Strippers at L.A.’s Iconic Jumbo’s Clown Room Adapt to COVID Era

LOS ANGELES—Of the many elements of the adult industry, strip clubs have been hit especially by the coronavirus pandemic, because they rely on live audiences and in-person contact to present their offerings. But a group of dancers at one of the most iconic strip bars in Los Angeles have banded together to continue the show — via Zoom. Their effortseven merited them prominent coverage in the L.A. Times on Monday.Jumbo’s Clown Room, a 50-year-old establishment on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A’s “Thai Town” area east of the famed Boulevard’s main attractions, is classified as a “bikini bar,” meaning that the performers do not strip fully nude, making it more of a burlesque venue than a strip joint of the all-nude variety found elsewhere in Los Angeles. Perhaps as a result, the bar — which converted to its strip-club format in 1980 — has long been a favorite of L.A’s hipster set.But Jumbo’s Clown Room closed in March, along with other bars and restaurants in Los Angeles, due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. According one dancer quoted by the Times, the performers at the club at first simply waited “for someone to swoop in and take the reins and tell us what to do. Then we realized that we were those people.”Dancers Gabrielle, Reagan, Coco Ono and Kitty the Stripperina took the initiative and created Cyber Clown Girls, using the video conferencing app Zoom to present three-hour shows, twice each week, online. The take in revenue from the project by selling tickets via Eventbrite, and by encouraging patron to tip using digital payment platforms such as Venmo and Cash App.Not only has the online endeavor allowed the performers to continue earning income even with Jumbo’s shuttered for the past seven months, but it has created “a new sense of agency and empowerment in an industry that is notorious for taking advantage of women,” Times reporter Makeda Easter wrote — though she noted that Jumbo’s itself “is a supportive environment run by women.”“We’ve all heard the horror stories of pay cuts being really unfair, favoritism, having to do certain favors for them that made a lot of performers feel uncomfortable,” dancer Coco Ono told the paper. “All these things we no longer have to deal with, which is pretty great.”Strip clubs across the country and even around the world have struggled to cope with the sharp restrictions imposed to slow the pandemic. A report this week by Britain’s Mirror newspaper described the “brutal reality” facing clubs in Wales, where hundreds of dancers and other employees now face permanent layoffs – even though they were briefly allowed to reopen two weeks ago, only to be forced into another shutdown as Great Britain’s coronavirus cases rose.Even when they were opened, actual strip dances were not permitted, making the establishments far less attractive to customers seeking live strip shows.In the U.S., some clubs have reopened, but with strict health precautions in place — or even moving their dancers onto makeshift outdoor stages in a parking lot. Photo By Victoria Borodinova / Pixabay