Category Archives: Features

Features, News

Belltown NIMBYs Have a Problem With This Upstart “5 Point” Place

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Photo courtesy the 5 Point Cafe

UPDATE: Re-posting this article due to continued interest. The city’s hearing on the issue of permitting the 5 Point Cafe to have outdoor seating is coming up, and David Meinert, the owner, is asking: “The Mayor needs to hear as many voices of support as possible. Email the Mayor at mike.mcginn@seattle.gov or www.cityofseattle.net/mayor/contact.htm and send him a message.” See below for more info, including the comments.

Oh Seattle, you crack me up sometimes. As much as I want to believe that you’re an awesome place that has a great future, sometimes I just have to give up hope. To wit–this morning, I came across this note on Facebook from Dave Meinert, a man who’s done more to make Seattle a cool place to live and go out in than almost anyone else. People who know Meinert know him as a serious advocate for Seattle’s nightlife and music (Capitol Hill Block Party, anyone?), a responsible businessman, and an all around decent guy.

So what’s his problem? Well, as part of his ongoing efforts to bring the legendary 5 Point Cafe into the 21st century without entirely ditching its storied past, last year he applied with the city to have a small area of outdoor seating in Tilikum Park, which we all know as one of the most charming outdoor areas in Seattle already. The mayor–like his predecessor–wants more outdoor seating; the permits were approved by the relevant departments, and everything seemed to be going okay until…

People appealed! Why? Well, the appellants are, respectively, the nearby Tilikum Place Cafe and some nearby condo-dwellers. The Tilikum Place Cafe’s complaint is a mystery to me–you can see Meinert’s explanation below, but it’s surely one-sided. Still, I can’t help but think he’s completely right that increased foot-traffic down there will be a benefit. The 5 Point isn’t the same old shady joint it used to be (which makes me a little sad, actually), and it’s going to continue becoming more and more of a cool destination. So if anyone can help me out with the substance of Tilikum Place Cafe’s issue, I’d love to hear from them.

As for the condo owners, I can only laugh at people like this. My patience and willingness to try to see both sides of this sort of issue have been ruined by having to repeat this same story so many times over the course of like eight years I wrote about Seattle development squabbles. All I can say is, get over yourselves. People who want to have urban living have no right to complain about urban living. In the end, if you don’t like the community you’re in or the people frequenting the area near your home, then you might just be morons who paid too much for a shitty condo in a place you apparently don’t want to be. And if your idea of trying to improve the neighborhood you find yourself stuck in is NIMBY-ish meddling that tries to impose your preferences on an area outside both your apartment and your building, rather than positive engagement and actual community building, well, you can go do something sexual to yourself that’s physically impossible, which may be a strong sentiment, but it’s appropriate because you are ruining–not improving–the community you’ve erroneously chosen to live in.

Here’s the 5 Point’s letter and plea for support; just do it Seattle, before you turn into a completely insufferable place:

About a year ago, we at The 5 Point started a process to get outdoor seating in front of the 5 Point. At the suggestion of the Mayor, this seating extends out into Tilikum Place park (which is actually not a park but a pedestrian right of way controlled by the Seattle Department of Transportation). The Parks department and SDOT agreed this would be a great thing, and Mayor McGinn also said he’d like to see Seattle’s core urban parks get more outdoor seating in order to activate the parks and make the safer – more people using the park, the safer it is.

In December we were granted our permit. The outdoor seating area extends 20 feet out from the front of the 5 point and is about 16 feet wide. Not a large area, but good sized for a sidewalk cafe. We thought we were ready to move forward. This area would bring more people to the park, and sitting in it you can see the water, the Space Needle, the Monorail, and the statue of Chief Seattle. Very cool.

It then came to our attention that the permit was being appealed. Surprisingly, one of the two appeals is coming from a neighboring business, the Tilikum Place Cafe. We feel our outdoor seating will benefit them as we draw more people to the area, and like in Europe, they could also set up a food cart in the park and make money as well. We offered to work with them to do so, and to promote this special little corner of Belltown as a place for people to come eat and drink. Their complaint though, is that the 5 Point’s customers are a negative impact on the community, will scare away their customers if allowed to be outside, and so we shouldn’t be allowed to have outdoor seating.

The other complaint came from a few condo owners across the street from the 5 Point. They also dislike the 5 Point, criticize if for being a bar (??) and are worried about noise. So we agreed to close the outdoor seating at 10pm. That is not enough for them as they would like to see us not have outdoor seating at all.

Now the City wants us to meet with this tiny minority of the neighborhood to discuss shrinking our outdoor seating, or possibly agreeing to do away with it. We have agreed to meet with neighbors, but feel this small group of people do not represent the whole neighborhood, and have asked to open that meeting up to other neighbors who support the outdoor seating. We’re waiting to hear back from the City about next steps.

