Contact Admin. Luis Rivas April 28, There is a look of stark confusion on the faces of people when I tell them that my nearly decade-long stay in the adult retail and strip club industry were some of the darkest, saddest moments of my life. When I first got hired as a sales clerk at a local scuzzy porn shop in the San Fernando Valley, I was excited. I was going to be surrounded by porn, sex toys and all the kinky elements that are associated with adult retail stores.
But little by little, just a few months into working there I witnessed the high-level of drug-use amongst the clientele, the demeaning nature in which management and the ownership treated all the workers—many of which were African-American and Latino, some with questionable residency.
A job, as is now, was hard to come by back then. I had just quit my FedEx job. I was doing poorly at Los Angeles Valley College, so I needed this job, however strange, however wrong. And for whatever reason, I excelled at it. I was promoted to assistant manager and then eventually manager at that location and other stores throughout Los Angeles and even in Oregon. My upward progression eventually landed me the opportunity to manage a strip club in the San Fernando Valley. The front of the club was an actual adult store with toys, oils, lingerie and DVDs.
In the dimly-lit back was where the actual club was. There was a marble-and-mirror stage which featured topless and bikini dancers and curtained-off private lap dance areas also known as VIP Rooms.
They took me to another nearby strip club where we met with club owners and managers. I was told to listen and take note of the advice and direction from the managers, which only reinforced notions of domination, sexist male hierarchy. All the dancers in all strip clubs, almost without exception, are technically not employees.
