Crystal Gibson Interview | Balancing Studio Owner Life

Sarah:               Welcome, Crystal!

Crystal:             Hi.

Sarah:               Welcome to my podcast. It’s back! I took a little hiatus but wanted to bring it back, and I want you to be my guest on, so thank you for giving me some of your time.

Crystal:             Oh, thank you so much.

Sarah:               Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your career change, how long you’ve been in the pole dance industry. You’re one of the OG’s, but how long you’ve been in the pole dance industry, and how your career has changed and developed over the years into what you’re currently doing now.

Crystal:             Into the motherhood of the pole industry. Well, I started back in 2001 as a little 18-year-old stripper in Seattle. My friend lured me into a strip club, as a way to pay for our rent, as we were living in Seattle. I was a country girl, so I was living in the country, and I had no idea about dance, or pole dancing, or that it was even actually a thing. I went to church three days a week.

Crystal:             And then I was like, “Okay, I’m going to move to the big city.” We moved there and she’s like, “Oh, I want to be a stripper.” I’m like, “Oh, what’s that?” She was going to do this audition night. She dragged me in, and I was hooked. I saw this girl called Cherry on stage, and she was whipping her head in a really tall, Russian ponytail. Obviously, they’ve been around before the Russians. I was like, “Oh my God. I have to do this.” I went the next week and signed up for the amateur night, which the winnings was exactly how much it cost to get the licence to become a stripper, and I won, so that was kind of fun.

Crystal:             And then that started stripping. And for me, it was a source of money, but I became addicted to the stage presence, and being on stage, holding the power, holding the space, and the lifestyle, actually having money for once. That was pretty cool too. But with that, comes a really hard party atmosphere, and I went down some paths that were really easy for an 18-year-old to go down, drug wise. And so, it put me in situations that I wasn’t really so proud of at the time. I knew with my upbringing, that I needed to eventually get away.

Crystal:             To make a long story short, I eventually ended up quitting stripping and I went back to school in Washington DC, where I went to school for broadcasting and communications, to work in radio and DJ.

Sarah:               Nice!

Crystal:             Yeah, that was fun. I did that for a few years and met my husband in Miami at a music conference that he was working out. He’s a DJ, an international DJ. He’s been doing that for a long time. I still wasn’t doing pole. I did build a pole, which is like from Home Depot.