LES GIRLS OF HARDCORE
It's a look at 1970s pornography through the eyes of a character who detests everything about it, but every person I know who loves classic porn, also loves Paul Schrader's HARDCORE. Best known for writing the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (another film that shares the lurid theme of exploring an unseen urban subculture), Paul had his finger on the pulse of the transgressive. As Brian McNair noted in his book Striptease Culture, “Paul Schrader was, at the time of Hardcore's making, immersed in a reportedly frenzied world of drugs and promiscuous, sadomasochistic gay sex, somewhat in opposition to the anti-porn moralism of his movie.”
Schrader was raised as a strict Calvinist who was forbidden from seeing any movies, as was his main character, played by George C. Scott. A Grand Rapids, Michigan minister simmering with rage, Scott's character has a daughter who runs away to California and becomes a porn performer. Aghast, he doggedly follows her trail, coming in direct contact with all manner of seedy street-level perverts and sinners. “Parts of the movie are autobiographical for me,” Scott told Roger Ebert in 1978, “because I come from a pretty religious background. I can understand this guy, the way he feels.”
Now, when you're as big a fan of this 1979 movie as I am, you start freeze-framing the dvd, and looking at the California locations where the movie was filmed. You start doing research to see if those places are still around today. You get weirdly obsessive. As one of the aforementioned perverts and sinners, this is the visual history of my people.
“Les Girls”, a strip club seen at the 63rd minute of the movie is for real, not some set -- as is so often the case. The Les Girls (also known as “The Body Shop”) is located at 3201 Hancock Street in San Diego, California, and it opened in 1969. With its large lit pink signs advertising “Burlesque” and “Hypo-sex-ism”, it was run through the 1970s and 1980s by a smut magnate named Big Jim Morgan, who also owned two other strip clubs in San Diego.
Porn star Kristina Munroe (star of 2007's Black Dicks in Latin Chicks 2) worked at the Les Girls through the 2000's under the stripper name “April”, and yes it's still there today and looks somewhat the same: a large single floor building with an A-frame roof, giving it the outward appearance of a midwestern pancake house or motel. With a lot of crack cocaine abuse happening in the light industrial area surrounding the vintage building, Les Girls has, by all reports, fallen on hard times.
There have also been a number violent crimes that have taken place on the property including an incident in 2015 where an officer rolled up at night on a homeless man walking down the alleyway behind Les Girls, and within seconds had shot and killed him. He said he did so because the man had a knife, but Les Girls' security cam video showed that Rawshan Nehad was holding a pen and was not making any threatening gestures. Nehad's family is currently suing the San Diego police department for $20 million dollars.
“(Les Girls) can only be described as a dungeon of sin”, Bennett L from Portland, reported. “Imagine a few rows of benches covered in what feels like carpet. If you're not lucky enough to score one of those prime spots, park yourself in a plastic chair much like you'll find on your back porch. Each dancer does two stage songs. Once clothed, the next time fully nude, and one of the stripper usually pulls double duty as the DJ. Generally, the crowd is one-third illegal immigrant, one-third creepy, old men, and the other third a mix of young dudes. If you really want something unique, get a private dance. It's only, like, 10 bucks a pop, and you're taken into this room (that looks like it was) designed for Austin Powers if he were a 16 year old girl. And to kill it, she's got a cassette mix tape she pops into a barely-working boombox to play while she grinds on you. That's solid.”
“This place is funny”, Kendra M said on yelp.com. “You walk in, pay ten bucks to an older madam sort of lady and then go sit on the benches which look like church pews more than anything else. The stage looks like something the high school theater department made. Between dancers, lesbian porn blasts on the screens. Sitting behind you there will see: strange couples on an erotic night on the town, homeless/toothless wanderers, and wannabe pimps. The girls are mediocre, and that's being generous. The prettiest one was a girl named Fox or something like that, however she made only 15 dollars in tips and that was the largest amount of anyone. The others made an average of 4 bucks. Pretty sad money for strippers!”
“Never come here alone, especially if you're coming here at night” 22 year old Angela D. warned. ”There's always a lot of guys the parking lot that are trying to sell you their cds and whatever. Ew.”
