherrie, Leanne promoting hers by sihingwith audience members and autographing the pictures with suggestive inscriptions. They sold fast. Rustler, the Canadian men's magazine, ran a onehanded article on her, entitled The Hottest Stripper in the West, and radio DJs, affiicted with the f~ver, urged their listeners to go down to The Drake. Men sent roses, and one group made her a crown out of cut-up $50 and $100 biils. She was given a 24-bottle carton of baby oil. Her performances were bright moments in Taylor's and Cooney's scheme of things. If Leanne packed them in, the other dancers did not exactly send them packing. The competition intensified for more polished acts, more adventurous acrobatics, nicer costumes and a hint of Leanne's boldness. For the price ofa beer, you could feel that you were part of a phenomenon. Youknew you were where theaction was.

All Sides -'low:

_-\"'k and Debbie

~,-7:~,-,fnt the .<-':cbreed of ,:;JjJical dancer, :,;.-'_-rkingforan :";'''a- change, Old-timers Joe F~ilJiponi and Dee Dt-<' Special, the 5,,;[ l~fhe many, t '-'-'''i.'mber how it :.t-.:;.; onstage at Tht- Penthouse. It-annie Runnalls d'c,rc is the
'..~,-~;.-tl'tt:ner f o

h.ti.'nwtional Artists booking CiZ,dlCY through '!I:hich many dl1nccrs lcork, '!i-h.ilcLeanne, the
iYlncJcafor
r,,;;:rmch,'

of

poses as n-ickcd Wanda. precision movement. Offstage, she pro_~-ts a .\Ionroe-like softness and vulnerability. :\n original star at the Drake when it ,~-as--still pretty shabby," she is acknowledged to be one of the best moving ,k'l~ers. and maintains that she learns her 5teps from old TV movies and never nractices or exercises. We should all be so f,~.d.~. then she does not sit in beer but parlors socking back belly-builder. Samantha, the Lady Godiva stripper, flips her neck to send a careful bundling of cmwning glory cascading down to frame her torso and a regal, high cheekboned 3~ce that denied her a modeling career after two-and-a-half years of training, she le-arned that the girl-next-door quality was men in demand). A local veteran, she created one of the town's most extravagant 5hows by reenacting Marie Antoinette's fr:-.aJ davs. The sets and costumes were de5igned for Isy's, with hoop skirts so large me,' could not be put on in the dressing TJO<Jms. hada boudoir set and ajailscene "It """t_"she recalls. "Music would come in .i:JJdreenact the French revolution. The 5~agehand would dress up as the ,f"'{ecutioner,and would take me away to }.ai1_ and r d do my floorwork there. Then !:.e-d take me to the guillotine-and it was a :-e..J1uillotine. A drumroll would happen, g =d off with the head." Debbie once wanted to be a nurse, and :n 3. wa, she is, but Florence Nightingale ''''is never quite like this despite the T.ilning cap and stethoscope. Her uniform of spangled smock and G-string, garter belt, silk stockings and white high heels seems more pre- than post-coronary. "Dancing is really into a mellow statejust dancing to music," she says. ''I'm bored of that; I don't want it to be like a nine-to-fIve job." To avoid that, she has ordered both a spy and military costume. There is something about a woman in uniform. Susen, whose fans and ever-present jade ornaments reflect her Cantonese heritage, hopes to become a veterinarian when she retires from dancing. ''I'll be leaving one animal show for another," she jokes. She reflects a feeling common among dancers regarding the improved venues: "In a dungy bar you just don't feel sexy at all while you're up there. So, of course, you're not going to put on a good show. But once you get in a room where there are people respecting you, and it looks clean and well kept, then you're going to do everything you can to look like alady:" Anne, back dancing with new enthusiasm after a motorcycle mishap that sidelined her for five months, will soon relinquish her position as president of the Vancouver Exotic Dancers Association. Her attitude toward the interplay between performer and audience is summed up in typically sunny manner: "What a bunch of lucky guys. Four gorgeous women are up there, taking their clothes off and dancing around over and over again." Theories concerning sexual repression in today's society aside, she has caught the essence of the appeal. Little Mary by her own admission "looks like Shirley Temple and sounds like Peter Lorre." At four-eleven and 90 pounds, she says it 'is a serious business to find 23-inch-waist jeans and size 4Vzshoes. An ex-Gary Taylor's Show Lounge and Number Five Orange Street performer, she is noted for dancing in tap shoes to Shirley Temple songs. Photographed by David Chan for Playboy's Girls of Canada feature (Oct. 1980), she was cut from the pages, she claims because of her stripping career. She had a speaking part in Paramount Picture's unreleased new wave movie, All Washed Up, and also appeared in By Design which starred Patty Duke Astin. One of the few dancers to favor an after-working-hours nightlife, Mary's most recent hobby is trading T-shirts with (presumably small) men in nightclubs. Leanne has been stroked enough on preceeding pages. Suffice it to say that, despite the natural waning of stardom, she continues to be a top drawer and an experience not to be missed. Truly the brazen harlot onstage, the girl with a heart of gold and a whip-quick wit offstage.

