O’ Big Daddy’s

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Varg

Gambit has a great story by Alison Fensterstock about the October demise New Orleans’ strip club Big Daddy’s.

Never having been a big fan of strip clubs when I was young and full of beans, I must admit I have developed a fondness for them as I have become more refined, particularly unpretentious clubs like Big Daddy’s.

I’m not interested in being mesmerized or even sexually aroused in a strip club. I just want to go in with a toasted group of friends, partake in a charade of lasciviousness, leave with cheap perfume all over me and laugh about it for years. One could find no better spot to do this than Big Daddy’s. Be weary of those Iberville spots like The Artists Cafe or Don Juan’s. They are too unpretentious. I once saw a pair of scantily clad pregnant women standing in front of the former. No sir, when you wanted the perfect dividing line between fake glitz and glamor and seedy underbelly, Big Daddy’s was your spot. It was little bit of both.

It was years before I did anything other than point to the swinging legs with my visiting friends. But a night before Katrina, my cousin and her husband were in town and we all ended up there. I was broke as a joke at the time and had perhaps two dollars for the girls. I ended up giving them to one who I later noticed was sporting a band aid on her butt cheek. O’ Big Daddy’s!

2 thoughts on “O’ Big Daddy’s”

Sherry says:

December 17, 2008 at 10:11 am

Dayum, I loved that place. Think they’d sell me the dancers pole?!?!

🙂
dambala says:

December 22, 2008 at 9:03 pm

sir, i truly appreciate your exquisite taste and refinement. I worked the graveyard shift in a FQ bar and my clientele was composed mostly of BD strippers at 4 to 5 am in the morning. I have stories…man, do I have stories.

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Rejoice!

I say that a lot. I sign many pieces with it. I do this because I believe our lives are a true happenstance. A brilliant occurence from nothingness. We are so rare. We are so unlikely. And simply being born isn’t enough. From there we must survive, endure. So each morning, after our Sun departs and is reborn again. Please, for the sake of your ancestors and the Universe in general, hoist that cup of joe up and say, “Rejoice.”

Ours is a soulful existence. No matter how many McMansions, polyester fabrics, auto-tunes, modified foods and social networks we surround ourselves with, we are all still native, passionate beings made of ancient matter. We are organic and we have soul.

Wood also has a warm, soulful quality. Wood has a memory. It retains smells, traumas, events. It even has a calendar. This is why I have chosen it as my medium, for its old soul. I like to think the wood in my work is in its third incarnation. First a tree, then a home and now art. If you have a room that needs a little soul, get a piece. A room can never have enough soul.

My inspiration and subject matter comes from many sources, among them: Humanism, old ballads, trickster tales, flora and fauna, science, myths and folklore, stringed instruments, brass bands, amber spirits, lady vocalists, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some of my pieces are there just to make a short, simple statement about what’s important in life. Some are more diffuse and abstract in meaning. A personal drama, an enduring line from a poem or novel, a poignant song lyric, the legacy of an important person, a fleeting thought … these are the subjects of my art.

I use hearts often because they are a very abstract way of depicting the human soul without also employing the very subjective human form. The symbolic heart is an apt representation for a person’s experience and essence. A body can immediatly conjure happiness, sorrow, youth, age, anger, bliss. These emotions can get in the way. Sometimes it’s simply about the experience.

I am the son of a sailor and a social worker, the grandson of a gypsy, a dancer and a nurse. I spent my youth moving from port city to port city, watching a lot of road go by and reading World Book Encyclopedia. After my parents settled down on the Gulf Coast, I was a miscreant youth, destroying cars and taking the wrongs things too seriously and the right things not serious enough. Eventually I began replacing my imagination with experience.

I will use any salvaged wood but prefer swamp cypress and longleaf heartwood pine.

I despise waste. Particularly the waste of organic matter. Trees are magnificent. They were here before we arrived and they’ll be around after we are gone. I’m making an effort to save as much wood as possible. Creating art is fun too. But beyond communicating with folks, but beyond making money ad providing for myself, beyond rescuing flooded parts, beyond reveling in the ethereal aroma of heartpine that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 years, beyond all that, I am trying to make a simple comment on waste.