Latest news with #stripclub
The Sun
12 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
Inside the Ukrainian frontline strip club where brave dancers flout curfew to perform to punters enduring hell of war
AMID the missiles and misery of life on Ukraine's front line, there is one night-time spot which refuses to be beaten. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, the Flash Dancers strip club is still swinging - offering a temporary escape for the embattled locals. 9 9 9 Flash Dancers is a women-owned business which opens its doors every night - flouting the 11pm curfew. It offers exclusive, exotic entertainment to anyone who pays. Prostitution is illegal in Ukraine, so strip clubs find themselves in legal grey area. But the law was lightly applied before the war - and now the authorities seem to accept that momentary indulgence can be tolerated. Valeriya Zavadskaya, the club's co-owner, told Business Insider in 2023: "Our goal is to be a switch from what is happening." Her mother, a former professional Soviet dancer, opened the club a decade ago. The dancers arrive in the afternoon to practice their routines. By night time, they're dressed to the nines in ornate burlesque outfits to entertain their clients. The club is dimly lit in soft red glow as the doors swing open to welcome customers. There are never more than 20 in a night - and sometimes no one shows up. I went on holiday to UKRAINE - I fled £7-a-night hostel during air raid siren on first night…but it didn't spoil my trip More than a million residents have fled Kharkiv since war broke out, meaning fewer people are looking for entertainment. Drinks have also tripled in price since before fighting began. While the club is a haven for both staff and punters, the signs of war are inescapable. The windows on the three floors above the club are boarded up after an explosion in the city centre shattered every pane on the block. And Flash Dancers is underground, so it doubles up as an air-raid shelter. When the sirens sound, people scurry down to wait out rocket strikes in the red-leather booths surrounding the dance pole. But despite it all - the doors of Flash Dancers remain open. 9 9 9 Valeriya says: "It's something you can't say with words, but can tell with your body." Her founder mother Valeriia Kseniya now has a day job too as director of a small hotel. She told Business Insider: "For most of us in Ukraine today, it's difficult to earn a living in just one job." In 2014, she heard of a city-centre strip club closing down - and recognised her opportunity to bring her love of dance to the city she called home. With dreams of a modern-day Moulin Rouge, she hired a handful of women who could dance, and began crafting her vision. She says: "Everyone initially thought it was a club with happy endings. "Our position is that girls are not meat. Girls are about aesthetics, about femininity, about beauty." 9 9 9
CBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
This play is about Christmas Eve at a strip club. It's also about loneliness
Julie Phan admits that when she picked up a Christmas Eve shift at a Montreal strip club back in 2022 that she "low key did it for the plot." The playwright and actor, or self-described "stripper and theatre gremlin," started dancing earlier that year after quitting what she describes as a "shitty $20 an hour theatre admin job." Stripping, she says, felt like a more efficient way to supplement the money she made as an actor and writer, a way to make a living "without tearing all my hair out of my scalp." Besides, years of fitness pole dancing had given her the necessary stage skills. Still, she didn't know what to expect from the Christmas Eve crowd, other than "lonely people who didn't have anyone else to spend time with on that night." And that included her. "There was nowhere else I really wanted to be," she says. "I didn't come from a background where Christmas was like a big deal culturally or religiously." That Christmas Eve shift wound up being the inspiration for her new play, Never Walk Alon e. And at its core, she says, it's less a play about a strip club and more a play about loneliness and the search for connection. "The feeling of being alone and the feeling of not really being understood by the people I love, that's something that I've always felt," she says. "Before ever becoming like a sex worker or a stripper — just this feeling of being not really seen for who I am." Like a lot of people in sex work, Phan didn't tell her family about how she made a living for a number of years — they only found out last year — but prior to that, she'd already spent some time concealing her involvement in theatre. She developed a love of theatre early on, and was selected to be part of the Tarragon Theatre's Young Playwright's Unit while still in high school, but her parents didn't encourage her interest. In fact, they actively discouraged it. "At the time, I was doing a lot of the extracurriculars that my dad wanted me to do," she says. "Kind of the Asian child trifecta of Asian language school, like, off-brand Kumon tutoring and piano lessons. He really thought that adding this extra thing would have been… a distraction… I told my drama teacher, and she called my dad to tell him that he