In the meantime, we need your letters of support. Basically they need to say that you live in, work in or regularly visit the neighborhood, that you support the permit for the outdoor seating for the 5 Point the way it is written, that the people opposing it do not represent a majority of the neighborhood or you. Email that letter to us at david@thefivepointcafe.com and we’ll forward to all the various people at the City. If you include your address it helps even more.

Thanks for your support, and when we get the permit we’ll have a little party you’ll be invited to!

David, Mandy and Oly

Features

The University War Sagas, Already in Progress

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Our Flickr pool’s Great Beyond gives us “Broken Obelisk at night”

The cuts have already come down.

Now they come down again, but this time with more shock, more force, more impact. Straight from Olympia. Tens of millions will be lost in this saga. But the tens of millions tally up to something more profound than cash: the loss of minds. Young minds who want to learn. Wise minds who want to teach.

Our minds, if we let this happen as a region.

The University of Washington, like every kindergarten, elementary, junior and high school and higher learning institution in our country is facing a war of historical dimensions.

What is this war about?

It is about whether we should measure the worth of knowledge and thinking with a calculator. It is about whether a free, thriving and independent learning academy has a place in our society. It is about whether our state and our citizens envision a future where knowledge for the sake of future knowledge is a value.

It is about whether the inexorable forces of capital will finally possess our academies once and for all, banishing any form of education that does not graduate a suited widget maker with no independent mind at all.

Today, the Washington State Legislature moved to deal with our state’s seemingly bottomless projected deficits by cutting $700 million from the current year budget. $50 million from education.

But what is at stake is more insidious than the loss of funds. It is the identity of education in our society, the relationship it has with capital, and the tools by which we will finally measure the dollar worth of a human mind.

There will be more dispatches from the university war sagas as the winter wears on.

Features

National Philanthropy Day Goes Over Big in Seattle

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If you felt an outpouring of lovingkindness while walking past the Convention Center yesterday, it was likely because over 1,000 people were gathered inside to celebrate National Philanthropy Day, hosted by AFP Washington. I was glad to attend, because on a day when unemployment cut-offs and ballooning deficits were in the news, it was particularly good to hear about Seattle’s pathbreaking philanthropic engagement. 

Enrique Cerna

Former Mayor Norm Rice

The lunch was emceed by KCTS’s Enrique Cerna, and former Mayor Norm Rice spoke as well, but both men knew that the stars of the afternoon were the honorees, and said as much. In fact, the theme of the day was the “faces of philanthropy”–Seattle’s populist spirit emerging even when it comes to what you’d imagine would be a wealthy-elbow-rubbing affair. 

In a town where you can run into a sweater-and-khaki-wearing Bill Gates catching a matinée at the Harvard Exit, it makes sense that Matt Griffin (a commercial real estate developer) and Evelyne Rozner (founder of her business consultancy, The Rozner Co.) were low-key about their Outstanding Philanthropists award, given because they “have not only contributed substantially to local and national nonprofits, they have also led efforts that raised more than $250 million for causes they support.”

Rozner won applause for warning that an obsession with efficiency and short-term fiscal prudence (as measured by cents per dollar that go to administration “versus” operations) is harmful to non-profits, who need to be allowed to experiment and test out new practices.

The Whatcom Community Foundation was honored for Outstanding Philanthropy Organization (President Mauri Ingram’s wry sense of humor won her a “She’ll be here all week, folks” from Cerna), and the Moles family was recognized in the Outstanding Philanthropic Family category. For your family’s reference, here’s the contribution benchmark you should aim for: 

Pure Water for the World, the American Red Cross, Hospice of Whatcom County, Whatcom Community Foundation, St. Luke’s Foundation, Rotary, Mt. Baker Theater, Whatcom Symphony, Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Salvation Army, Boy Scouts of America, Visiting Nurse Home Health Care and Personal Services, Northwest Public Radio, Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, Mount Baker Planned Parenthood, Whatcom Maritime Historical Society, Whatcom County North Rotary Foundation, United Way of Whatcom County, Bellingham Dollars for Scholars, Ferndale Chamber of Commerce and the Whatcom County Old Settlers Association.

Under Outstanding Corporation, we heard from the McKinstry Company‘s Dean Allen, who explained that the company’s practice of dividing up profits among employees, so that each can dedicate $500 to the non-profit of their choice, is something each employee’s family is asked to weigh in on, so that philanthropy is taught to new generations. The Outstanding Small Company was Delivery Express, who “deliver” for both the Puget Sound Blood Center and the Starlight Children’s Foundation of Washington. President Dave Hamilton dresses up as Santa to deliver toys to seriously ill children; he also contributes to KEXP and KUOW, whom he thanked for helping make his children think he’s cool and smart, respectively. 

