Reviewing strip shows for quality performances is always a tricky business. While I am in no way a veteran of the world of erotic dancing in the South Sound, this pseudo Sex Issue required me to venture into the land of brass poles, gelled lights and $10 sodas. Every reporter draws tough assignments from time to time.



While it would be easy just to say the dancers were hot and got a whole lot of naked by the end of their songs, critics like me have to be a bit more critical when we look at such things.



The South Sound has fewer strip clubs than it did in the old days thanks to more aggressive police monitoring and code enforcement in Lakewood, which used to have four. Now, only one remains — the corporate-owned Déjà Vu along South Tacoma Way. The only locally owned one still around these days is Fox’s in Parkland’s strip of Pacific Avenue, just north of the State Route 512 intersection.



Fox’s has been in the news lately. Investigators swarmed it in early June in search of evidence connecting it to a federal investigation of possible racketeering and associated charges that involve three other strip clubs in Puget Sound. The target of that investigation was 90-year-old Frank Colacurcio Sr. who has business relationships with clubs in Everett and Seattle as well as Fox’s.



Such raids are not new. The allegations are generally the same. The strippers essentially work as independent contractors inside the club and pay “rent” to the club each night. They then get to keep the money they earn from tips, table dances or from cuts of the profits when they get patrons to buy them sodas — State law doesn’t allow all-nude dancing and alcohol. Crime watchers claim the business arrangement between the club and the dancers promotes dancers to stray into prostitution to maximize their income.



That’s a matter for the courts to decide. I’m here to talk about stripping as art. Now do-gooders would argue that pole dancing isn’t art and therefore doesn’t fall under the Constitution’s First Amendment granting freedom of speech. I would argue differently. What someone says through self-expression may be offensive to some, but that doesn’t mean it should not be protected. In fact, that is the whole point of protecting free speech. The First Amendment is

meant to protect speech that is offensive to the majority as a way to protect minority views.

The founding fathers were well aware of the troubles associated with the tyranny of the majority. Protecting only speech and expression that everyone agrees with as appropriate does not constitute protecting expression. It trounces it.



Arguing that stripping isn’t art is also an extremely narrow view of what art is since at its core art is the purest form of self-expression because it is a statement for the statement’s own sake. 



Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary states that art is simply the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects or performances. And these dancers certainly are performers. Their movements are deliberate. They are particular and precise as they twirl around the pole or parade around the stage. Nothing they do occurs by chance. Routines are practiced and honed. Dancers don’t want to strip too early or awkwardly out of rhythm. Anticipation has to be built carefully during the course of the songs so that their patrons keep their eyes and wallets open. Imagine how boring a strip club would be if the dancers simply walked out on the stage wearing jeans and T-shirts, stood in the middle of the floor and stripped as if they were getting ready to change into sweatpants so they could watch reruns of Who’s the Boss?



Strippers create fantasy lands in the minds of their viewers through costumes, makeup, calculated blocking of their movements, character creations, and plot development just as actors in more traditional plays do each time they perform their craft.



[Fox’s, 10707 Pacific Ave. S., Parkland/Tacoma]



[Déjà Vu, 8920 S. Tacoma Way, Lakewood]