The Star Garden Strip Club Strike Is Part of the History of SW Organizing

I haven’t written off that this is all some sort of elaborate club promotion.

Talks about SF Lustly Lady, the first to unionize, through SeIU. But the club did not last that much longer.

SJG

I guess it depends on what kind of security concerns they’re talking about. Being taped against their will is not ok. They should certainly be safe from assaults.

As to hiring that’s the entertainment industry. You hire who you think your customers will like. They were already hired so I don’t understand what they were complaining about.

I feel like there are gaps that are not discussed. If they want to unionize that’s fine but for me non union girls should be able to work and they should understand damaging the club could hurt their earnings.

no sympathy or support here. hope they all get run over.

great scam for those coercing/collecting the union dues though.

off to get some dances with my hotter non-union dancers- none of who are named *shudder* velveeta.

Yeah interesting article. I say this every time it's mentioned, it's always interesting that the Lusty Lady is given up as a winning example. And there is definitely a sense in which the girls won: the girls organized, and took over management and ownership of the club. But it was a bunch of very rough years after that, as the collective put into practice some fairly wacky ideas. They believed every size and shape should be hired, so the lineups were... daring. They believed they should run as a collective -- all profits were shared, which means the few attractive girls who were raking in money, got the same amount as the the girls making nothing, so you can imagine how long the very few attractive girls stayed before moving to the club right next door where they kept the money they made. The club refused any contact until out of desperation they introduced low touch lapdances in the last couple of years, too little too late.

That said, huge labor organizing win. But their ideas on management and hiring practices, etc., do to a club about what you'd expect

Equal sharing of money in a strip club might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard.

" But the club did not last that much longer."

SJG, I had to look up how long it lasted, it seems to have lasted quite a while -- 1997 is when they unionized, years later in 2003 they bought out management and became a workers cooperative, and lasted about 10 more years until they closed in 2013. It was a very low volume affair the whole time, given the "what the customer wants doesn't matter" business model, but it ran on slim clientele for quite a while

"Equal sharing of money in a strip club might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard."

You obviously haven't read any of the brainstorming on SW as to how a club should be run 🤣

The girls had safety concerns. Bouncers would let customers harass them. They sent their grievances to the owner and she fired the whole night shift. So they sued. I hope they win. And I hope they unionize.


Most of you oppose unionization coz you think it will push hookers out of clubs and your ldks will cost more.


You'll bitch about club prices but will defend the club owner.

Subraman as someone who gets banned from websites for soliciting prostitution then bitching about it. You should just stfu.

It's a b bunch of burnouts and malcontents who were already working in one of the cleanest clubs and tightly controlled clubs in Los Angeles, but couldn't even handle those relatively benign conditions

A big shout out to Spice for recognizing the disgrace of publishing this article in Teen magazine. The media has found a gold mine by doing anything and everything that can fuck up a kid's life.

Why did they drop a cool name like Soldiers of the Pole?

Does seem bent that sex work should be considered of particular interest to young teenage chicks.

If you're like 17, and are meh about any college/trade school program that would lead to a decent job, should probably consider sex work. But also understandable that most or many would prefer to scrape by in a non-decent job than do sex work.

If strippers want a union, they should have a union, same protections against retaliation as any other worker. But, in this particular case, it doesn't sound like they got realistic, and ruined a business. Kinda of the flip side of LDK organizing us PLs to demand to nut for $37.50.

Star garden was sleazy af. The owner has mob ties. Girls were forced to put up with Russian mobsters doing whatever they want. Bouncers threatening and coercing girls.

I know very little about teenage girls magazines but TeenVogue seems like a poor choice to publish such an article.

As for the merits of actually forming a union it seems that success would be a long shot when you target one club. You might be better off just going to a club where you feel more comfortable 🤷🏻‍♂️

otoh, it seems like a great media for indocrinating young minds with woke revisionist history from skanks that never should've been allowed onstage in the first place.

sad seeing this happen to any club.

They can't just go to another club or give up. Standing up to a club in LA gets you blacklisted. Its hard fighting for rights.

Aaaaand it looks like they won
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labo…

What's it like being a neurodivergent stripper hoe?


And their case was solid.

Neurodivergent strippers will often do their thing by taking frequent breaks, having a quicker “wanna dance” pitch, and be choosy with what customers they would be willing to sit and talk with for a long time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stripper/commen…
…And I do all those things and it works well 😁

I’m not autistic though. I got screened for that as a child and that came up negative.

And I agree about the solid case. Fuck California club owners for using the whole employee thing as an excuse to screw everyone over instead of lobbying to maintain independent contractor status for their dancers. (Or if keep dancers as employees, not be greedy about it) They can reap what they sow.

Good that they are associating with an actor's union, since stripping is much more similar to acting than working on an assembly line.

My current #1 fav is kinda pissed that the owner let the other dancers pressure him into raising the dance price from $15 to $20. She said most customers would tip the $5 for a good dance anyways. She focuses on the bigger spenders on busy nights. And she can generally still grind out several hundred on a slower night, by doing $15 dollar dances. But many of the guys who don't want to pay (or at least not be obliged to pay) $20 have stopped coming in as much as they use to. Probably inevitable when those collectively bargaining have an average age well under 25. They don't immediately see fairly obvious things. If the club is already too slow, raising prices will more likely mean less $ than more. And the owner is pig-headed, didn't like being told what to do, so he's being passive-aggressive. Hiring pretty much anybody to dance, even if they have bad BO or are otherwise annoying to most PLs.

Independent clubs are usually money laundering schemes in Cali. That's why they're so shady. This is going to be a landmark case though. Clubs need to stop feeling untouchable.

I give the club a year or less before it's gone.

Clubs can make it without resorting to being illicit brothels catering to your kind

No club can survive the level of restrictions on customer behavior or the restrictions on firing likely required under collectively bargained "employee protections." Think Lusty Lady. It may take longer than the year I predicted for the club to bleed out, but bleed out it will.

Btw Icee you really need to learn to stay in character better. Lately you've been sounding a lot less like a juvenile cosplay pimp and more like an angry bitter girl. Just sayin "dude."

Most clubs function just fine not being illicit brothels.

^ Saying it a second times only makes you sound twice as stupid. Star garden was never that and implying that it's a binary choice between a brothel club or one with onerous collectively bargained restrictions is moronic.

It's not necessarily neurodivergence. Some strippers just don't feel like it's worth the money (or the stalking danger) when a PL is taking the roleplaying too seriously. They have a cutoff point, just like a more conscientious bartender does.

Rickdugan you know about as much about clubs as sjg