Grace Grubb (left) and Madeleine Colvin (right)

At this point, I was feeling like I really knew what Louis Armstrong was saying with that “What a Wonderful World” song, but there was one more award. The Outstanding Young Philanthropists award went to Madeleine Colvin and Grace Grubb, who, by the end of 10th grade, “had founded Dig Deep, a nonprofit that has raised more than $13,000 to purchase a water system for a village in Ethiopia.” Grace is in Africa (of course), so Madeleine appeared to talk a little about how important clean water is, and their idea to raise money through, among other things, fundraising walks based on how far women in Africa might have to walk each day to provide water for their families. 

It’s slightly surreal to watch a high school student address a crowd of 1,000 very influential Seattleites (the WAC parking garage nearby was almost full), half-apologizing for the fact that when the two were freshmen they really didn’t know much about the legal or financial issues involved in starting a non-profit, and giving shout-outs to family members who drove them everywhere. “It’s,” said Madeleine, mastering a breathy trill of nervousness, “excellent,” and then led the crowd in a chant of “I am a philanthropist!”

Environment, Features, News, Transportation

The Anger About Road Diets, Rising Deficits, and Higher Electric Rates

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Every so often, people who like to think of their reality as fact-based (most everyone, then) throw up their hands and ask what is to be done about people who “don’t get it,” as if there’s some formula. This isn’t a partisan viewpoint; it reflects biases we all have, which tend to show up in how we intuitively imagine consequences of action. But sometimes how we imagine builds those biases.

If you force “four busy lanes of traffic into two,” after all, anyone can see that a congested crawl will be the result. In a feeble economy, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you need to make substantial cuts to keep the state’s deficit down. If you want to save on electricity, even a child could tell you that the best thing is to turn the heat down.

Except none of that may be true.

It’s based on what is easy to visualize, rather than what isn’t. In the case of a road diet, the third, bi-directional turn lane gets overlooked, but left-turning cars block traffic in a four-lane model–and it gets worse the busier the street gets. So far as deficits go, consider a liquidity trap–again, harder to visualize than simply cutting to make fit. And that electric bill? “Making retrofits, for example, saves far more energy than turning down the heat a few degrees.”

All of these examples, besides pointing up how our “arguments” tend to rest on what we can visualize quickly and easily, all have to do with size effects, too. We’re not good at estimating how many people turn left during rush hour, or what will happen if every state makes draconian cuts, or how much energy we waste collectively. Most of us problem solve individually–that’s where our experience comes from–and so tragedies of the commons leave us stumped.

One of the signal moments of any age’s education is marked by the conflict between, loosely speaking, the intuitive and counterintuitive. No one now really relates to the people who were really invested in the sun revolving around the earth. It seems pointless. But it’s undeniable that people were upset to greater and lesser extents by this new thinking and its implications.

We happen to live in a time when data frequently suggest conclusions that strike the person in the street as mysterious or just counterfactual. Data on the results of group behavior is what we wrestle with, we’re deluged by the preferences of hypothetical populations. For some people, there’s real pleasure in turning over conventional opinion with the aid of datasets. That’s the Freakonomics crowd (today’s learning: students prefer instructors with tattoos).

Others will stick with their intuitions, thank you very much. Attempts to reason with them about the result will only provoke a frustrated anger. Anywhere from 17 to 25 road diets have already taken place around Seattle over the last 30 years, and they have stuck because enough people like the results. (Here’s an early update on Stone Way.) But it is never an intuitive solution, so people never react with joy to the news that a lane is going away.

Sometimes people–and populations–simply want different things (“space,” say, or a deep-bore tunnel). But in the event that your solution is counterintuitive, it can’t hurt to tweak your argument’s delivery. You have to short-circuit your listener’s tendency to intuit that they’re right and you’re wrong.

The Freakonomics guys are masters at this; they take the pat answer (“Everybody knows this…right?”) and add just enough information to turn it back into a puzzle.

The counterintuitive part–which if simply presented in the train of an argument would be rejected out of hand–can become the element that engages people. Road diets, for instance, are a magic trick: “When are three lanes better than four?” But you have to have the patience to engage people first, rather than simply inform them of the “rechannelization” or retrofitting project–and why their kneejerk response is wrong. Roads may become more efficient when rechanneled, but people tend to bristle at the experience.

Features, News

“Goodbye To All That”–A Dancer Remembers The Lusty Lady of ’94

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Special to The SunBreak by Heidi Boren

Things have come full circle for me and for Seattle since 1994. That was the year I danced at The Lusty Lady. It was also the April that Kurt Cobain ended his life. Now, The Lusty Lady is shutting its doors this June 27, while the Kurt exhibit draws visitors just across the street at the Seattle Art Museum.

