Old School Strip Clubs

And most of these clubs I step into I have no clue how long they’ve been around unless I hear about it maybe on here or it’s extremely obvious. I’ve also been to the Condor Club recently in San Francisco supposedly the first strip club. Not just the strip clubs but that whole Broadway strip in North Beach is a huge time warp.

The oldest club I am aware of in this area is The Brass Ass in Newport. ( tuscl.net ) The business got it's start during Newport's heyday as a speakeasy that was run by an off shoot of Al Capone's organization during prohibition and was later turned into a casino run by the Cleveland Syndicate that operated until the 1960's when it turned into a regular bar following a crackdown on gambling as Newport ended it's run as the original Sin City.

That's when it was taken over by Larry Flynt in the late 60's and turned into one of his first strip clubs back before he started Hustler Magazine. He and his partner moved the club a few blocks down the road to it's current location in 1970 and Flynt sold his share of the club to his partner's sister. That same family is still running the club at that location more than 50 years later.

Sadly the club is not even close to it's former glory that saw celebrities like Pete Rose and other members of the Big Red Machine as frequent customers. Now it is just a run down dive bar of a bikini club like all of the rest of the Northern Kentucky clubs.

Whodey - I was just gonna mention the Brass Ass. It was a helluva club back in the 80's, along with the Spotted Giraffe and a handful of others. Unfortunately, the ugly hand of repression descended, and the area SCs today are mere dying shadows of their former selves. I hit up the Ass a couple years back, and couldn't believe what a depressing dive it had become. Too bad, because aside from the riverfront development, downtown Newport is dead.

Thew Sunnyvale Brass Rail was around for 58 years but shut down in 2018

I went to my first strip club while I was in college in AZ in 1981. It was a bikini bar with emphasis on girls having pubic hair hanging out of the bikini. It was called The Squeeze Box. That same location is now called Sugar 44 and still open as a strip club. It had a couple of names in between.

King of Diamonds in Inver Grove Heights, MN opened in 1965 and is still going strong. I don't know if they've had their unique combination of full nude on stage + full alcohol that entire time, but it's working for them.

The Clermont Lounge is Atlanta's first and longest continually operating strip club, opened in 1965 and boasts a completely female ownership.

Based on the aging look of many northern NJ strip clubs, you’d think they were around since the 1920’s, but that’s not likely the case.

The only recent history I can remember is of the Lace club in Wayne.

When I was in high school in the 1980’s it was a night club with those huge spot lights that you could see from miles away. I believe the club was called Trumps - lol!

It is a black cinder block building across an access road near the NJ DMV location where folks take their road test to get their license - but I used to think it was a very glamorous spot!

Over the years it became less glamorous - and it became a strip club Lace.

For those who remember a band with the same name - it’s also directly behind where a store called Fountains of Wayne used to be.

Interesting stuff guys

I’ll put the brass ass on my list of where to go to. Maybe I’ll see Johnny Bench there who knows.

And Cash I had no idea about Lace goes that far back.

This is something I might seek out a little more, like “hey how longs this place been around?” Instead of the usual “Shake ya booty!”

Sunnyvale Brass Rail went back to 1960. But being a Go Go Bar went back to around 1966, which is when such clubs, girls dancing and waitressing, started. That is also when Larry Flynt got into the business.

Brass Rail was a low cost place to relax and get to know a girl or two. Girls are just ordinary girls, and if you never treat them as anything other than that, they can be yours.

But now the whole thing is gone to real estate developers.

SJG

I first went to the Clermont Lounge in 1980 or 1981. One and possibly two of the dancers from that trip are strip dancing there.

Also in Atlanta Tattletale's goes back to the late 70's.

The Cheetah (at a different location a couple of blocks away) goes back to the mid 70's. They had a burlesque show style comic who would appear.

Used to work at Turks when I lived in Montco. I miss it but I’m so far away now.

At a club I frequented about 15 years ago, some of the more veteran dancers nostalgically remembered when the club was owned by the Mafia. They said the guy who managed the club then was warm-hearted, would cut dancers slack and otherwise do what he (and his wife) could for dancers with personal situations going on. That he was clearly not a button man, and they never saw any situation where he brought in a button man to handle it.