Lusty Lady, San Francisco

[Mugu]

The members of the board of directors for one of San Francisco's newest corporations sometimes work naked.

snip

It's not just for fun. It's easier that way. Because most of the time, they've been dancing naked upstairs, in the Lusty Lady Theater. And, as new owners of the joint, they sometimes go to the office in their work attire to get stuff done.

snip

The women of the Lusty Lady, at 1033 Kearny St., are making history again. They were the first strip club in the country to unionize, joining the Service Employees International Union several years ago.

Now, they've bought the club and have become the first employee-owned strip joint in the nation.



Complete article at:
http://www.nobawc.org/article.php?id=83

[swag]

1. I hope the guy who operates the mop bucket and bleaches the quarters

makes a living wage.

[crikkett]

2. the first thing I'd do is put a towel over the seat of that chair

that kind of fabric (and the glue holding it to the padding) is not nice to skin.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Good news

The whole article. All good.

[readmoreoften]

4. Too bad the good news doesn't usually extend beyond California.

Getting unionization rights in the most liberal city in America at a club with few girls, many of whom were queer activists and educated, is a hell of a lot harder than unionizing women in other parts of the country. I was a dancer on the East Coast in a major city shortly after these guys first unionized. They or their organizers went to various clubs talking union with the girls. After the mafia club owners joined with the cops and the newspapers to make a laughingstock out of the pro-union strippers in my city (including incessant articles about the women using their real full names and what part of town they lived in) before blacklisting them from working anywhere. Talking union was so thoroughly prohibited that I've seen women get violent on new girls for just mentioning casually "hey! we oughta have a union!" When I got my first job, I was told that if I tried to push for a union, I might get blanket-beaten by the other girls. That means, if you don't know, when a blanket is thrown over you and you're beaten up so that you can't see who is attacking you and you can't escape.

But, hey, good for them.