SAM, the reborn Seattle Art Museum on First Avenue, was just a baby back then. Hammering Man had been recently, uh, erected, and The Lusty Lady had the cheek to comment on him from its pink-framed marquee with “Hammer Away, Big Guy.” But as pithy as the marquee had always been, the Lusty was still just another sex arcade down at the end of  “Flesh” Avenue. A girl who worked at one of these places was probably also a hooker, and most certainly suffered from low self-esteem.

A stripper named Jane, who I met in New Mexico, had challenged those notions for me. When I asked her why she, someone who had a high school diploma, no addictions, and could have worked anywhere else in town, worked as a dancer at a strip club, she told me she didn’t want to end up “one of those people from suburbia who thinks Cat Stevens is a real person.”

As my musical tastes ran directly to Cat Stevens and Suzanne Vega, I didn’t really grasp what she meant. When she died in a motorcycle accident a few months later, however, I decided I wanted to find out.

Having written a single, five-page play that had been well received by my professor in college, I considered myself the premier dramatic voice of my generation. My plan was to get myself back to Seattle where I had a sister who was a soft touch with money. There, I would live out Jane’s quest and write an award-winning play about it.

My sister worked as a security guard at SAM. She told me to meet her for her half-hour lunch to discuss having me crash on her couch for a few weeks. On the way to meet her I looked up and saw The Lusty Lady’s marquee about the Hammering Man. I was instantly intrigued. The place looked…charming, with the goofy smiley-face and the announcement “Every Miss is a Hit!”  Somehow my sister knew that The Lusty had a good reputation with dancers and that it was managed by a woman. After lunch, I walked in, auditioned, and was hired to start the next day.

The first thing I noticed, to my horror, was that all the customers jacked off. Call me naive, but I thought the customers just put quarters in the slot to stand there and watch a show. I had no idea that they also routinely pleasured themselves. After my first Friday night shift, as I sat listless on the backstage couch, kernels of popcorn dribbling down my chin, another dancer took pity on me.

She suggested I might prefer the Private Pleasures talk booth to the Live Stage.  “And you’d make a killing because of your looks,” she had added. I jumped at the chance to only have to face one customer at a time, perhaps just to chat.

As luck would have it, I began to attract the “talkers.” These were the guys who didn’t always unzip their pants but were more interested in having a conversation or telling me their secrets and fantasies. At first, this was great. I’m a good listener and I liked being away from the loud, largely undanceable music and onslaught of male nudity that was the Live Show. In the name of artistic research, I wrote down every word. What transpired inside the talk booth, however, soon turned darker than I was prepared for.

Mr. Tuesday at 10 p.m. told me his three-year-old granddaughter was living with him and had an infection “down there” but he was sure that it was not his fault because all he did was bathe her. He placed shaking hands on the glass and told me to tell him over and over again that I believed him and that it wasn’t his fault.

Mr. Friday at noon said he was misunderstood by women. I pointed out that Einstein was also misunderstood. Mr. Friday erupted in anger, slamming the glass and trying to get his money back. He said Einstein had been married twice, so he was at least understood by two women and what kind of an idiot slut was I, anyway? He then settled down and proceeded to tell me, in lurid detail, just what kind of a stupid slut I actually was.

The majority of the customers just wanted to talk to a pretty girl about a fantasy; nothing real, and nothing sinister. It was the three or four customers a day like Mr. Tuesday at 10 p.m. and worse (much, much worse) that began to haunt me.

Until then, the grunge music scene had never really moved me, but it was at this point that I began to relate to the angry, atonal noise that spewed from the jukebox. The songs were mostly tracks from local Seattle bands my sister had been dragging me to see for years at The Off Ramp, Central Tavern, and house parties on Bainbridge Island–bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, and Nirvana.

As I listened day after day to betrayals, degradations, and just plain sicknesses, all the while having to smile and look my best, the punk-infused songs began to make sense. The music was about knowing what people wanted from you and refusing to give it to them on their terms. The upper-middle class kids on Bainbridge and the dancers from the city high schools had one thing in common: They weren’t going to live their parents’ boring repressed lives no matter what.

I saw the way the dancers needed the music: Veronica swinging her dark hair with abandon and spinning around the stage when any song from the newly released In Utero played and a customer had given her the curt hand signal that meant “turn around and bend over”; Wren lifting her leg up and slamming her platform heel into the mirrored wall in protest when a song from Hole’s album Pretty on the Inside started skipping and she had just had a customer walk out on her.

The songs helped me deal with the talkers on my terms. And my terms were that I could smile and smile, but I was going to record every word they said in my journals. I liked Pearl Jam’s “Black.” I think it’s a song about a break-up, but I liked the idea of being able to tattoo over memories. All the images from my Private Pleasures shift could be inked out of existence for me with my black pen. If I got down the lies and betrayals on paper and away from my soul, it would just be so many stories in a notebook and nothing real.