“The place has a rundown retro late 80's pool hall look”, Sugar L. reported. “Which I guess makes sense since they have pool tables, but if you're looking for something more moderate and a nice clean atmosphere this is really not for you. Just a minute into having a seat, Desiree approached me who was a tall black girl with a so-so body, and man -- was she aggressive. I managed to get Desiree to back off, but she started to raise her voice and kept telling me she would be back as she walked off.”
Selene G. had a similar experience. “After their show, the girls get off the stage and walk around and ask everyone in the place for tips. It's weird and awkward, and if you choose not to, they walk away before you even finish answering. Rude. Most of them look like they from the hood. I mean, I'm ghetto, but if you're going to sell a show, at least clean it up. Comb your hair and look like you took a shower.”
“The only place you're safe from these panhandlers-in-panties is when you're playing pool”, Gary P. noted. “That's what you learn when you're a regular. Otherwise, the girls literally line up to harass you for pocket change. I've never been to a club in my life that features strippers that are this pushy, but clearly it must work, because they're obviously instructed by management to pressure and berate everyone who walks in.”
In order to get people to come on down, Les Girls advertise that drinks are “only 75 cents” on their bare-bones website. “No $2.50 sucker drinks!”, the site trumpets. What they don't mention is that no alcohol is served, and the .75 cent drinks are nothing more than water! Haha!
In recent years, the latest co-owner of Les Girls, 65 year old poet named Kata Pierce Morgan (a former stripper, herself), has begun taking the club in unpredictable directions. In particular, she's made it a venue for her own “adult” plays to be performed for the local San Diego Fringe fest - a festival of the performing arts. One such play she did there in 2015, entitled “Hooker P.I.” was described by Morgan as such:
“Via live electronica, pole-dancing and singing, be transported to a world much like our own. One stormy night, sex worker Kate McGrew takes a client for one hour of illegal ill-reputed transactional sex. When he kicks the bucket during the act, McGrew is faced with the task of hiding from a pack of Radical Feminists who roam the streets, hell-bent on enslaving hookers and eating their clients for strength. She devises a plan to trap and school the Rad-Fems one-by-one. Will cross-dressing save her life? Can she end the horror once and for all?”
"Nudity is art," Morgan told the local paper. "There's the stigma of Les Girls -- it always gets a little bit of a snicker. But that theater is unique to San Diego history. My shows should be appealing to both men and women, but they have to be open minded. They can't be my relatives from Oklahoma or the Bible Belt."
Or a Calvanist minister from Grand Rapids, Michigan, searching for his porn star daughter, I would imagine.
-- Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer magazine. 2016
Schrader was raised as a strict Calvinist who was forbidden from seeing any movies, as was his main character, played by George C. Scott. A Grand Rapids, Michigan minister simmering with rage, Scott's character has a daughter who runs away to California and becomes a porn performer. Aghast, he doggedly follows her trail, coming in direct contact with all manner of seedy street-level perverts and sinners. “Parts of the movie are autobiographical for me,” Scott told Roger Ebert in 1978, “because I come from a pretty religious background. I can understand this guy, the way he feels.”
Click to viewNow, when you're as big a fan of this 1979 movie as I am, you start freeze-framing the dvd, and looking at the California locations where the movie was filmed. You start doing research to see if those places are still around today. You get weirdly obsessive. As one of the aforementioned perverts and sinners, this is the visual history of my people.
“Les Girls”, a strip club seen at the 63rd minute of the movie is for real, not some set -- as is so often the case. The Les Girls (also known as “The Body Shop”) is located at 3201 Hancock Street in San Diego, California, and it opened in 1969. With its large lit pink signs advertising “Burlesque” and “Hypo-sex-ism”, it was run through the 1970s and 1980s by a smut magnate named Big Jim Morgan, who also owned two other strip clubs in San Diego.
Porn star Kristina Munroe (star of 2007's Black Dicks in Latin Chicks 2) worked at the Les Girls through the 2000's under the stripper name “April”, and yes it's still there today and looks somewhat the same: a large single floor building with an A-frame roof, giving it the outward appearance of a midwestern pancake house or motel. With a lot of crack cocaine abuse happening in the light industrial area surrounding the vintage building, Les Girls has, by all reports, fallen on hard times.
There have also been a number violent crimes that have taken place on the property including an incident in 2015 where an officer rolled up at night on a homeless man walking down the alleyway behind Les Girls, and within seconds had shot and killed him. He said he did so because the man had a knife, but Les Girls' security cam video showed that Rawshan Nehad was holding a pen and was not making any threatening gestures. Nehad's family is currently suing the San Diego police department for $20 million dollars.
