"If they sell alcohol, the liquor control board gets involved, and there will be more oversight.
"It absolutely benefits club owners," Angelique told me. Still, the prohibition on alcohol isn't bad for everyone in the business. "None of the council wanted to be associated with stripping." "They were unwilling to take up our cause," she said. She said she also spoke with several members of the Seattle City Council and they were also unaware. "The representatives were astonished to know that we can't even serve beer and wine," Angelique told me. Most of them don't even know the law exists. But while this bill easily passed through the legislature, when it comes to allowing alcohol in strip clubs, lawmakers have been notably unwilling to pick up this fight. It may well have been the first law in the state made for exotic dancers by exotic dancers themselves. The bill, which Governor Jay Inslee signed into law in May, will also establish an adult entertainer advisory committee within the Office of Labor Standards, half of which will be made up of dancers. In addition to mandating panic buttons in private rooms, the law will also require trainings for dancers on their rights and allow clubs to keep blacklists of bad customers. Angelique, Aubrey, and Shiara are part of a coalition of dancers who worked with lawmakers and the labor rights group Working Washington this spring to pass a law to enhance protections for dancers. When you tell customers you don't serve booze, they say, 'Well, what do you serve?'" The implication is that without booze, the dancers themselves are on the menu. The pressure to do things you're not comfortable with is way higher. "There is a huge, dramatic difference in clubs that serve alcohol and clubs that don't. Shiara, a former dancer who has worked at 30 different clubs in seven states, said the same.
You effectively cancel out the casual night-out-with-the-boys customers." "I hate to say this, but you attract more perverts," Angelique said. Unlike in, say, Portland-where strip clubs are allowed to serve booze and food, and where female customers and co-ed groups aren't an uncommon sight-Seattle strip clubs tend to attract mostly men on their own. "Tourists and bachelor parties might come in, but when they realize they can't get a drink, they leave," Aubrey said. The lack of alcohol also changes the vibe. And those house fees are not cheap: At Deja Vu, a chain with a near-monopoly in the downtown Seattle area, dancers are charged $120 to $180 a night-and if they don't make that money, the club will charge them back rent. In Seattle, clubs make their money off the dancers themselves, who have to pay for the privilege of working. In other cities and states, strip clubs make the bulk of their money from the sale of booze. "At the clubs I've worked at, they allow drunk guys to come in from the bars across the street, so we are still dealing with them regardless." If clubs were selling alcohol, she added, at least they'd be able to cut customers off.īoth Angelique and Aubrey have worked in clubs across the United States, and they say that Seattle is one of the most difficult and least lucrative cities to be a stripper, in no small part thanks to the statewide ban on alcohol sales. "Not serving alcohol doesn't mean drunk people don't come in," she said.
This was echoed by Aubrey, another longtime dancer in Seattle.
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