The lyrics from Nirvana’s song “Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” were my personal favorite: “She’ll come back as fire and burn all the liars.” That was like a promise of my life without the talkers. A day in the future when I didn’t need them to pay my rent and I could burn all their words.

Then one morning in early April of 1994, Kurt Cobain killed himself. I wasn’t shocked. It was no secret he was a tortured soul. But Kurt had been my personal frontman for the whole Seattle music scene. I instantly focused on his wife, Courtney. For better or worse, she had been his soulmate and I desperately needed to hear from her.

A radio station announced that she would appear live the next morning at the Seattle Center fountain lawn to give a eulogy for the fans. I took off work and made my way to the Space Needle, sure that I would be mobbed by the thousands of fans the radio station reported had cut school to be there. When I arrived, a few hundred high school kids were milling about in their flannel shirts. I found some dancers I knew huddled in a cigarette haze by the rusty fountain.

After an hour, a public address megaphone began to crackle and pop above our heads. Then a canned recording of Courtney’s froggy whine came in and out, telling us she was sorry she couldn’t be with us but that she loved Kurt and she knew we loved him, too. I don’t remember what else she said. Generic things, with a voice that clearly was not going to be breaking down into sobs anytime soon. Fuck you, Courtney, we thought. Did you even like his music? Where the hell was she? Where was anybody?  Who gave a fuck about anything? It was all pointless. Seattle and the entire sound had suddenly become as arcane and lifeless as the stupid ’60s era Seattle Center.

Around this same time, a state-funded gallery show of photos of exotic dancers opened to cries of “Indecency!” from the public. The photographer, Erika Langley, a Senator’s daughter from Virginia, had received an art grant to document the lives of exotic dancers. Consequently, she had started working at The Lusty Lady a few months earlier.

Perhaps due to the controversy, or perhaps because sex sells and May is sweeps month, the local KING 5 television show Evening Magazine was interested in shooting a segment on Erika and her photos. The show’s producers also wanted to include another dancer in the segment; a dancer with a college background, who, like Erika, was working as a dancer because she wanted to, they had said, and not because she had to, which they hadn’t said, but which they meant. My boss, June, thought I’d be a good choice and I agreed to an on-camera interview at my apartment.

That was a mistake. I had no furniture except my Murphy bed and a card table. The only other things present were the stacks and stacks of my customer journals.  I instantly wished that I had stashed them in the bathroom. The cameraman’s lens swept over the stacks like a searchlight as the reporter, a perfectly poised Asian woman, asked me three hours worth of questions.

I have no memory of what I said. Erika was there, probably for moral support, and as she flipped idly through the pages of one of my large binders, all I could think of was what horrible secret she was discovering on each page. Maybe she was just glancing at the words, killing time. Maybe she had chosen the harmless journal that described the daily nuts and bolts of my life at The Lusty and not the customers’ confessions. I do remember that the reporter asked about the dancers, or the dancing, and not the customers. Erika’s photos (and the controversy) dealt with the dancers, not the customers.

But the elephant in the room for me was the customers. The interview and the segment helped bring that front and center in my mind. I had to go to work that night and face the pedophiles and misogynists whether exotic dancers were a symbol of feminine power or just smut. The creeps were my bread and butter. I had to listen to them and validate them and smile at them if I wanted to pay my rent.

With Cobain dead and the knowledge that his lyrics would never again exist in the present moment, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do it. Grunge was just some dumb sound from high school. Its veil of protection and release had washed away with the tide. I didn’t care about my play anymore. I didn’t care about Jane or about running from Cat Steven’s “Moonshadows.” I had stomach ulcers and had cracked my back teeth from grinding them in my sleep.

As I paced the back hallway of The Lusty, debating whether or not to give notice, one of the owners, Darrell, was emptying out a change machine from a row of booths I had never noticed before: the video booths. Darrell told me they made three times the money as the Live Show and Private Pleasures combined.

I was crestfallen but also curious as to what all the fuss was about. He dug out a handful of quarters and suggested I take a gander. The porn fare displayed on the small screen was the average variety legally available. A customer could click through to what he or she preferred: college girls, girl with girls, etc. Maybe it was just the privacy that was the big deal, I thought, or not having to rent a whole video.

Then I noticed something inserted into the frame of the video screen. It was a wallet-sized school photo of a girl about seven years old. She had a round, open face and a gap-toothed grin. I knew the staff had seen much worse, they’d probably just throw it away. I put the little photo in my pocket and recognized it for what it was: my sign to leave The Lusty Lady. I still have that photo.

As strip-culture chic came into the mainstream and gyms all over the country installed stripper poles so women could discover their sexuality while getting fit, I had the photo as a reminder that for me (and the girl in the photo) it wasn’t always fun and games.