had to let me do it because it was basically a professional opportunity, and he allowed it because he listens to authority." After high school, she went to McGill with the intention of becoming a doctor, but in her first year, she was given the opportunity to put on a play she'd written back in Toronto. But she couldn't just bail on school to go direct the play. What ensued was a level of sneaking around, back and forth between Toronto and Montreal that seems almost unfathomable. "I was trying to do the show in my first year while going to school — school being in Montreal and the show being in Toronto — and needing to come back to Toronto to do that show without my parents knowing because I wasn't supposed to leave school," she says. "It went off not without a hitch, but it went off, and it went well, but I think I nearly died under the pressure of it all." Shortly after that, she came clean to her parents about wanting to pursue a career in theatre, quit McGill, and enrolled in the National Theatre School. "I had discovered that [theatre] was just such a fundamental part of who I am," she says. "It just makes up who I am, actually. I literally thought I was going to die without it." Phan says that not all the stories told in Never Walk Alone actually happened on that Christmas Eve shift, although some of them did. Rather, she's using the Christmas Eve shift as a device to hold together stories she's collected over the course of her time in stripping. "Situating it in Christmas was giving it more of an anchor, more of a context for everything that happens… for that kind of pressure to build," she says. Phan hopes that, in the wake of Anora 's big Oscar win, audiences are ready to hear more stories about sex workers, ones that are "more complex than, like, the dead sex worker or the background characters on The Sopranos." She particularly hopes that they're ready to hear sex worker stories like Never Walk Alone, ones written by sex workers themselves. "I think it's important to support narratives where sex workers are humanized and portrayed as their own people with their own motivations and complexities and, you know, all the beautiful things, but also all the messy things as well," she says. She adds that, hopefully, the more sex workers are humanized in fiction, the easier it will be for them to exist in real life. "I'm hoping that the more we have nuanced portrayals of sex workers, the more… it [will] be easier to recognize how a lot of the laws, or a lot of the ways we treat people are f**ked up," she says.
BBC News
27-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Bilston strip club applies to council for new license
A strip club and adult cinema which closed temporarily in March has applied for a new Lady in Oxford Street, Bilston, includes a sex shop, cinema and strip clubAndrea Parsons applied to City of Wolverhampton Council for a new sexual entertainment venue licence for the club, and the application asks for permission to open from midday to 06:00 BST every authority said no objections had been made to the plans by any of the responsible authorities. The council's regulatory committee will meet in Wolverhampton on 3 June to make a decision on the club opened in the 1990s and was given a venue license by the council in opening hours were extended to 06:00 BST following a decision by the authority in 2012, despite objections from local councillors on behalf of several were concerned over added noise and traffic by extending the opening hours.A notice was placed on the club's entrance in March, saying it had closed temporarily. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kieran Trippier is 'stitched up by mates who spent over £9,500' at a Newcastle strip club - before 'putting hefty tab under full-back's name'
Kieran Trippier has been 'stitched up' by a group of friends who spent close to £10,000 on a strip club bill - before putting the defender's name on the tab. Reports claim the Newcastle star was not present at the club - however his name still appeared on the bill, which included 76 £100 tokens for personal dances. According to The Sun, the bill was a staggering £9,663 and was believed to have been racked up by Trippier's friends who play for National League side Gateshead. A source told the outlet: 'Kieran has visited FYEO before but this bill was run up by some of the lads he knows at Gateshead. He wasn't there 'This seems to be their idea of a joke on Kieran. Who knows who footed the bill.' The Newcastle star was sidelined for his side's trip to Arsenal on Sunday afternoon - which resulted in a 1-0 victory for the Gunners after a Declan Rice strike. The bill was accrued at gentleman's club 'For Your Eyes Only' in Newcastle's city centre The bill was accrued at gentleman's club 'For Your Eyes Only' - with £9,500 of the total tab coming from dance chips spent by the group. There were also a large number of drinks that were seen on the receipt. It was printed at 4:36am earlier this month under the name 'Tripps', according to the report. Though he wasn't on the night out in question, the Newcastle full-back is no stranger to an evening out in town and was spotted at the Premier League Darts in March. Eleven days on from beating Liverpool at Wembley to end Newcastle's 