Jumbos Exposé(d)
Jumbos Exposé(d) – Megan “Reagan” Rippey – 6/23/21
This article reflects the personal opinions of one person based on her experiences working as a dancer at Jumbos Clown Room for 11 years. Some of the author’s memories may be imperfect but the experiences referenced herein are to the best of her knowledge.
Jumbos Clown Room is reopening, but I won’t be there. A chapter in my life 11 years in the making finally comes (non-consensually) to a close, and this is my response.
When the pandemic hit Los Angeles, Jumbos shut down indefinitely, along with the rest of the city’s nightlife. The bar was subsequently approved for a PPP loan (allegedly over $100,000) meant to cover payroll for its 40 or so total employees, but the amount of money that was given to the dancers was paltry (I received about $300 total). Plus, the PPP money wasn’t distributed until December of 2020, so you may be wondering how we kept ourselves alive in the meantime. In short, we got creative.
A few Jumbos dancers started their own virtual shows. I co-founded one such show, the Cyber Clown Girls, with three other Jumbos dancers. We put on virtual shows twice a week for over a year, and CCG provided monetary support for dozens of Jumbos dancers. Our original intention was to provide a platform for displaced Jumbos employees to dance virtually to help support them during the pandemic. This was important to me because at the time, the only other (unofficially) Jumbos-affiliated show that existed was not available to all of us. So I saw a need to fill.
Our show was so successful that shortly after creating it, one of the CCG dancers decided to donate a portion of her earnings to a nonprofit, and we were thus inspired to make it a part of our mission to donate a portion of our profits to meaningful causes (now over $35,000 donated to over 100 different organizations including RAINN, the LA Food Bank, Gender Justice LA, the Unique Woman’s Coalition, the Martha P. Johnson Institute, Sex Workers Outreach Project LA, Red Canary Song, Black Women Lead, and the Black Sex Workers Collective). Reporters from the LA Times and LA Weekly began writing stories about our show, describing how “out-of-work strippers” were “taking the power back” and photographed us standing in front of the shuttered club.
It was no shock to me that every journalist who interviewed us wanted to mention our origins— having “Jumbos” in a headline gets clicks because Jumbos is iconic. It stands in a genre all its own — not quite a strip club, not quite not a strip club, definitely not a gentleman’s club— closer to a rock ‘n roll dive bar with a reputation way bigger than its actual size. It was easy to love by all— it appealed to locals, tourists, celebrities, groups, loners, all genders, & all sexualities. CCG most likely would not have been as successful as we were without the name-brand notoriety of Jumbos, even as we stressed over and over that we were not officially affiliated, so I have to give credit to my connection to Jumbos for making Cyber Clown Girls as successful as it is.
Iconic performer Coco Ono, known by Jumbos patrons as “Akira” for over 15 years, is also not re-hired. As another co-founder of Cyber Clown Girls, she has been just as prominently featured in the press about CCG, and has been just as loud if not louder about the social justice issues and politics that have informed our mission to donate to causes we care about. Because Coco and I were the most outspoken, political members of CCG, and two of its most prominent faces, I believe this made us targets.
Here is how our boss fired us: she sent out an email to all the dancers... except us. The email welcomed them back, with instructions on how to be “re-hired.” When we reached out with questions, such as, “Is there a reason we did not receive an email? Was this a mistake? Are we not being invited back?” We were met with silence. Emails went unanswered, as did texts. We had been effectively ghosted by our employer of over 10 years, but sadly this tactic was nothing new. We knew already that this is how she fires dancers. She simply stops scheduling them, and stops answering their emails. That’s it. In the past, I have watched dancers struggle and pine for weeks, and months, sending emails with questions that are never acknowledged, and I’ve watched myself and other dancers cut them off too in fear of losing our own jobs by associating with someone who is in the process of being ostracized. It disgusts me, both that I was a silent witness to this so many times and felt powerless to do anything, and that I now find myself in the same position.
After I co-founded Cyber Clown Girls, my boss stopped all direct communication with me. My seven emails to her over the course of the year went unanswered. When she let me go, I received no explanation, no apology, no word of thanks. There were two weeks of the silent treatment in response to my inquiry about the reopening, and then the text:
“You will not be rehired.”
There are other dancers who are not, as of yet, rehired or given the decency of any information on their status as employees. They include three dancers of color. To someone unfamiliar with Jumbos’ roster, that may not sound like a high number, but this is part of a larger trend of discriminatory firings.
A little context: When the law AB5 was signed into law in 2019 following the California Supreme Court’s infamous 2018 Dynamex decision, California strip clubs were forced to reclassify dancers as employees, and many clubs let go of a large portion of their workforce now that they were incurring payroll costs for each dancer. Many clubs wrongly took this as an opportunity to white-wash the workforce, letting go of most of the dancers of color and other dancers with relatively marginalized identities, and keeping on white dancers and dancers with relatively privileged identities. Jumbos was one such club. Now the pandemic seems to be the latest opportunity for the club to cut some of its few remaining dancers of color from the roster.