Five years after I quit, Courtney Love was starring in a film about porn king Larry Flynt, Pearl Jam had a greatest hits CD released just in time for the holidays, and I lived in California and worked at a radio station. My sister eventually mailed me the boxes of my customer journals she had been storing. The pages were yellowed, but not by much. She told me I should either burn them or publish them. I did neither.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday, June 13, 2010, I am at The Lusty Lady as the last-ever live dance shift comes to a close. The video booths are to stay up and running for a few more weeks. Outside, SAM feels closer now. Before, Hammering Man was just a hard-working statue minding his own business, occasionally winking at us ladies. Now he looms only an arm’s length away, inviting us to view artists’ renderings of the Gen X icon Kurt: hammering, hammering.

Inside, a few actual customers holler from the booths as 27-year veteran dancer and manager Candy Girl yells, “Twelve more minutes of puff-puff, people…five more minutes of puff-puff….” But the viewing booths are mostly filled with current dancers, staff, and me–clapping and laughing at the antics onstage.

A tall, blonde dancer wears a ’60s era prom dress and pretends to spank a dancer in jeans and boots. Another wears candy-cane stockings and a Santa hat and waltzes with a longtime customer they have let onto the stage and who looks like Santa himself. As Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” comes to an end, we hear Candy Girl announce from the PA: “That’s it, Seattle! No more puff-puff!”

I say goodbye and make my way up First Avenue through the fruit and vegetable stalls of the Market just setting up for the day. A vendor has music playing as he works. The song is folksy and melancholic. It suits my mood and I stop to listen. The vendor has a youthful, vegan look, though his hair is peppered with grey.

Fifteen years ago, we might have exchanged phone numbers over Red Hooks in a Pioneer Square pub. As a well-kept older couple maneuvers past with their dog, the vendor asks if he can help me. I tell him I just really like the song that’s playing and I’m trying to figure out who it is. “Oh, yeah, that’s Cat Stevens,” he says, and keeps sweeping.

Heidi Boren is a freelance writer and playwright currently commuting between Seattle and Los Angeles. Her play about an exotic dancer was produced at The New City Theatre’s New Playwright’s Festival and the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival.

Features, News

“Goodbye To All That” — A Dancer Remembers The Lusty Lady of ’94

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Special to The SunBreak by Heidi Boren

Things have come full circle for me and for Seattle since 1994. That was the year I danced at The Lusty Lady. It was also the April that Kurt Cobain ended his life. Now, The Lusty Lady is shutting its doors this June 27, while the Kurt exhibit draws visitors just across the street at the Seattle Art Museum.

SAM, the reborn Seattle Art Museum on First Avenue, was just a baby back then. Hammering Man had been recently, uh, erected, and The Lusty Lady had the cheek to comment on him from its pink-framed marquee with “Hammer Away, Big Guy.” But as pithy as the marquee had always been, the Lusty was still just another sex arcade down at the end of  “Flesh” Avenue. A girl who worked at one of these places was probably also a hooker, and most certainly suffered from low self-esteem.

A stripper named Jane, who I met in New Mexico, had challenged those notions for me. When I asked her why she, someone who had a high school diploma, no addictions, and could have worked anywhere else in town, worked as a dancer at a strip club, she told me she didn’t want to end up “one of those people from suburbia who thinks Cat Stevens is a real person.”

As my musical tastes ran directly to Cat Stevens and Suzanne Vega, I didn’t really grasp what she meant. When she died in a motorcycle accident a few months later, however, I decided I wanted to find out.

Having written a single, five-page play that had been well received by my professor in college, I considered myself the premier dramatic voice of my generation. My plan was to get myself back to Seattle where I had a sister who was a soft touch with money. There, I would live out Jane’s quest and write an award-winning play about it.

My sister worked as a security guard at SAM. She told me to meet her for her half-hour lunch to discuss having me crash on her couch for a few weeks. On the way to meet her I looked up and saw The Lusty Lady’s marquee about the Hammering Man. I was instantly intrigued. The place looked…charming, with the goofy smiley-face and the announcement “Every Miss is a Hit!”  Somehow my sister knew that The Lusty had a good reputation with dancers and that it was managed by a woman. After lunch, I walked in, auditioned, and was hired to start the next day.

The first thing I noticed, to my horror, was that all the customers jacked off. Call me naive, but I thought the customers just put quarters in the slot to stand there and watch a show. I had no idea that they also routinely pleasured themselves. After my first Friday night shift, as I sat listless on the backstage couch, kernels of popcorn dribbling down my chin, another dancer took pity on me.

She suggested I might prefer the Private Pleasures talk booth to the Live Stage.  “And you’d make a killing because of your looks,” she had added. I jumped at the chance to only have to face one customer at a time, perhaps just to chat.

