tuscl

Chicago Area Strip Clubs Circa 1980's

dennyspade
Illinois
Sunday, July 30, 2006 5:46 AM
Some of you like to post comments about the notorious BLOCK in Baltimore, Detroit's unsavory reputation and tolerance for stripo clubs, etc... You need to read what itvwas like in Chicago when the mob had it's hold on several clubs: Ogden `sin strip' stills haunt Lyons By James Pluta My Uncle's Place, and its promise of ``Girls, Girls, Girls,'' closed in the late 1980s. During the mid-1960s through the late 1980s, Ogden Avenue through Lyons had a reputation for raunchy bars and as a place for men to go for a good time when they couldn't make it to Las Vegas or, say, Calumet City. Night clubs with such names as Saints and Sinners, Bobbie and Clyde's, Gigi-a-Go-Go and The Mineshaft, as well as strip clubs with names like Piccadilly Circus and Michael's Magic Touch dominated the Ogden landscape. Prostitution and drug sales flourished; gambling was a mainstay; and, as the federal government proved in a number of trials that took down several bar owners in the late 1980s, the more seedy establishments were linked with the Chicago mob. Club Algiers, The Petite Lounge, My Uncle's Place and Michael's Magic Touch all saw their demise just a few years after the federal raids shut them down for prostitution and credit card fraud. One of the most notorious of them was Michael Russo of Riverside, owner of Michael's Magic Touch, the last bar of its kind to remain standing into this decade. He allegedly had close ties with organized crime and at least one former village official, who he was accused of paying off and bribing with trips and sexual favors. Bartenders in Lyons today, at least those who are willing to talk about the past, tell stories about how they still do battle with customers who don't seem to understand that Lyons is no longer ``like it used to be.'' There was the French 75 on Harlem Avenue just off Ogden, which had a wooden cutout of a scantily clad female dancer out front; Johnny Merola's Club Algiers on the bend west of Joliet Avenue, which burned down after he sold it and went to prison; the Petite Lounge where Del Russo's Deli now is at Ogden and Leland Avenue; My Uncle's Place at Plainfield Road and Ogden; and Gigi-a-Go-Go's where the Country Market Buffet now attracts diners. Then there was Michael's Magic Touch, where Burger King now stands at First Avenue. The front window of Michael's gave motorists a sneak peak of what was inside, that is until a minister complained enough for it to be covered up. On the same night the FBI conducted raids on the Lyons' strip clubs in August 1984, one of the village's most notorious homicide investigations also got under way when former Lyons Police Chief Allen Scheffelbein was found in his home shot in the head. Police at the time called the officers' death a suicide. But many still have their doubts. Bar opponents never spoke louder than they did in the early to mid-1980s, when they collectively caused the naughty bars to go away, their owners to be put away and for all bars in town to make last call two hours earlier than they used to.

4 comments

  • parodyman-->
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    18 years ago
    From what I hear you weren't the only one out there late at night. They dismantled the Lyons strip then I was about 14-15. Damn. Too bad for me.
  • dennyspade
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    18 years ago
    Hey Parodyman: I had one of my first HJ's in the French 75 following a wedding recption with a non-stop champagne fountain. Too blind and drunk to drive any further I discovered the Lyons strip of clubs and frequented them often late at night when any decent person would be asleep. The Mob/Outfit got busted for scamming businesses with credit card receipts for seemingly legit businesses like limo services, florists and caterers and then companies deducting these as business expenses, while their employees were charging off sex in back rooms. You can Fuck anybody but, Uncle Sam.
  • Book Guy
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    18 years ago
    Wonder where the hot-spots are now in the US? And if you could trace migrations of certain key players in the "industry", by tracing where the hot-spots moved after they were shut down in city after city. In the late 60s and through the 70s, every big city in the US had a "district" where it got done. "It" being ... erm ... whatever a guy needed. I remember that New Orleans was cleaned up for the 1984 World's Fair; and we all heard about New York's Times Square getting Disneyfied, much to a hobbyist's chagrin, in the 1990s. When did the demise happen to Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Kankakee? Anyone have any specific info on their own cities? New Orleans, as a major port, and as the South's biggest city until about 1955, and as a booming industrial center after World War II, was exactly what the hobbyist wanted in mid-century. Or so I've read. Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, off and on owned strip clubs in New Orleans. Governor Earl Long fell in love with stripper Blaze Star, who still lives in Baltimore (?) off the clandestine legacy he somehow provided her. The Kit-Kat and other famous names? Bourbon Street wasn't the only place in New Orleans with strip clubs and wonderful vice opportunities. In my childhood in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, New Orleans had a stroll along Decatur Street, from about Toulouse to Canal -- the section where the historic "customs house" (actually the Rice Exchange, I think) fronts Decatur's fork away from the River. I think House of Blues is in this district now. The fire station had a great view of all the goin's ons. Mom and dad and I were driving home from dinner in the French Quarter one night and dad mistakenly passed through this stroll when I was, about, twelve. The (IIRC skanky!) street-walkers were so brazen that, even though they saw me and mom, they just didn't bat an eye and leaned in the car window (stalled in stroll traffic) to ask dad if he were interested. "Maybe the family likes to watch?" Yeesh. Then the 1984 World's Fair hit and the city had a pretext for improvement modifications. Bourbon Street strip clubs changed from scary dives to the touristy glitz that they are now, and other clubs closed entirely. This was of course horrible timing for me, the incipient monger smack in the middle of High School and puberty. Enough vice to whet my appetite, then they took it all away just as I got the resources to take advantage of it. One major episode, the "Canal Street Madam," of about five or eight years ago (?) was a vestige of New Orleans' glory days as sin city. An internet-based brothel in a residential neighborhood was raided, and a little mini-Heidi-Fleiss story developed as the madam threatened to reveal her little black book of major political connections. The story petered out, as I remember. Now Katrina has changed the flavor of things again, with many cash-paid out-of-town workmen, crews for all the utilities, squads and loaners from military and para-military units, and of course laborers working to reconstruct the house of anyone who wants to pay for it. Solicitation, for drugs and prostitution, is up again in the FQ, though not to a noticeable extent. But because police are already stretched thin, a new form of "self policing" seems to be developing, in which perhaps, if you find the right street corner, decent folk can have a decent mongering adventure as long as we don't interfere with the tourists. I'm hoping ... Your thoughts about your city?
  • parodyman-->
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    18 years ago
    dennyspade: I grew up just down the street from the French 75. (Berwyn) I never got a chance to experience the Lyons Clubs becase I was too young. I did have a good time in some of the old Cicero Clubs that were still around when I was of age.
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