You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Gigi La Femme’ tag.

Ruby Valentine
By J.D. Oxblood
City Winery is a big, fat, wooden room that would make a vacationing couple from Vermont feel very at home. High ceilings smattered with rotating fans, a pervasive blonde woodtone, and a stage so deep you could stack the Rockettes 6-deep and they could still kick. We rolled in around 10 to witness the changing of the guard—upper East Side diners were paying the stiff tabs for their undersized tapas & pricey vino as downtown hoodlums played musical chairs, vying for decent seats as they became available, nestling up to the stage and onto the raised dining area in back. This was a big room … could Doc fill it?

Bird of Paradise
He did, but the sound system didn’t. The PA was lacking, but I quickly forgot about it as the shapely Bird of Paradise came on to warm up the crowd with a little gogo to surf music, in a purple sparkly bra and a short skirt cut on an angle, accentuated with bangles and nude fishnet stockings. Babe-o-licious.
“Come on, let’s go downtown, Trixie and the Monkey are performing at the Slipper Room.”
“No, no… I’m drunk, I don’t have a notebook with me, I don’t have my camera—“
“Let’s just go see the show!”
“Ok, fine, but I’m not working!”
Famous last words. Hear me, O children, as I say verily unto you, once one has started down the path of wickedness, there is, truly, no turning back. And truly, once one has committed oneself to the recording of said wickedness, merely being wicked will never again suffice. Which is a long-winded way of saying, I went to the Slipper Room and totally blew my cover. It had been so long… I was just so HAPPY to be back in a burlesque venue, and the show was so show-stoppingly amusing, and I so show-stoppingly inebriated, that I just couldn’t HELP myself from talking to the performers and generally making a total ass of myself.
By J. D. Oxblood
Through a random sequence of events and acquaintances I was invited to attend a party at the Crunch Gym on Lafayette, just below Astor Place. I was a little confused—a party? At a gym? Like a work-out party where we all hang out and pump each other up? Chat with personal trainers and drink some smoothies? Rub each other down in the shower? I am IN. But, no, it was a party party, with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres (that’s French for “snacks”). At a GYM. I had to check it out.
Chapter 2:
Saturday, 9/20: the Saturday Spectacular at Le Poisson Rouge
By J.D. Oxblood
Photos by T-Bone Caruthers, Willy G., and Jane Smith
[***3 kisses indicate J.D.’s faves.]
The crowd at the Saturday Spectacular was decidedly older and more well-heeled. And completely sold out. Turns out that getting people to the West Village is easier than getting people to Gowanus—who knew?—and the place was weirdly, if not wisely, laid out to accommodate VIPs at tables close to the stage and standing room only everywhere else. Which is to say that if you didn’t pay the tab or have the connections to score a dope seat, you couldn’t get within fifty feet of the stage. My entourage and I were lucky enough to find a quaint little spot wedged in between the exit door and upstage left, putting us in the path of performers entering from stage left (Trixie Little rubbed up against me! I’ll never wash that shoulder!) and I had the added pleasure of having Jo Boobs sit right in front of me for the first act in her civvies. It isn’t just that she’s so hot, you dig?—like any man, I can get hot pushed in close to a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman on the morning G train—but, this woman is, like, a legend. You can feel it steaming off her. And I am honored to be so close.