As luck would have it, I began to attract the “talkers.” These were the guys who didn’t always unzip their pants but were more interested in having a conversation or telling me their secrets and fantasies. At first, this was great. I’m a good listener and I liked being away from the loud, largely undanceable music and onslaught of male nudity that was the Live Show. In the name of artistic research, I wrote down every word. What transpired inside the talk booth, however, soon turned darker than I was prepared for.

Mr. Tuesday at 10 p.m. told me his three-year-old granddaughter was living with him and had an infection “down there” but he was sure that it was not his fault because all he did was bathe her. He placed shaking hands on the glass and told me to tell him over and over again that I believed him and that it wasn’t his fault.

Mr. Friday at noon said he was misunderstood by women. I pointed out that Einstein was also misunderstood. Mr. Friday erupted in anger, slamming the glass and trying to get his money back. He said Einstein had been married twice, so he was at least understood by two women and what kind of an idiot slut was I, anyway? He then settled down and proceeded to tell me, in lurid detail, just what kind of a stupid slut I actually was.

The majority of the customers just wanted to talk to a pretty girl about a fantasy; nothing real, and nothing sinister. It was the three or four customers a day like Mr. Tuesday at 10 p.m. and worse (much, much worse) that began to haunt me.

Until then, the grunge music scene had never really moved me, but it was at this point that I began to relate to the angry, atonal noise that spewed from the jukebox. The songs were mostly tracks from local Seattle bands my sister had been dragging me to see for years at The Off Ramp, Central Tavern, and house parties on Bainbridge Island–bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, and Nirvana.

As I listened day after day to betrayals, degradations, and just plain sicknesses, all the while having to smile and look my best, the punk-infused songs began to make sense. The music was about knowing what people wanted from you and refusing to give it to them on their terms. The upper-middle class kids on Bainbridge and the dancers from the city high schools had one thing in common: They weren’t going to live their parents’ boring repressed lives no matter what.

I saw the way the dancers needed the music: Veronica swinging her dark hair with abandon and spinning around the stage when any song from the newly released In Utero played and a customer had given her the curt hand signal that meant “turn around and bend over”; Wren lifting her leg up and slamming her platform heel into the mirrored wall in protest when a song from Hole’s album Pretty on the Inside started skipping and she had just had a customer walk out on her.

The songs helped me deal with the talkers on my terms. And my terms were that I could smile and smile, but I was going to record every word they said in my journals. I liked Pearl Jam’s “Black.” I think it’s a song about a break-up, but I liked the idea of being able to tattoo over memories. All the images from my Private Pleasures shift could be inked out of existence for me with my black pen. If I got down the lies and betrayals on paper and away from my soul, it would just be so many stories in a notebook and nothing real.

The lyrics from Nirvana’s song “Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” were my personal favorite: “She’ll come back as fire and burn all the liars.” That was like a promise of my life without the talkers. A day in the future when I didn’t need them to pay my rent and I could burn all their words.

Then one morning in early April of 1994, Kurt Cobain killed himself. I wasn’t shocked. It was no secret he was a tortured soul. But Kurt had been my personal frontman for the whole Seattle music scene. I instantly focused on his wife, Courtney. For better or worse, she had been his soulmate and I desperately needed to hear from her.

A radio station announced that she would appear live the next morning at the Seattle Center fountain lawn to give a eulogy for the fans. I took off work and made my way to the Space Needle, sure that I would be mobbed by the thousands of fans the radio station reported had cut school to be there. When I arrived, a few hundred high school kids were milling about in their flannel shirts. I found some dancers I knew huddled in a cigarette haze by the rusty fountain.

After an hour, a public address megaphone began to crackle and pop above our heads. Then a canned recording of Courtney’s froggy whine came in and out, telling us she was sorry she couldn’t be with us but that she loved Kurt and she knew we loved him, too. I don’t remember what else she said. Generic things, with a voice that clearly was not going to be breaking down into sobs anytime soon. Fuck you, Courtney, we thought. Did you even like his music? Where the hell was she? Where was anybody?  Who gave a fuck about anything? It was all pointless. Seattle and the entire sound had suddenly become as arcane and lifeless as the stupid ’60s era Seattle Center.

Around this same time, a state-funded gallery show of photos of exotic dancers opened to cries of “Indecency!” from the public. The photographer, Erika Langley, a Senator’s daughter from Virginia, had received an art grant to document the lives of exotic dancers. Consequently, she had started working at The Lusty Lady a few months earlier.

Perhaps due to the controversy, or perhaps because sex sells and May is sweeps month, the local KING 5 television show Evening Magazine was interested in shooting a segment on Erika and her photos. The show’s producers also wanted to include another dancer in the segment; a dancer with a college background, who, like Erika, was working as a dancer because she wanted to, they had said, and not because she had to, which they hadn’t said, but which they meant. My boss, June, thought I’d be a good choice and I agreed to an on-camera interview at my apartment.

