The Strip Club signs of Phoenix, Arizona


No history of Phoenix, Arizona would be complete with a mention of its strip club signs. Now, don't worry, I'm not going into graphic detail here (this is the internet, you can find that elsewhere), but I am going to mention them, as they have been part of the background of Phoenix that I've been looking at since I was a teenager.

I've only lived in two other places in my whole life, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, so I really don't know, but it has always struck me that the strip club signs around Phoenix were pretty blatant. There have always been these big signs all over the place, on city streets where everyone goes by all of the time, that say some pretty outrageous stuff.

For those of you who have never been inside of a strip club, this is how it works: It's a dark room, filled mostly with men who are intently staring at a young woman on a stage. As a song begins, she dances in place, and during the course of the song, she removes her top. Then she puts it back on, waits for the next song, and repeats the procedure. As a young man, of course, I found it fascinating, but after seeing it a few times, I have to admit that it seemed a very simple source of entertainment. OK, that's all I'm gonna say about it. If things have changed much from the last time I went into one of these places, in the '80s, I would be surprised.

Grand Avenue used to have a lot of big signs. No, I'm not going to quote them, and I don't want you to, either. And yes, they were rude and obnoxious, but they were part of Phoenix.

Image above: looking towards South Mountain past the sign for the Playpen in the 1960s, Phoenix, Arizona.

Comments

  1. dwberendMarch 13, 2016 at 9:33 PM

    Would that be 35th Ave south of Thomas?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brad HallMarch 13, 2016 at 9:59 PM

      I'm not sure of the exact location, other than in Phoenix, as that's definitely South Mountain back there!

      Delete
    2. dwberendMarch 13, 2016 at 11:59 PM

      After taking another look I'm positive that's the location. If you look on the right side if the frame you can see a propane tank at what is now Amerigas. Also there is still a strip club there.

      Delete
    3. dwberendMarch 14, 2016 at 12:00 AM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more