I hope the revelations of 2020 are not so far behind us that folks will forget to demand more from the businesses and organizations that we patronize and work for. It is not lost on me that having refused to rehire three dancers of color, Jumbos is left with a total of two or three women of color on their roster. That bears repeating: There are two, or maybe three, women of color who were invited back to work for the Jumbos re-opening... out of dozens of white dancers. In my opinion, the decision to fire ANY dancers of color after the wreckage of 2020 and Covid is unacceptable, but cutting the number of dancers of color in half is unconscionable.
There is an unforgettable comment from our boss that we would often reference: that Jumbos dancers are like “paper towels.” Utterly replaceable. That’s the inside scoop on Jumbos— the dancers are treated as “paper towels,” and this comment preyed upon our own self-worth to the point that we would actually believe it. If you asked me about my job in the last 10 years, I would have told you that I love it with all my heart, and that simultaneously, I was petrified every single week as I waited for the schedule to come out to find out if I still worked there. That has been my reality for a decade: waiting on pins and needles for the schedule to reveal if I am still in good standing for another week.
Before the pandemic, there were a handful of times that my boss showed me kindness, empathy and generosity. She called me on the phone (this was the only phone call I received from her in 11 years) to check on me after she found out I was sexually assaulted. That meant a lot to me. She came to see me in some of my plays. She threw a party for me when I was preparing to get married.
The reason I was afforded such kindness is because for years, I craved and lived for her attention and her favoritism. This is how Jumbos dancers secure our employment: by doing whatever we think we need to do to stay in our boss’s good graces. This is easier said than done when you feel like you strip at a bar owned and operated by a female misogynist who doesn’t see the value in your profession, and in fact treats it with disgust.
For example, one day she ripped out the only lap-dance booth in Jumbos, giving no consideration and no notice to the dancers who relied on that booth to help them make a living. She had a crew come in after a shift one night, tear it down, and paint over the empty spot like it had never even been there. We were never told why this was done, but the general consensus was that lap-dances appeared to make the boss uncomfortable (it was impossible not to see her glaring and rolling her eyes at you from across the room as you swiveled over your customer). Regardless of whatever the true reason may be, her words and actions made it clear that we were not respected.
Contrary to some of the popular mainstream narratives about strippers, many of us are feminists who find our work empowering and seek out jobs at places like Jumbos that have a reputation for empowering dancers. On the floor and on stage, dancers have the power. We decide which customers to interact with and we negotiate the terms of every interaction and walk away whenever we feel like it. What is disempowering about working at a place like Jumbos is the way the club treats us. Its treatment of dancers is completely out of line with its reputation, and at the end of the day, what’s the point of being a feminist stripper who works at a place supposedly known for being “empowering” if you can never stand up for yourself at work and you’re afraid you’ll be fired for standing up for what you believe in when you’re off the clock?
I feel sad to be forced to say goodbye to a place that defined part of my identity for so many years. But on the other hand, I feel relief. Relief that I don’t have to fear for my job anymore. Relief that I have nothing more to lose in speaking my truth. Relief to be tumbling off my own pedestal, to freedom.
Jumbos was truly one-of-a-kind; I have danced all over the country and there is nowhere like it. I will miss the energy of the crowd— no other club has that rowdy-but-respectful vibe. It also gave me so much freedom to be an actor and an artist, and travel— I could take time off and come back, I could go to school — it was so wonderfully accommodating to my lifestyle. It also felt like home for a long time. It felt good to belong there. It was a community, a family. It’s also a famous destination, so it was fun to connect with people from all over the world who loved it. I will miss it. It was a huge chapter in my personal story.
However, at this point in my life, honesty and integrity are at the forefront of my priorities. I have spent so many years holding back, censoring my voice, placating, and playing it safe in order to preserve the best job I had ever imagined having. Now, having been fired, I am released from the absolute power it held over me for 11 years, and being part of an online dancer cooperative has made me realize my own power. I helped create the very capable engine of Cyber Clown Girls to generate income for dancers in my community as well as donate tens of thousands of dollars to organizations doing important work that actually makes a difference in the world. And Jumbos can’t diminish that, or take that away.
What do I want? I want strippers to truly be empowered. I want strippers to have rights, to have respect, to have job security and physical safety and a prosperous existence. I want strippers to organize and demand better working conditions and the end of wage theft. I want new laws to protect strippers, and old laws that only do us harm to be eradicated. I want to abolish “at will” firing practices in strip clubs. Strippers are uniquely vulnerable to abusive firings, and that’s why California law should make “just cause” the rule for firings in strip clubs.
In order to try to prevent what happened to me from happening to others, I am launching a petition to advocate for job security for all dancers. Please sign it below! Dancers are artists, teachers, journalists, students and doctors, and a myriad of other things. Dancers are wives, siblings, daughters and mothers. We need allies; we need your support! We need real change. Let us use the rebuilding and reimagining of a post-pandemic world to create safer, healthier, more ethical spaces to continue to bring joy, escape and connection to those who need it.
As for me, personally… I’ll tell you what I wanted. I wanted to go back to work at Jumbos to enjoy the relief of something familiar after the chaos of the past year. I wanted to gracefully bring my career to a close, throw myself a retirement party, and leave on my own terms. That’s what I wanted before all of this went down. But now, I want real change.
For the record, Karen, I quit.