“(Les Girls) can only be described as a dungeon of sin”, Bennett L from Portland, reported. “Imagine a few rows of benches covered in what feels like carpet. If you're not lucky enough to score one of those prime spots, park yourself in a plastic chair much like you'll find on your back porch. Each dancer does two stage songs. Once clothed, the next time fully nude, and one of the stripper usually pulls double duty as the DJ. Generally, the crowd is one-third illegal immigrant, one-third creepy, old men, and the other third a mix of young dudes. If you really want something unique, get a private dance. It's only, like, 10 bucks a pop, and you're taken into this room (that looks like it was) designed for Austin Powers if he were a 16 year old girl. And to kill it, she's got a cassette mix tape she pops into a barely-working boombox to play while she grinds on you. That's solid.”
“This place is funny”, Kendra M said on yelp.com. “You walk in, pay ten bucks to an older madam sort of lady and then go sit on the benches which look like church pews more than anything else. The stage looks like something the high school theater department made. Between dancers, lesbian porn blasts on the screens. Sitting behind you there will see: strange couples on an erotic night on the town, homeless/toothless wanderers, and wannabe pimps. The girls are mediocre, and that's being generous. The prettiest one was a girl named Fox or something like that, however she made only 15 dollars in tips and that was the largest amount of anyone. The others made an average of 4 bucks. Pretty sad money for strippers!”
“Never come here alone, especially if you're coming here at night” 22 year old Angela D. warned. ”There's always a lot of guys the parking lot that are trying to sell you their cds and whatever. Ew.”
“The place has a rundown retro late 80's pool hall look”, Sugar L. reported. “Which I guess makes sense since they have pool tables, but if you're looking for something more moderate and a nice clean atmosphere this is really not for you. Just a minute into having a seat, Desiree approached me who was a tall black girl with a so-so body, and man -- was she aggressive. I managed to get Desiree to back off, but she started to raise her voice and kept telling me she would be back as she walked off.”
Selene G. had a similar experience. “After their show, the girls get off the stage and walk around and ask everyone in the place for tips. It's weird and awkward, and if you choose not to, they walk away before you even finish answering. Rude. Most of them look like they from the hood. I mean, I'm ghetto, but if you're going to sell a show, at least clean it up. Comb your hair and look like you took a shower.”
“The only place you're safe from these panhandlers-in-panties is when you're playing pool”, Gary P. noted. “That's what you learn when you're a regular. Otherwise, the girls literally line up to harass you for pocket change. I've never been to a club in my life that features strippers that are this pushy, but clearly it must work, because they're obviously instructed by management to pressure and berate everyone who walks in.”
In order to get people to come on down, Les Girls advertise that drinks are “only 75 cents” on their bare-bones website. “No $2.50 sucker drinks!”, the site trumpets. What they don't mention is that no alcohol is served, and the .75 cent drinks are nothing more than water! Haha!
In recent years, the latest co-owner of Les Girls, 65 year old poet named Kata Pierce Morgan (a former stripper, herself), has begun taking the club in unpredictable directions. In particular, she's made it a venue for her own “adult” plays to be performed for the local San Diego Fringe fest - a festival of the performing arts. One such play she did there in 2015, entitled “Hooker P.I.” was described by Morgan as such:
“Via live electronica, pole-dancing and singing, be transported to a world much like our own. One stormy night, sex worker Kate McGrew takes a client for one hour of illegal ill-reputed transactional sex. When he kicks the bucket during the act, McGrew is faced with the task of hiding from a pack of Radical Feminists who roam the streets, hell-bent on enslaving hookers and eating their clients for strength. She devises a plan to trap and school the Rad-Fems one-by-one. Will cross-dressing save her life? Can she end the horror once and for all?”
"Nudity is art," Morgan told the local paper. "There's the stigma of Les Girls -- it always gets a little bit of a snicker. But that theater is unique to San Diego history. My shows should be appealing to both men and women, but they have to be open minded. They can't be my relatives from Oklahoma or the Bible Belt."
Or a Calvanist minister from Grand Rapids, Michigan, searching for his porn star daughter, I would imagine.
-- Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer magazine. 2016