Topless Trouble : Business: Strip joints are going upscale to reach a corporate clientele, but the dancers may not be getting fair treatment under state labor laws.

By ALAN ABRAHAMSON

Nov. 30, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In black panties embellished with gold studs, rhinestones and tiny mirrors, Lexis sashayed down the stage.

Soft lights glittered on her matching bra, her gold garter and her gold thigh-high boots. Around the club, a bouncer in a tuxedo picked up a wrapper someone had dropped on the soft carpet. A waitress, wearing a tuxedo-style blouse, solicited drink orders. “No pressure,” the waitress said. “No two-drink minimum, nothing like that.”

As Lexis swayed, men in suits and ties gathered around the stage. She shed her bra, teasingly--unhooking it, sliding it off one shoulder, then the other, then drawing it across her chest, back and forth, before letting it fall to the stage. When the bra came down, so did several ties in the audience. And out popped dollar bills for that gold garter.

“Taste and class,” Lexis said. “That’s the way to get ahead in this business.”

Welcome to the changing world of adult entertainment. It’s a booming business, one of the emerging industries of the ‘90s. The traditional strip joint, that familiar purveyor of sleaze and raunch, is on the way out. In its place has evolved an upscale club catering to corporate clientele, offering amenities such as valet parking, fine food and fax machines.

It’s a business built on fantasy, potent with profit for both dancers and management. It also may be at odds with state labor laws--a harsh dose of reality amid the fantasies for sale.

“A businessman can come in here, relax and enjoy himself without feeling disgusted at the place or ashamed of himself,” said Jimmie Ellis, general manager of Pure Platinum, a string of San Diego clubs where the 23-year-old Lexis dances. “He can do business. He can entertain clients. It’s class. It’s sophistication.

“The girls having their clothes off--more than anything else, that’s an icebreaker,” Ellis said. “It’s not like it was before, or like the image people may have had. Guys don’t come here for sex. Girls don’t leave this place early, go home with the men, do anything but dance and entertain. The girls having their clothes off--it’s like an adult Disneyland.”

The trouble in fantasy land actually seems quite innocent: The dancers at upscale topless clubs work only for tips.

The money is excellent. The women make $150 and up a night in take-home pay, every single dollar of it in tips. Tales of $700 a night are not uncommon.

The trouble is, the clubs call the dancers “independent contractors.” But indications are that the dancers are treated in significant ways like employees--without getting any of the benefits of being an employee, such as unemployment, disability or workers’ compensation insurance.

State labor relations officials said last week that they planned to launch an inquiry. “It looks like you have a situation here,” said John Duncan, deputy director of the state Department of Industrial Relations in San Francisco. “We’ll look into it. I think it would be worth our while. This is an interesting situation.”

Already, workers’ comp officials have awarded disability benefits to a San Diego woman who worked in topless bars for 25 years.

Danna Land, 45, can’t work and must wear a special neck brace because of spinal damage due to too much dancing. Land’s last job in the trade was at a go-go bar near the 32nd Street Naval Station, where the owner routinely paid salaries and benefits.

Land, workers’ comp ruled a few months ago, was an employee. Though her case involves unique circumstances, her attorney, Joel H. Siegal, a San Diego lawyer who specializes in labor law, contends it stands as precedent that topless dancers are employees.

“These jobs involve the equivalent of jogging 10 miles a day in high heels,” he said. “It can be brutal on the back, the neck, the joints. So the way I see it, there are two ways to look at the situation with these clubs. One is that the damn clubs are terrible and ought to be shut down. Now how realistic is that?

“The second way,” Siegal said, “is to assume these clubs are not going to be shut down. If that’s the case, I want these women to be empowered, to have control over the wages, terms and conditions of their employment.”

Land said, “I put it this way: If we as a society allow our young women to entertain, then we should do right by these young women. How’s that for a fantasy?”

Traditionally, topless dancers were employees, paid a salary. Typically, a bar featured a few dancers who stripped and also waited tables.

No more. The upscale club features 25 to 30 women dancing each night. The prospect of seeing two or three dozen pretty women in--and out of--exotic, sexy costumes attracts the 25- to 45-year-old guy, typically a businessman or professional with discretionary income, said Fred Levy, who owns the Pure Platinum chain.

“It’s not like the days where you could run seven or eight dancers,” Levy said. “You’ve got to run 25 or 30 dancers, just to compete around the country for the girls. If we ran seven or eight dancers, the real good dancers, the pretty ones, they wouldn’t work here--there’s nothing in it for them.”

Topless clubs in Florida, Texas and the East Coast are always on the lookout for young talent, he said. West Coast clubs must compete for those up-and-coming dancers, he said.

It would be impossible, Levy said, to pay hourly salaries to dozens of dancers--even minimum wage would run thousands of dollars an hour--and still make a profit.

Management makes the bulk of its money in alcohol sales, he said. Most clubs demand a cover charge of $5 and up for an initial visit. But that first cover charge also buys a VIP card enabling patrons to come again for free.

“Then there’s the clientele,” Levy said. “The better clientele, the more sophisticated clientele, they don’t come anymore to see one or two dancers doing the go-go. They want to see a show. Different girls. Pretty outfits. A bunch of pretty ladies.”

Levy brought the upscale topless business to Southern California three years ago, reworking the Pure Platinum clubs he had owned for years in San Diego. The upscale concept had already proven successful in Florida, and he decided the time was right to bring it west.

It’s been so successful, he said last week, that he has plans to open clubs in Seattle and in Hawaii. The first upscale topless club in Los Angeles, Bailey’s Twenty/20, opened this past summer in Century City.

Levy has made a point of stressing updated marketing techniques. A “limited edition” 1992 Pure Platinum calendar features the club’s dancers in lingerie, swimsuits or topless at various San Diego sites. It’s $25 for the calendar, to see women such as Rikki, an “adventurous French-Russian” who “loves acting, animals, traveling and making love.”

“A lot of people still try to associate (topless clubs) with drugs or the Mafia and prostitution and stuff. We’re none of those,” Levy said. “Customers go to our places, they find out they have a good time. It’s a fantasy world.”

Take Lexis as an example, said Ellis, the Pure Platinum general manager. “You look at this lady, let’s say you’d see her in a mall, at the grocery, just out shopping or around, you’d say, ‘I’d like to see her with her clothes off,’ ” Ellis said. “And that’s what this is all about. That fantasy. Here you get to see.”

Lots of men are eager to look. On a typical weeknight, Ellis said, 250 men come through Pure Platinum’s Kearny Mesa club. Weekends, it’s 500 or more. “We’re very popular with the Padres, the Chargers and all the visiting teams,” said Juliet, a 25-year-old dancer. “Baseball and football--they’re big on that, all of them.”

Last Monday, even with the competition of football on TV, the parking lot at Pure Platinum’s Kearny Mesa club was jammed. “This is slow,” Ellis said.

The competition is not unaware of Pure Platinum’s success. Competing clubs have arrived in town, sounding the same upscale themes.

“Basically, our establishment gives the businessman a place to go without having to worry about run-down sleazy,” said Ray Redding, a disc jockey at Deja Vu. “Every one of our places is very classy. Every one of the girls is attractive. The girls are clean. There are no bullet holes in them or in the walls, nothing like that.”

Even Pacer’s, a venerable San Diego landmark, now offers the money-making innovation that marks the evolution of the topless club: the table dance, where a woman will shimmy and shake suggestively within mere inches of a single man or small group.

Under state law, a topless dancer on stage must stay 6 feet away from the patrons. Table dancers must keep their tops on but get a lot closer. But, as in real estate, location is everything: a table dance costs $5 while the usual tip for a stage dance is $1.

“You’ve got to remember, it’s all a fantasy,” said Juliet. Like the other dancers interviewed for this story, she uses a stage name and asked that her real name not be used. “You lead these guys on to get their money.

“A majority of these guys want the fantasy of being with you,” Juliet said. “They have to think--and boy do they really want to think--they can take you home. Or take you out to lunch. Sometimes I’ll take their card and say I’ll call. I never call.

“I made $700 last Friday night. Thursday night it was $600. Tonight’s slow, probably only $300,” she said.

The first rule in figuring actual take-home pay is that the dancer must “tip out” a chunk of the night’s gross. Typically, the club doorman, bartender and disc jockey take a share that totals 20% of what the dancer made that night.

“It hurts,” said one dancer who asked not to be named. “The girls do it, they pay (the 20%), because they’re still going to make better money doing this than anything else, especially if you don’t have an education. Hell, even if you have an education.”

There are other work rules, too--and that’s what concerns state labor authorities.

Under state law, an independent contractor has the right to decide when and how work gets done, even what to wear on the job. A boss can demand only results.

But at upscale topless clubs, according to interviews last week with managers and with a dozen dancers at different clubs, the dancers work assigned shifts--by date and by time--and typically must abide by strict “guidelines” detailing the way they look.

Among the rules at some clubs: no gum, no visible tattoos, no drinking or smoking on the job. Pure Platinum recently ordered dancers to wear a jacket or similar cover--open in the front--while mingling with customers before table dancing, dancers said.

‘I think the whole thing is wrong,” said one dancer. “They say we’re independent contractors. And here they go and tell us what time we have to be here, what to wear and how to do what it is we do.

“To me it sure seems like I’m an employee,” the dancer said. “Look, I grant you we make a lot of money. But it’s not right that we don’t get the side benefits. The owners work hard to make this a success. But so do we. And what’s right is right. So we’ll see what happens.”