Soon after, Mills sought help for a drinking problem and resigned as head of the House Ways and Means Committee.īy 1986, the neon demimonde that thrived in the blocks around 14th, H, and I streets had vanished. In a panic, Foxe leaped into the Tidal Basin. One October night in 1974, Mills and Foxe and some friends were driving around in a Lincoln when US Park Police pulled them over near the Tidal Basin for speeding. Wilbur Mills met Fanne Foxe at the Silver Slipper on 13th Street. There was also burlesque, with big-name headliners like Blaze Starr, who performed in sequined outfits and plumes of feathers, and comedians who filled in between acts. Prostitutes walked the streets and hung out at clubs conventioneers could pop into "model studios" off the street for an intimate but anonymous $125 encounter. Thirty years ago, you could walk through DC's red-light district and take in Jell-O wrestling and 25-cent peep shows. The rest of X-rated Washington is now largely out of sight–a flourishing underworld of escort services and massage-parlor brothels. As a result of laws that keep new strip clubs from locating in DC, the only X-rated action that remains in public view is a handful of clubs that feature nude dancing. The gaudy downtown clubs have been replaced by office buildings the striptease acts have given way to in-your-face nudity. Gone is the old red-light district along DC's 14th Street, where neon lights led the way to peep shows, go-go clubs, and burlesque halls and where the late congressman Wilbur Mills, an Arkansas Democrat, fell madly in love with Fanne Foxe–the "Argentine Firecracker"–then fell out of power when she fell into the Tidal Basin. Stripping may not make many résumés, they say, but it may help pay for the credentials on them. A stripper can easily take home more than $1,000 a week, according to dancers. Most say stripping–or dancing nude–is a means to an end. Today's strippers, like Sugar, may have toned bodies, but they're about as exotic as cashiers at a suburban mall. "Because I'm crazy."īut not crazy like a Fanne Foxe, some old-timers might say. "Why do I do it?" Sugar muses while rolling her long blond hair around her wrist. She danced for a few minutes and got $25 in tips. The dancer dared her to go up, and "Sugar" was born. She and some friends were out at another strip club when Sugar–a little drunk, she says–started talking to a dancer on stage. Sugar says she began stripping on a dare three weeks earlier. When the R&B song she's dancing to ends, she puts her dress back on and is replaced by the next dancer. Men approach her to slip dollar bills under her garter. On stage, she sheds the dress and is left wearing a baby-blue garter and the platform heels. "I can't tell you my real name," she says, "because my parents don't know I'm doing this." Sugar says she grew up in a Bethesda neighborhood off River Road and graduated from an area college. This is just one part of me, and I'm having a lot of fun." "I know that guys look down on me and see me as just this hot chick without a brain," she says, "but it doesn't bother me. Scantily clad women hobnob with customers, exchanging pleasantries and cruising for tips.Ī young woman in a sheer blue dress and high platform heels introduces herself as "Sugar." Tan and lean, she says she is a 29-year-old graduate student who's just wild enough to take her clothes off for money. Inside, the VIP balcony is filling up, and the downstairs lounge is teeming with businessmen trying to show clients a good time. A bouncer sits on a stool outside a building at 900 First Street, Southeast. Lining the streets beneath the noise of I-295 is a mixture of auto-repair shops, chainlink fences, and taxi-cab companies. Almost in its shadow, seven blocks away, is a neighborhood few tourists have reason to visit. At the end of the Mall, the dome of the Capitol shines like a moon. It's Tuesday evening, and the tourists have said goodnight to the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.