hile traipsing about under the lights may look like glamor and glitter, the job does have its hazards. Cherrie chuckles while recalling

an over-enthusiastic high kick that cracked the bridge of her nose, plus several head bangings against the solid brass poles featured on some stages, and being stuck in a vertical splits when her heel caught in a low ceiling (an audience member stepped up to free her). Cherrie's farewell to the traditional baby oil show had its basis in bummer, too: "I used to do an oil show at 1sy's, and I had bought this new white Borg carpet that was really thick white fur. I was all greased up and dancing to Jet' aimeFrench, sexy, orgasm music. And when I got up, I had 'fuzz all over me. I was spinning, and the fuzz was flying off in clumps with the oil. It was a total disaster-trying to be sexy, and the whole place was roaring." Susen groans and covers her eyes as she recalls one of her less graceful performances: "Naked as a jaybird, I went to do one flip too many, and I threw my back out. And they called the fire department and the paramedics. Next thing you see is these six or seven firemen up on the stage. The firemen were hams. One of them put his jacket over me, and another picked that off me and put his jacket over me. Finally, the paramedics came and carried me out on a stretcher. The crowd was going crazy. They liked it; it broke the monotony that day." Anne tells of a clumsy move early in her career when she had borrowed a tight dress from another dancer: "I was kind of giddy, dancing away, and I kicked, but the

skirt was so tight that when I kicked with my top leg it pulled my bottom leg up with it. I just went splat, right down on the stage, and I just cracked up. "Another time I was working at this place that had poles and a bar onstage. So, I was up on this bar, doing monkey tricks, and I got stuck up there and the only way I could get down was to let go-boomright down on the stage." The dancers are not the only ones to suffer, though. Tarren recalls a high kick that launched one of her stiletto-heeled shoes through The Drake's smoky atmosphere to hit one of her nearby fans squarely on the pate. Then there are the simply touching incidents, such as when Leanne, as a Christmas treat for her fans, spent ages affixing baubles to a seasonally green satin dress. The frenetic pace of her first dance, though, caused every bauble to fly off and shatter. "I cried," she says. espite the good working condi. tions and the taste. of fame, there is still the hackneyed, age-old image problem. Behind their hard-boiled unconcern'toward widespread perception of them as being promiscuous, drugdependent prostitutes, there is always a glint of pain in the eyes of one-time little girls who made mom holdthe beach towel around them when they changed into bathing suits. More distressing to some is the prospect ofleaving a well-paid occupa-

