Deja vu lansing specials8/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Some dancers allow customers to touch their breasts, she said, and some are bitten. Chan Bailey reported that he got his information secondhand.ĭrake’s testimony about couch dancing was among the most riveting at the hearing. Her story was corroborated by a county sheriff’s lieutenant who reported in a memo that “it is not uncommon” for dancers to use marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine in the dressing room. The two events are unrelated, said Drake, who would say little else during a telephone conversation.ĭrake told county commissioners that drug use was common among performers, including herself, and managers. 4 county commission hearing about the regulations.ĭrake started dancing in 1993, the same year she and her husband declared bankruptcy, owing $32,000. Kissing my neck is not.”Īnother dancer, Michelle White, said that until recently, some of the women met for Bible study before their shifts.Įx-dancer Kimberly Drake told a far different story at a Nov. “I’ve never, ever let a guy in my thong area or my top area,” she said. Johnson said she’ll allow customers to caress her legs below the knees. But dancers are the primary enforcers, and each sets her own standard. Club rules say customers can’t raise their hands from the couch, and bouncers watch for offenders. She said she doesn’t know any dancers who have sold sex, and insists they’d be thrown out if they did.ĭuring lap dances, the women wear skimpy clothing and are never naked. Johnson said she’s often propositioned by customers, but has never accepted money for more than dancing. “You have to become a preferred customer to get that kind of (illegal) treatment.” “It takes a lot of money” for thorough investigations, said Patti Walker, the deputy county prosecutor who wrote the ordinance. Sheriff’s detectives report seeing little that’s illegal when they go into the club, but say that’s not often enough to provide a good gauge. There is no evidence of widespread prostitution at Deja Vu in the Valley since it opened eight years ago. Police said the illegal acts typically started as lap dances. Between caring for their children and earning a living, none of them has completed more than a year’s worth of college classes.Īt a Deja Vu nightclub in Tukwila, Wash., undercover police made arrests that led to 70 convictions for prostitution in the summer of 1994. “I’ve worked for everything I have,” said Alicia Erickson, a 24-year-old single mother who in May put a down payment on a modest home in a nice North Side neighborhood.Įrickson and two others plan to earn college degrees and get jobs as a teacher, a stock broker and perhaps a lawyer before they are too old to make money with their bodies. None collects public assistance, and all said that would be more degrading than removing their clothes in public. They have one to three children fathered by men with whom they are no longer involved, and get little or no child support. The four strippers interviewed for this story live in tidy houses decorated for the holidays. But there was no illumination of the private lives of the women who remove their clothes in public. ![]() The recent debate over the ordinance at a county commission meeting focused a spotlight where it seldom shines, on people who work or seek enjoyment on the dark fringes of societal mores. Dancers say it will regulate them out of jobs that can pay $30,000 or more a year. County officials say the rule will prevent prostitution. The money - Johnson’s primary income for everything from rent to soccer uniforms - buys a couch dance, also called a lap dance because that’s where the gyrations are performed.Ī new county ordinance would keep dancers out of men’s laps and mandate at least 4 feet between entertainer and customer. When the music stops pounding, she squeezes into a too-small outfit, steps out of the strobe light and into the audience, hoping her dance was erotic enough to entice men to pay $12 for a closer look. Johnson, 30, is an exotic dancer at Deja Vu Gentlemen’s Club in the Spokane Valley.Īt least three times during an eight-hour shift, she strips to her platform shoes, earning perhaps a few dollars in tips for that work. There’s a bunch of men who want to touch her.” “I actually hate her job,” said the well-mannered 11-year-old. He lies, he said, because he doesn’t want people to judge his mother, Angela Johnson. He tells people he doesn’t know or that she doesn’t have a job. But he lies when asked how his mother makes a living. The Boy Scout took an oath to tell the truth. ![]()
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