70-year wait for a domestic trophy, several of the club's players attended the event. Dan Burn and Kieran Trippier were all smiles as they watched on, while Harvey Barnes and Matt Targett also appeared to be enjoying their evening. Luke Littler was in sparkling form on the night, as he swept aside Stephen Bunting inside 10 minutes before beating Rob Cross 6-3 in his semi-final. But Newcastle's players were unable to inspire local hero Chris Dobey to victory against world No1 Luke Humphries. Trippier has endured a difficult campaign for the Magpies after struggling with injuries and falling out of favour with boss Eddie Howe. The full-back has made 24 league appearances during the campaign - but just 14 of those have come in the form of a start for the former England international. He has produced three assists in the league and is yet to score in the campaign. The Magpies have just one league game remaining in the campaign and are in the driving seat to secure Champions League qualification. Sitting third in the Premier League table, they are tied on points with Chelsea and Aston Villa, while being above Man City by just a point. Tripps' Tab 76 Dance Chips @ £100 = £7,600 38 Dance Chips @ £50 = £1,900 1 Stella Artois = £5.95 6 Peroni Bottles = £31.50 5 Amaretto = £40.50 1 Jack Daniels = £9.15 2 Coke Zero = £3.20 6 Patron Silver = £32.40 1 Jack Honey = £8.10 1 Coca Cola = £4.05 1 Baby Guiness = £4.85 3 x Mixer 200ml = £4.80 1 Mixer can = £1.60 1 Diet Coke = £1.60 2 Appletiser = £8.10 1 Prosecco Vaporet = £7.65 Total: £9,663.45
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Detroit strip club for sale for $1 million comes with unexpected perk
A Detroit strip club has hit the market for a cool $1.1 million - complete with classic stripper poles, a red stage and a liquor license for anyone who wants to get it up and running. Real estate agent Timia Carter of Legacy Park Realty listed the adult entertainment venue this week, with the selling point: 'summer time is almost here.' 'Contact me today if you're interested in purchasing club - summer time is almost here,' Carter wrote alongside a video of the property on social media. The video of the space reveals the classic strip club stage with dancer polls alongside the bar and a lounge area with couches and tables. In addition to the liquor license, which has been thrown in for free, the site also offers its parking lot gratis. The large lot can accommodate up to 80 cars with additional on-street parking available. The property, which is located at 8050 Livernois Avenue in Detroit, also boasts 4,700 square feet of commercial space. A Detroit strip club has hit the market for a cool $1.1 million - complete with classic stripper poles, a red stage and a liquor license for anyone who wants to get it up and running Real estate agent Timia Carter of Legacy Park Realty listed the adult entertainment venue this week, with the selling point 'summer time is almost here' While the property's history and reason for sale remain unclear, the listing is being marketed as owner will consider 'obo' (or best offer) The venue's Class C liquor license is described as 'clean, with no violations history'. The club features a brand new roof, complete with all new decking, insulation and EPDM membrane. The HVAC system has also been completely overhauled with three new units installed - one 7.5-ton unit and two 5-ton units. The listing highlights recently upgraded electrical, plumbing and refrigeration systems throughout the building. According to the listing, exterior repairs have been completed along with all new security lighting installation. The kitchen also comes equipped with a new make-up air system and new exhaust fan for the hood. The realtor describes the interior as solid though admittedly in need of cleaning. 'Solid interior - needs cleaning,' she writes. The unusual listing quickly spread across social media platforms on Instagram and TikTok, with users sharing their reactions. 'If the police DNA-test that rug they'd probably solve 150 open cases,' wrote one commenter. Another wrote: 'I'm gonna buy it and rename it the nasty kitty.' Many shared their creative takes on what they would use the space for. One user suggested: 'Honestly could turn this into an Airbnb.' Another envisioned: 'Uhhhhmmm! With a little work that would be a NICE Comedy Club!!' Many made jokes about purchasing the property. 'If this parlay hit tonight I'm buyin this spot,' one user wrote. But other commenters took a more serious approach and saw the sale as a troubling economic indicator. 'When the strip club industry is tanked that is the number 1 sign of a recession. Buckle up for the ride. Don't buy cars don't buy houses, stop the Amazon purchases and hold the cash you have.' According to the listing, exterior repairs have been completed along with all new security lighting installation The listing highlights recently upgraded electrical, plumbing and refrigeration systems throughout the building The realtor describes the interior as solid though admittedly in need of cleaning While the property's history and reason for sale remain unclear, the listing is being marketed as owner will consider best offers as well. That suggests some flexibility on the $1.1 million asking price.
