Inside Vancouver
Stripped Down
By Kevin Chong published Jan 1, 2009
The Penthouse Club has survived criminal charges, murder, and even the
Internet. But can it survive neighbourhood improvement?
At the Penthouse Club, a dancer with the stage name Kate Hudson pivots around a brass pole in an all-white snow-bunny outfit-pleated miniskirt, tiny hooded sweatshirt, and leggings-to 50 Cent's "In Da Club." The bar, with its casino-worthy red carpeting, its Dijon-coloured walls, and the vintage photos of patrons like Jimmy Durante and Max Baer, echoes the louche glamour of the past without falling into kitsch. The crowd, about a third women, is mainly in its 20s and includes a corn-fed dude from Oregon who hurls a loonie onstage before a waitress settles him down.
Rayelle-the wispy 28-year-old whose nom de pole originated from her passing resemblance to the Almost Famous star-first took up exotic dancing a decade ago. When she returned to the job in 2005 after a long-term relationship ended, she found Vancouver's strip-bar landscape had shifted drastically. "There's a lot less bars," she notes. "Honestly, I think it has to do with the Internet. You can get so much more access there than what we're providing."
In its seventh decade of business, the Penthouse Club has seen liquor laws and societal norms pass like buses at rush hour. The Seymour Street institution went from being the only nudie bar in town to one of several dozen in the early 1990s, when Vancouver was often touted as the stripper capital of the world. Now, at a time when the city's shedding strip clubs like, well, a dancer peeling off undergarments, the Penthouse survives by capitalizing on its colourful history for movie shoots and stag parties and by attracting the square-jawed, Axe-cologne-wearing revellers from nearby Granville.
"We've been able to thrive as one of the few remaining bars with stripping," says owner Danny Filippone, 45, whose competition is down to the soon-to-be-closed Cecil around the corner, Brandi's in the financial district, and the No. 5 Orange on Main. "When you're downtown and you're out with your girlfriend or your buddies and you want to go out for a drink and want something different, you go to the Penthouse."
