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With more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in the United States, Portland, Oregon had become known as a hot bed for erotic dancing. Add to that an extremely accepting public, a growing sex worker movement and a liberal constitution that protects the right to dance nude, and you will find a city where an oft-marginalized subculture has gained a degree of acceptance almost unknown anywhere else in North America.
Original Airdate: Saturday, Nov. 23/02 @ 11:30pm
Repeats: Sunday, Nov. 24/02 @ 11:30pm
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Portland – Strip City
The United States is a strange country when it comes to sex. Sex or sexual allusions are everywhere – on television, in movies, in advertising and in magazines. But for a country that seemingly has sex on the brain, most American strip clubs are decidedly un-sexy and conservative. You either can't drink alcohol if the dancers are actually stripping [i.e. take all their clothes off], or if there is alcohol the dancers are required to wear pasties to cover up their nipples, or g-strings, or can only show their breasts, or they're behind a pane of glass, or you're not allowed to sit too close to the stage … the list goes on and on. Whether this un-sexiness is due to local zoning laws, conservatism or Christian morality is beside the point; the end result is that most American strips clubs are usually rather dull. So when I heard that Portland, Oregon, has a booming and vibrant strip club scene, I just had to see if this was the case.
What I found was pleasantly surprising. Portland's strip clubs have a lot to offer to those who enjoy erotic dancing. There are small, family-owned clubs in the downtown core, to full blown gentlemen's clubs in the suburbs, to private 1 on 1 dances in the 'modeling' salons that skirt parts of the city. Liberal state laws protect a woman's right to dance naked, and as a result the city of 1.5 million reputedly has more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in North America. Portlanders genuinely seem more liberal and open to the concept of stripping, and the atmosphere in some of the clubs is pleasantly different. Men and women mingle in the audience, full alcohol is served where there is full nudity, the dancers are not all Pamela Anderson wannabes and are usually more creative and Burlesque influenced than is the U.S.A norm. Stripping is not really stigmatized, and by going to a strip club you will not be branded a leering pervert. In a country that hides behind a banner of freedom yet which is so often sexually conflicted and conservative, America could use a few more Portland's.
Matthew Hanson
Segment Producer
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