Lusty Lady
The Lusty Lady is the name of two peep show establishments, one in downtown Seattle and one in the North Beach district of San Francisco. It was made famous by the labor activism of its San Francisco workers.
History
The Seattle Lusty Lady 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, but 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 2005 only) unionized sex business in the U.S.
Operation
The two peep shows operate similarly: Several nude women dance simultaneously on a stage, separated by glass windows from the customers who each stand in their own booth, paying by the minute. No tipping is possible and the dancers are paid an hourly wage. (The top wage in 2001 in Seattle was $27 per hour.) Some of the booths in the Seattle operation have one-way mirror glass; these were removed in San Francisco after worker protests. The dancers are also available for one-on-one shows in glass-separated private booths where tipping is possible. In addition, coin-operated booths showing porn videos are available.
Lusty Lady occasionally features "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.
Once a year, Lusty Lady organizes a "Play Day": the dancers walk around, explain the operation of the club to customers, and allow behind-the-scenes peeks.
In recruitment ads, the establishments often present themselves as hip and claim to be woman-owned.
Seattle
The Seattle Lusty Lady opened in the 1970s and moved to its present location at 1315 First Ave. in downtown Seattle near Pike Place Market in 1985. The club is 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 comments on current exhibits or the Hammering Man statue.
In 2006, the Seattle Lusty Lady survived a threatened wrecking ball when the building's owner refused a multi-million-dollar tear-down offer from developers of a new Four Seasons Hotel next door. Employees celebrated by posting on their reader board: "We're Open, Not Clothed!"
Books
The 1997 book The Lusty Lady by photographer Erika Langley < ISBN:393114159 Buy it from Amazon.com > documents the work in the Seattle branch of Lusty Lady. It includes photos by Langley (who had worked there as a dancer since 1992) as well as essays by a number of Lusty Lady dancers, who vary considerably in their attitudes toward their customers and toward their work. In 2000, some of the photos were exhibited in the Seattle Art Museum, across the street from the Lusty Lady.
Elisabeth Eaves, who had stripped at the Lusty Lady in 1997, completed graduate school and returned in 2000 to write a book about stripping in general and her experiences in particular, Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power, published in 2002 < ISBN:0375412336 Buy it from Amazon.com >.
Popular culture references
The first murder in the 1996 pilot of the TV series Millennium takes place in a Seattle peep show modeled on the Lusty Lady.
San Francisco
The San Francisco Lusty Lady's address is located at 1033 Kearny, in the Broadway strip club district of North Beach.
Unionization
Several grievances led to the unionizing effort in 1997. The black feminist sociologist Siobhan Brooks who worked at the club had noticed that black 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 (2000), 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.
Worker cooperative
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.
After the club had been bought by the workers, 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.
The club, open 24 hours a day, had a revenue of about $27,000 per week in the first half of 2006.
A dispute began in the summer of 2006 when a male employee wrote a confidential email to the co-op board, complaining that hiring of too many heavy women drove customers away, thus lowering every employee's income. One member of the board posted the message on a message board, causing considerable consternation among dancers. The board member was dismissed. Two of the male employees have argued that the union should be abandoned as not useful in a worker-owned cooperative.
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