On the stage, I learned to cultivate a persona. But backstage, among the women, I found something more valuable
by Lily Burana
This is the latest entry in a personal essay series called "One Person's Trash," about items you just can't part with.
They came from a trashy store on Hollywood Boulevard, the shoes, but the first sight of them spun me back to an infamous strip club in San Francisco. Clear Lucite platform heels -- a stripper wardrobe staple, they were comfortable and, in a sleazy way, quite practical. But it was the pink glitter accented with the sparkling white heart appliqué that sold me. They looked like something an O'Farrell girl would wear.
The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco's rundown Tenderloin district, was most widely known as a post-Flower Power bohemian hangout, where Hunter S. Thompson and other margin-dwelling luminaries would drop by to smoke pot and play cards with owners Jim and Artie Mitchell. I was never invited into the boss's office with Jim and Artie, though -- Jim was in prison for killing Artie with a rifle blast by the time I signed on to dance there.
Despite its old-school hippie associations, the O'Farrell Theatre was avant-garde in its elegance. It was the first strip club I saw that could authentically be described as beautiful, the crown jewel of the club's many rooms being New York Live, where dancers would perform two-song sets bathed in a body-caressing pink spotlight on a gorgeous polished wood stage. Watching dancer after dancer sweep across that stage, her costume, mannerisms and music perfectly coordinated, I knew that in order to fit in and pull down significant cash, I would have to make an effort; I would have to put together something resembling a show. Under the older dancer's tutelage, I learned to kick off my thong and catch it in one hand, how to flip upside down on the brass poles, and how to cultivate a workable persona. I wasn't the sweet one, the popular one, the exotic one or -- let's be frank -- the gorgeous one. I was the aspirational arty girl (still found today in clubs, wearing glasses with her Catholic school girl costume). For all the coaching, my costumes remained lame, hastily assembled affairs. Ambivalent about stripping, I was reluctant to commit to investing in decent gear. Why wear sparkling pink when scuffed, secondhand black would do? That final layer of professional polish evaded me.
So a few years later, when I snuck back into the business to write about it and needed to costume myself again, I couldn't resist the shoes. By stripper standards, they were strictly utilitarian, but they felt like an homage. A shot at image rehab. A shot at stripper redemption.
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by Lily Burana
This is the latest entry in a personal essay series called "One Person's Trash," about items you just can't part with.
They came from a trashy store on Hollywood Boulevard, the shoes, but the first sight of them spun me back to an infamous strip club in San Francisco. Clear Lucite platform heels -- a stripper wardrobe staple, they were comfortable and, in a sleazy way, quite practical. But it was the pink glitter accented with the sparkling white heart appliqué that sold me. They looked like something an O'Farrell girl would wear. The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco's rundown Tenderloin district, was most widely known as a post-Flower Power bohemian hangout, where Hunter S. Thompson and other margin-dwelling luminaries would drop by to smoke pot and play cards with owners Jim and Artie Mitchell. I was never invited into the boss's office with Jim and Artie, though -- Jim was in prison for killing Artie with a rifle blast by the time I signed on to dance there.
Despite its old-school hippie associations, the O'Farrell Theatre was avant-garde in its elegance. It was the first strip club I saw that could authentically be described as beautiful, the crown jewel of the club's many rooms being New York Live, where dancers would perform two-song sets bathed in a body-caressing pink spotlight on a gorgeous polished wood stage. Watching dancer after dancer sweep across that stage, her costume, mannerisms and music perfectly coordinated, I knew that in order to fit in and pull down significant cash, I would have to make an effort; I would have to put together something resembling a show. Under the older dancer's tutelage, I learned to kick off my thong and catch it in one hand, how to flip upside down on the brass poles, and how to cultivate a workable persona. I wasn't the sweet one, the popular one, the exotic one or -- let's be frank -- the gorgeous one. I was the aspirational arty girl (still found today in clubs, wearing glasses with her Catholic school girl costume). For all the coaching, my costumes remained lame, hastily assembled affairs. Ambivalent about stripping, I was reluctant to commit to investing in decent gear. Why wear sparkling pink when scuffed, secondhand black would do? That final layer of professional polish evaded me.
So a few years later, when I snuck back into the business to write about it and needed to costume myself again, I couldn't resist the shoes. By stripper standards, they were strictly utilitarian, but they felt like an homage. A shot at image rehab. A shot at stripper redemption.
Read more:
