Tualatin Stars opens to deafening silence from protesters
Much-contested strip club officially open fior business
Jaime Valdez / Times Newspapers
Stars Cabaret server Karli Hebisen,23, who was a pharmacy tech talks with a customer at the business' new location in Tualatin.
In the hours before its grand opening on the night of Nov. 19, Stars Cabaret at Bridgeport was bustling with activity.
At least 20 workers were whittling away at various tasks that needed to be finished before the night’s big party. The club’s managers were expecting hundreds of people, and everything had to be just so. Tualatin’s second strip club was opening its doors.
A group of four men were installing what looked to be an intensive lighting system at one of the room’s three stages. A few more carefully applied Windex and elbow grease to a battery of mirrors mounted in the other corner. The place has a lot of mirrors.
Randy Kaiser, one of the club’s co-owners, pressed off his iPhone after dealing with a last-minute permitting issue – something about fire alarms – and pondered the journey it took to get to this point.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year,” he said. “And it’s finally happening.”
In this case “working on” means battling a downpour of negative community reaction, including a mayor, police department and city council who actively opposed the project, saying that it would bring more crime to the city, and a liquor commission that wasn’t exactly gung-ho either.
Kaiser has dealt with this reaction before, when he opened up other locations of his chain of clubs – Bridgeport will be the fourth Stars, besides those in Bend, Salem and Beaverton. Nude dancing is a protected form of free speech under Oregon’s constitution. At this point, he said, he welcomes any attention the business gets, even if it’s negative.
“I guess that’s the uptight masses,” he said of community members who opposed the club’s opening. “And thank God they have that attitude, because people always want to do things that they aren’t suppose to.”
In this case however, the storm of community opposition didn’t materialize. There were no protesters on opening day, and www.changefororegon.org, a Web site organized by anti-strip-club activists, has lapsed into non-existence.
And, as of Wednesday afternoon, Tualatin police had not been called to the club
Kaiser said that he and his partners invested over half a million dollars in remodeling the building at 17939 S.W. McEwan Road from its former incarnation as the Out of Blues restaurant, and it shows. Inside, a bank of flat-screen televisions dominates the south wall. The chairs are black steel and leather. Everything is gleaming, fresh and new. It looks like money.
Kaiser said that the recession has affected his business, just like everyone else. After all, upscale gentlemen’s clubs are definitely luxury items. But he said that he and his partners expect the Bridgeport location to be successful, in part because of it easy access from Interstate 5.
“Honestly, our biggest concern is the effect it will have on our existing operations,” he said.
Life in the club
In the mid-afternoon on Monday, following the lunchtime rush and before the twilight revelers, a strip club is kind of a quiet place. A small group is talking and focused on their food, while a couple of lone men sit quietly and look at the stage as different dancers rotate in and out. Mostly, they’re dancing to modern hip-hop songs.
Most of the employees who work there, from the managers to the cooks, agree that the stereotypes of workers at strip clubs are not quite right.
Claude Dacorsi, the businesses operations manager who has worked in the industry for 13 years, said he understands the other perspective. He used to be in a Christian ministry that visited prisoners and tried to convince them of God’s good intentions. Dacorsi said that he likes the industry because it pays well and offers the opportunity to meet interesting people like rock stars and NBA players.
“According to some people, I am a felon who does underground drug deals just because I work at a strip club,” he said. “That’s the furthest thing from the truth. People fear what they don’t understand. Nine times out of 10, if someone who has issue with what we do comes in and sees us, they change their mind.”
Dacorsi said that he and his fellow managers take pride in creating a club that is classy – “or as classy as a strip club can be” – and want to make sure they offer a different, better experience than what other clubs in the region offer.
According to Joel Hardage, the bar supervisor, this means carefully selecting food, liquor and champagne, and training the waitstaff on how to recommend drinks. It also means, he said, really taking into account customer service. Dacorsi said that the club hired 21 new staff members, mostly from Tualatin and surrounding areas, pointing out that he feels the club has had a positive economic impact on the region.
Karli Hebisen, 23, works as a waitress at Stars, and says she like the work. She has also worked at the Beaverton and Salem locations.
“I want to stay with this company,” she said. “You get to make people happy at your job.”
Bill Lee, the chef, has worked at many other restaurants during his 20 years as a professional cook. He hopes to do “something different” with his bar food, and is quick to push the free prime rib on Monday nights.
“I like it here,” Lee said. “We’re really putting out the best food possible.”
As for detractors of the strip club, Dacorsi keeps it simple and other staff members echo his sentiments.
“It’s not for everyone. You can’t change the way some people feel,” he said. “If you don’t like gentlemen’s clubs in general, don’t come.”