tion based on the arguable premise of youth as beauty. No.one wants to be asked to leave, and pushing eight years in the business is maximum. And the taint of the stripper can stick to an ex-dancer like Bill Sykes's dog, Bullseye. Will it ruin a potential career in modeling, acting, legitimate dancing, even wifehood? Motherhood? Are they thought of as genuine screw-ups, even by those who court them? Losers or winners? "A lot of people still don't know what's happening," says Susen. "They think it's wild parties and every Tom, Dick and Harry. They don't realize that we do have a private life, that we've got families, kids to look after. They think we're hookers and right on down with the trash." Debbie elaborates: "The men who come to see us come to see the entertainment value. They don't think about us when we go home to our children, to our husbands or girlfriends. They don't think about us washing dishes, cooking supper, washing floors and doing the laundry. They see the entertainment value; they see an image up there. A woman who is sitting at home alone, cooking supper for her husband who isn't showing up because he's in a pub watching a stripper, has a whole different viewpoint on strippers." It was primarily to put a new face on this old image that the Vancouver Exotic Dancers Association was formed from Jack Cooney's original idea, actualized by Tarren. At Christmas 1981, VEDA's approximately 70 members, strippers all, donated $3,000 to the Lions' Timmy' s Christmas Telethon. Two months later, those immoral hedonists gave $12,000 to the Variety Club Telethon to buy a bus for the handicapped, some of them manning volunteer information booths at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. The funds were raised at four car washes held last summer, at The Cecil's Stripathon, featuring 55 continuous acts, and The Man's Best of Burlesque, with seven hours of continuous novelty acts. Various private parties, at which attendance was by donation, added to the charity fund. VEDA looks after its own, allocating funds to members who have fallen on hard times. Recently, members picketed Number Five Orange Street to protest what the association consider"ed a lewd act involving two dancers onstage simultaneously. While neither a union nor negotiating body, VEDA does give the dancers an opportunity to air problems they may have with age lcies or hotel owners and have them dealt with on a soft line basis. . "We think of it as a professional association; we're not really militant," says VEDA president, Anne, who helps buff up their self-held image as upright, respectable citizens by appearing on TV and radio and by speaking at Lions Clubs and Kinsmen's meetings. "Personally, I'm concerned with making a difference in people's opinions. I don't want people to think I'm sleazy. I noticed that I really
1

Continued

on page 145

STRIPPERS, continued from page 35

didn't like the way that some people looked at me because of what 1 do for a living. 1 know that I'm a nice girl, and 1 don't know any of the girls who are ashamed of what they do. It's hard to say what the image is, but 1 know what people say about strippers, and 1 also know that the way it is in Vancouver is not like that." evertheless, some dancers feel that they are not going about the image facelift the right way, and much of it hinges on the aspect of "pink." Tarren, one of the more outspoken among them raises an eyebrow and sighs. "Now, you've got the spreaders and I've noticed a change in attitudes again because they become pretty explicit onstage. Everyone and their dog does a baby oil act; it's getting so bad that the audience is actually throwing bottles of baby oil at you. There's a lot of girls around who have absolutely no talent at all. The audience goes crazy for spreading, and these girls like to have the audience reaction, so they get their ego gratification. 1 have to work three times as hard up there to get even near the reaction, because 1 don't spread. 1 remember just about three years ago that there was a big stink happening because they wanted to put the G-strings back on the girls. And now look at it! They'll be having animals up there soon, because baby oil isn't enough." "Sometimes you feel like a puppet on a string," Cherrie adds. "They almost tell you by the feeling in the room what they want you to do." While no dancer interviewed here will admit to an owner or agency asking her to make her act more explicit, rumors persist that cancelled bookings can result from an entertainer not giving the audience what it wants. If it is the audience itself that is suspect, then, what do the dancers think of those fans cramming the houses? ''I'd never go out with a guy who sat on gynecology row," says Anne, referring to seats adjoining the stage. "I don't see how they can sit there and eat their lunch," adds Samantha, aghast. "You're basically performing to them (the front row)," says Topaz, rolling her eyes. "They're there for the pink, but that doesn't mean you have to show them any. 1 try to block out all the slosh (weirdos) out there. Luckily, 1 don't have very good eyesight." Expressing a common view, Topaz remarks that an audience's open lust often makes the dancer feel slightly cool toward them. After all, you do not find too many Warren Beatty lookalikes lounging around these places. "We have to be a bit aloof to do our job. We feel a bit above them in a way. 1 guess there's a bit of a superiority complex. We're the untouchables, and 1 don't think we're easy catches." For the price of a beer, though, they do keep your mind offthe ugliness outside the door for awhile.