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“I stayed in the very shallows and every so often would go a little deeper and deeper until I finally learned how to swim.” The Lusty Lady is sort of like the puns on its marquee: It's funny, as long as you don't think about it too much.“I used to be scared of the water when I was a little kid,” he said. Laughing, one of the men - who wouldn't give his name - says, "You just want to wash your hands as soon as you leave." It doesn't take long for them to walk out again. Now that the club has announced it is closing, some of the fans of the marquee are coming by for a look inside.Ī couple of young men walk through the doors, sounding a little giddy, saying they've admired the marquee for years and want to see the show before it closes. The perception of The Lusty Lady as less exploitative than other strip clubs has earned it considerable goodwill from forward-thinking Seattleites.īut that goodwill hasn't been enough to keep it in business. They're protected by the glass windows, she says, and they earn a wage, instead of relying on tips. In fact, people are confusing it with a different Lusty Lady, located in San Francisco.īut Hance says the Seattle peep show is a good place for women to work. There's a common misperception in Seattle that the dancers are unionized and that they own The Lusty Lady. Hance has known many of the dancers for years her mother used to be a dancer at the club, and she refers to others here as her "aunts." "As I keep trying to tell people, these are live ladies! Right there!" Working the front desk, Pauline Hance says she doesn't understand why people would prefer the Internet to The Lusty Lady. "You can go online and you can pick whatever you want the menu is there," Lambert says. Lambert says peep shows simply can't compete with all the porn online. It used to be found in ports and disreputable carnivals, but it's become a rarity.
Peeling off his latex gloves to shake hands, janitor Bob Lambert says this kind of peep show dates back at least 100 years.
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Some specially marked booths offer windows with one-way glass, for clients who want more privacy. To keep the shutter on the window open, the client has to keep feeding quarters into the slot - 25 cents buys you 30 seconds. Each booth has a window looking in on the "main stage," where women dance and crawl around in various states of undress. Farther inside, you see the doors to the private booths. The first thing you see when you walk in is the change machine. The Lusty Lady is not what most people would think of as a strip club. Still, few of the marquee's fans have ever been inside the business itself. Now, all grown up and making a career in comedy, Armstrong and a colleague have started a website dedicated to tracking The Lusty Lady's marquee.
"I thought that was hilarious," Armstrong says. The Lusty Lady's version? "The Loin King." He was about 13 years old around the time Disney's The Lion King was in theaters.
It was on one such trip that Charles Armstrong "discovered" the Lady. And the Lady has obliged with "Gogh All Night," among others.įor a generation of suburban kids, the marquee has been the highlight of many a museum field trip. Museum staffers have even requested museum-related messages on the marquee. "I wait at the bus stop in front of the museum, and I'm often interested to see what their marquee is going to say."Įven though the marquee is clearly visible from the windows of the kid-friendly "family space" in the art galleries, the museum has had a friendly relationship with The Lusty Lady. "It's such a landmark!" says Tracy Timmons, the librarian at the SAM.