SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Much as Porn Valley seems to think it has a corner on the market of sex in general, San Francisco often acts like it has a lock on sex positivity. According to the San Francisco Chronicle BBW dancers who took the stage at the city’s famous Lusty Lady found out the hard way that it ain’t necessarily so.As part of its commitment to offer peep show visitors a full assortment of sexy women willing to talk naughty and show their all, the North Beach employee-owned, employee-run, fully unionized burlesque decided to offer a night exclusively dedicated to those who prefer the more lushly upholstered woman.
Although there are plenty of closet Big Beautiful Woman lovers in the world, few of them apparently chose to visit the Lusty Lady — and the customers that did drop by that night, walked right back out.
Business throughout the area is depressed since the dot-bomb went off, but the Lady has been able to keep its doors open and its customers happy. Apparently tattoos, piercings, exotic ethnicities, sweet faces, cynical attitudes, big boobs, small chests, flat butts and round asses are all fine with the locals — but those with extra padding just can’t be tolerated.
Male staffer Davide Cerri took special note of the customer’s complaints that night — and then shot them off to the establishment’s board of directors, claiming that they proved that the place was hiring “unwatchable girls” who were causing financial hardship to their employers.
What Cerri thought was a private email quickly found itself taped to the dressing room mirror, after Emma Peep, one of the board members, printed off a copy and put it there.
Lorellie, another board members and an entertainer at the club herself, points out poignantly that “Those same BBW girls had to come in, see it, then go out and perform.”
Ouch.
“People comes (sic) asking for refunds, because they do not want to see girls that they would not want to have sex with even if they were completely drunk,” Cerri wrote, defending his decision to pass along the complaints. “We sell fantasies, not nightmares.”
Peep, on the other hand, insisted that denying people employment based on their size was illegal discrimination and said that Cerri’s email resulted in calls for some women to be fired based on their weight.
Ultimately, both she and Cerri were relieved from duty.
The issue looks likely to be thrashed out in the courts, since the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concluded that Cerri’s complaint that SEIU Local 790 treats male employees differently from female employees is nothing they can help him with, since everyone at the employee-owned and run Lucky Lady qualifies as a managerial employee.
Yet, at the same time, SEIU informed the Lusty Lady that its firing of Peeps was “without just cause” and “inappropriate.” Further, Local 790 staff manager Dale Butler says that Peep’s union contract provides for mediation — meaning that the theater could owe as much as $2,000 in arbitration fees, plus Peeps’ lost wages, and any attorney fees she has accrued. This information convinced the board of directors to come to the table with a mediator.
Ex-fellow employee Brian Falls — who says the matter was never about fat performers, but about a stage filled with fat performers — agrees with Cerri that the union should butt out of Lusty Lady business entirely now that the previously agreed-upon common enemy of an abusive management is out of the picture.
The issue may turn out to be a non-issue, since the union claims the final version of this year’s agreement was never returned by the board.
Ironically, the entire matter may be a big fat tempest in a fully functional teapot, since financial records located by the Guardian indicate that any drop in income that may have been caused by the plump performers is nearly invisible when weekly revenues are compared.
