artdirector@sfreporter.com
A sign outside Cheeks as Santa Fe's only strip club prepares to shut down.
A dancer, Aria, talks about god-knows-what with Katie at the bar. Two Chicanos wait patiently and place a few quarters on the edge of the pool table, which is the universal sign for “we’re next.” Meanwhile, a different dancer climbs to the top of the pole and hangs on with only her thighs.
“Jeezus, I really need to get to the gym,” I think to myself.
Katie, my bisexual pal and fellow night owl, darts from the bar to my table: “They’re shutting down!” she yells over the music.
“No, they’re not,” I reply. “It’s only 9. They close at 2.”
“Dipshit!” she responds. “No. Cheeks is closing.”
Aria, a young blonde who travels from Albuquerque to Santa Fe every weekend for this gig, sits at my table. “It’s true. We’re done.”
And so it is—Santa Fe’s last remaining strip club is shutting down as of Friday, Dec. 17. I need to find out more.
I scan the room and see a bevy of dancers and bartenders and doormen and a DJ in the dim, dark corner—all about to lose their jobs. I quaff my gin and tonic and go to work.
“May I talk to the owner? I’m a journalist!” I bellow over a hip-hop hit from 2005. “That’s him, right there,” she says, pointing to a paunchy type surrounded by wiggy, fawning fellows who look sauced and privy to the news.
I thank Aria, buy Katie a dance, and approach the doorman who’s checking IDs.
“Simon Moya-Smith, Santa Fe Reporter,” I say. “There’s a rumor going around that you’re closing...”
“Yeah,” the Chicano says. “We just got bought.” The tall, broad-shouldered man then lets slip a few more details: “This place is now going to be a Dunn Bros. Coffee and a Twisters.” (Neither company responded to SFR’s requests for comment.)
Suddenly, the owner waddles toward his office, which is right behind me, shaking hands and nodding to frequent flyers, the regulars, along the way. The doorman stops him mid-swanker and says, “This is Simon; he’s with the Reporter.”
A look of contempt and disgust falls upon the owner’s face. “I hear you’re closing, sir,” I say.
“Oh, we are?”
“Are you?”
“Talk to me on the twenty-first?”
“What’s happening on the twenty-first?” I query.
He walks past me, unlocks the door, then turns to the doorman and gives the ol’ slit-throat, say-no-more-to-this-guy kinda gesture.
“Sorry, man,” the doorman says. “I can’t say anything else, and please don’t use my name.”
“I’m not here to fuck with you,” I assure him. “I’m just trying to get the story...”
I head back to my table and begin scribbling cute sentences like “Cheeks are closing” and “spank you very much for 30 years, you cheeky bastards.” Aria, who has finished the dance with Katie, sits at my table again.
“Our last nights are Thursday and Friday.”
Knowing I won’t get any more quotes for the night, I wander next door to Arcade News, a sex toy joint, and ask the man behind the counter where they keep their cock rings. “Do I get a discount because I’m a journalist? You’re the News after all.”
Fast forward to Friday night—red letter calendar date for the swan song at Cheeks. Katie and I stop at Kelly’s, a few doors down on Cerrillos, grab a Tito’s and a six-pack of ginger beer for later, then zip to the strip club. Outside hangs a sign that reads, “Thank you, Santa Fe.” A river of cars flood into the parking lot. A jackass parks his red Corvette between two spots. We head to the door when, BANG, a guy inside swings the door open and yells, “Private party!”
“To hell with this place,” Katie says. “We’ll start our own strip club!”
The night did end with stripping, but sans a paunchy, curmudgeon of an owner, and without a doorman who wouldn’t give his name, nor a kind, blonde dancer who has traveled an hour every weekend for god-knows-how-long just to keep the bills paid.
Lo, this isn’t merely a piece about a storied strip club, but of a local institution now gone, purchased by corporations. Jobs lost. Mom and pop shops and, yes, strip clubs all over the US, are falling victim to corporate swine. And what is the difference between the nimble dancer who hangs onto the pole with her thighs and the line worker at a factory who’s been given the pink slip? Nothing.
Just how many lost jobs come with the closing of Cheeks, I couldn’t say, on account of the owner’s resolute refusal to speak with me. But it’s a solid handful, to be sure.
Seeing we can’t get in, and because the owner despises a reporter reporting for the Reporter, we decide to drop in at Evangelo’s by the Plaza. “Who wants to strip?” Katie hollers. A born-and-raised Santa Fe local raves downstairs at Evngelo’s by the pool tables. “What!?” he shouts. “Are you serious? Cheeks is closing!?”
“They’re closed,” Katie says.
“Now what?” he mutters.
“Guess you have to go to Albuquerque.”
The word about the place closing spreads all over Evangelo’s and even to nearby Matador. Two folks raise a glass to Cheeks, which is a weird sentence to write without the capital “C.”
“Here’s to Cheeks...and to cheeks!” Lower case “c.”
By midnight, locals and newbies and random who-have-yous cheers to the staple—or maybe just simply to fantastic booty. No one knows, and no one cares. And no one argues.
