How about the places you see when you drive across town: strip clubs, massage parlors---how do they fit in the industry picture? 

 There are two different kinds of things happening here.

 One is burlesque, which seems to have evolved, at least here in Portland, into “performance art.” Here’s Honey LaFleur talking about that:

             L-3: she sees burlesque as a mission.

             L-4; it’s a feminist act!

 But the real story is about stripping, dancing in clubs that cater to…well, horny guys.

 

MUSIC

 

We went inside Diablo II, a strip club on Mccullough.  It’s a big open roomwith a bar to your right as you walk in and a stage area with two poles taking up most of the rest of the stark, undecorated space to your left. Customers, mostly twenty-somethings when we were there, sat around an inside bar that creates a rectangle around two dance poles.  On those poles and on the bar itself, women stripped and danced.  The dancer worked around the bar and got close to each customer, who paid out $2 bills as the dancers got even closer…

 Here’s what Fauna has to say about stripping in Portland:

 What are the laws related to this business?  What about the sex industry issues that arise with strip clubs, regarding location, employment, connection with trafficking, vice, tax evasion, etc?

 

Here we can tell the rest of the BOLI story…

 

R-3: The BOLI story from STROLL perspective…

 

And what about “bikini drive-thru coffee shops?” (Twin Peaks Espresso, Vancouver…)

 

What other events and organizations connect the arts with the sex industry?  The Naked Bike Race, Hump Fest…

 

And we’d like your feedback. At the end of this series we’ll do a full episode in which you get to speak your mind on this subject.  If you have a comment or question about the series or about the sex trade, we’d like to hear it.  Call the KBOO Newsroom at 503-231-8032 ext. 202 and we’ll  hear you out and put you on the air.