Sounds like L. S. Ayres is Macy’s now. I was thinking that there was a tire dealer across from that entrance.

Is it the building where Ollie Fretter was located?

Kafkaz, I know a reader may have the impulse to arrive at a quick evaluation and judgment when looking at something like the College Girls whatever. While it is certainly the reader’s prerogative to do so, it isn’t necessary to either take her completely at face value or to dismiss her as a fake. The judgment may be left in suspense. I have no idea if the writer if that blog is what she purports to be and don’t particularly care. I’m aware that it’s not an annotated sociological study published by a university press. I’m happy to take her observations for what they’re worth along with all the other stuff I’ve heard here and there over the years. I find interesting her observations on women and their self image and on hookers and their attitudes toward their customers. That wouldn’t change if she were proved a fraud or proved genuine.

There was a woman there who danced to “Bridget the Midget.” Can’t remember her name, maybe “Holly”?

Most of the girls in most of clubs come on with dirty, stringy hair and bad makeup, shuffle around a bit, and remove 90% of their outfit in the first 30 seconds, then stumble around for the rest of their set in a daze as if they were stoned out of their mind. And maybe they were.

Some of the higher-class joints, like the Brass Ass on Monmouth Street in Newport (across the river from Cincinnati), the dancers are awake, the makeup at least equal to you’d expect from a cashier at Maloleys, expensive, professionally-sewn breakaway costumes, and an actual strip-tease dance. Now, “higher-class” is a relative term. You can smell the mildew when you walk in the place, and when they say a two-drink minimum, they put two cans of not-too-cool beer in front of you when you enter, popping both tabs, so that the second one starts going flat before you have a chance to start sipping the first.

But Holly, if that was her name, was the most impressive dancer I ever saw. She had magnificent costumes, her high-energy dancing was performed with olympic precision, and she looked more wholesome than Mary Tyler Moore. She didn’t perform a strip-tease; there was nothing at all sexual about her dancing. She was dancing in the near-nude, but it was a work of art. You could have broadcast it on PBS without old biddies calling to complain.

One of the other patrons told me he went to high school with her — maybe South Side? — and that her mother sewed the break-away costumes she wore. And she didn’t act like she hated what she was doing, except that everybody asked for “Bridget the Midget”; she got tired of doing it over and over, so she started refusing to do it unless someone tipped her $20 in advance.

The girl sings pretty well!

Maybe if she had a decent arrangement of a decent song, and a good producer. She seems to stay on key, and her voice has a pleasant tone, which is quite enough to work as a backup singer, but could she fill a theatre in Branson five years from now, when Spitzer is old news?

I feel mean-spirited saying that, especially given my own lack of talent in that area, but singing is like writing. Everyone thinks they can write, and most people have trouble composing a grocery list. Frank Sinatra, Junior can stay on key, and he has a pleasant voice, but he was a dud. Joey Heatherton had those qualifications, too, and she could dance fairly well, too, but I don’t think I’ve heard of her performing since Dean Martin had a weekly TV show.

You say you’re single? Amazing! Your post makes you seem like quite the catch.