That was a mistake. I had no furniture except my Murphy bed and a card table. The only other things present were the stacks and stacks of my customer journals.  I instantly wished that I had stashed them in the bathroom. The cameraman’s lens swept over the stacks like a searchlight as the reporter, a perfectly poised Asian woman, asked me three hours worth of questions.

I have no memory of what I said. Erika was there, probably for moral support, and as she flipped idly through the pages of one of my large binders, all I could think of was what horrible secret she was discovering on each page. Maybe she was just glancing at the words, killing time. Maybe she had chosen the harmless journal that described the daily nuts and bolts of my life at The Lusty and not the customers’ confessions. I do remember that the reporter asked about the dancers, or the dancing, and not the customers. Erika’s photos (and the controversy) dealt with the dancers, not the customers.

But the elephant in the room for me was the customers. The interview and the segment helped bring that front and center in my mind. I had to go to work that night and face the pedophiles and misogynists whether exotic dancers were a symbol of feminine power or just smut. The creeps were my bread and butter. I had to listen to them and validate them and smile at them if I wanted to pay my rent.

With Cobain dead and the knowledge that his lyrics would never again exist in the present moment, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do it. Grunge was just some dumb sound from high school. Its veil of protection and release had washed away with the tide. I didn’t care about my play anymore. I didn’t care about Jane or about running from Cat Steven’s “Moonshadows.” I had stomach ulcers and had cracked my back teeth from grinding them in my sleep.

As I paced the back hallway of The Lusty, debating whether or not to give notice, one of the owners, Darrell, was emptying out a change machine from a row of booths I had never noticed before: the video booths. Darrell told me they made three times the money as the Live Show and Private Pleasures combined.

I was crestfallen but also curious as to what all the fuss was about. He dug out a handful of quarters and suggested I take a gander. The porn fare displayed on the small screen was the average variety legally available. A customer could click through to what he or she preferred: college girls, girl with girls, etc. Maybe it was just the privacy that was the big deal, I thought, or not having to rent a whole video.

Then I noticed something inserted into the frame of the video screen. It was a wallet-sized school photo of a girl about seven years old. She had a round, open face and a gap-toothed grin. I knew the staff had seen much worse, they’d probably just throw it away. I put the little photo in my pocket and recognized it for what it was: my sign to leave The Lusty Lady. I still have that photo.

As strip-culture chic came into the mainstream and gyms all over the country installed stripper poles so women could discover their sexuality while getting fit, I had the photo as a reminder that for me (and the girl in the photo) it wasn’t always fun and games.

Five years after I quit, Courtney Love was starring in a film about porn king Larry Flynt, Pearl Jam had a greatest hits CD released just in time for the holidays, and I lived in California and worked at a radio station. My sister eventually mailed me the boxes of my customer journals she had been storing. The pages were yellowed, but not by much. She told me I should either burn them or publish them. I did neither.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday, June 13, 2010, I am at The Lusty Lady as the last-ever live dance shift comes to a close. The video booths are to stay up and running for a few more weeks. Outside, SAM feels closer now. Before, Hammering Man was just a hard-working statue minding his own business, occasionally winking at us ladies. Now he looms only an arm’s length away, inviting us to view artists’ renderings of the Gen X icon Kurt: hammering, hammering.

Inside, a few actual customers holler from the booths as 27-year veteran dancer and manager Candy Girl yells, “Twelve more minutes of puff-puff, people…five more minutes of puff-puff….” But the viewing booths are mostly filled with current dancers, staff, and me–clapping and laughing at the antics onstage.

A tall, blonde dancer wears a ’60s era prom dress and pretends to spank a dancer in jeans and boots. Another wears candy-cane stockings and a Santa hat and waltzes with a longtime customer they have let onto the stage and who looks like Santa himself. As Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” comes to an end, we hear Candy Girl announce from the PA: “That’s it, Seattle! No more puff-puff!”

I say goodbye and make my way up First Avenue through the fruit and vegetable stalls of the Market just setting up for the day. A vendor has music playing as he works. The song is folksy and melancholic. It suits my mood and I stop to listen. The vendor has a youthful, vegan look, though his hair is peppered with grey.

Fifteen years ago, we might have exchanged phone numbers over Red Hooks in a Pioneer Square pub. As a well-kept older couple maneuvers past with their dog, the vendor asks if he can help me. I tell him I just really like the song that’s playing and I’m trying to figure out who it is. “Oh, yeah, that’s Cat Stevens,” he says, and keeps sweeping.

Heidi Boren is a freelance writer and playwright currently commuting between Seattle and Los Angeles. Her play about an exotic dancer was produced at The New City Theatre’s New Playwright’s Festival and the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival.