Club 888, how I wrote the top story of 1993

This article I wrote December 2, 1993 turned out to be a pretty big deal at the time. I sorta cringe at it now because the editor added all sorts of shrill stuff about as subtle as a cucumber in the eye. For example the penultimate paragraph is not my kind of writing, kids. I was seeking to write in a sorta wistful laddish way but got my arm twisted. A DJ at the Biftheque bar on the Main later told me that they studied this article in their journalism class and I'm sure they noticed that it looks like it was written by two different people. Anyway, maybe worth a read, it seemed to be a big deal when it came out. Much love to the late Montreal cop William Livesey (aka Bill Livesey) The operation was busted a few months later and immigration law later changed to make it difficult for such performers to get into the country.

   The first time I went to Club 888 in the spring of ’92, shortly after it opened, I was greeted at the door by two Asian strippers who playfully stroked me with a metal detector. When I decided not to go in, one said: “You got girlfriend? I no have boyfriend.” As I walked away, she called out: “Come back soon I lo-o-o-ove you.”
   Club 888, at the corner of Ste. Catherine and Drummond, is named after the ultimate lucky number in some Asian countries. It was started up in February by Clive Didier Serre, a middle-aged businessman who has perfected a Saturday Night Fever look in the best ready-to-wear fabrics. Serre’s club is the former Millionaires Club, the owner of which was murdered.
   Serre figured his luck would be better when he opened the 888. He had already developed a formula for success at the Fairbank Hotel in Toronto, a classy-looking strip club appealing to clientele with a thing for Asian women. The formula- which sources in Canada’s External Affairs department say is the one used by strip clubs in Bangkok that employ women from the countryside - involves importing women from Thailand and the Phillipines, taking their passports away, providing them with food and housing, keeping them under close watch and then shipping them back home.
   Serre isn’t breaking any laws. He’s just capitalizing on the financial desperation of Thai and Filipino women who have no other way to make a living. And he is exploiting them with the help of lax Canadian immigration rules.
   The men who manage Club 888 maintain they’re doing these imported dancers a favour. “You have to understand these girls come from poor backgrounds to support their families,” said Ben, an assistant manager at the club (manager Dan Hall wouldn’t divulge his assistant’s full name). “You may think they’re exploited but you should see where they come from.”
   According to club management, each dancer can stay as long as she wants but the average is six months. A paid advertising feature the club bought in Allo Police shortly after it opened last spring states that the girls are under six-month contracts. Between the Toronto and Montreal clubs, management says there are about 50 imported employees at any given point. That means Serre has brought in and sent home hundreds of women from Thailand and the Phillipines in the few years he’s been in operation.
  It all starts in Hong Kong. That’s where these dancers are recruited, according to the Allo Police piece. The advertising featured reported that dancers get two years of training in English, psychology, dancing and, of course, flirting, before Serre signs contracts with them to come to Canada. He boasts that his dancers lovingly call him “Papa.”
  The women are brought to Canada on work visas, an amazingly simple process thanks to Canada's Immigration rules. Exotic dancers are excluded from the clause in the Immigration Act which requires those entering the country on work visas to prove their position can’t be filled by a Canadian. “People say it’s too easy to get these work contracts,” said Richard St. Louis, a local immigration officer. “We are not completely naïve to the possibility of exploitation. Maybe our rules should be changed.”
  A Quebec immigration official said that long with a federal work permit, foreigners working in the province must have a “Quebec acceptation certificate.” This is granted only if an employer can prove there’s a labour shortage in his line of business. “I never heard of exotic dancers being considered a ‘shortage profession’ in Quebec,”’ said Andre Gamache of the Quebec Immigration and Cultural communities’ ministry.
  But police both in Quebec and Ontario have checked the papers and deemed them in order.
   Legal or not, Serre’s conditions are definitely restrictive. The reign of control begins with a clause in the contract requiring his dancers hand over their passports, making it impossible for them to travel or leave the country without first consulting club management. Serre was out of the country while the Mirror conducted its investigation. Hall, the club manager we interviewed, refused to comment on why passports are taken away from the dancers.
   The dancers’ mobility and freedom is further restricted by tightly controlled work and social schedule. Inside the club, dancers are kept under close watch. While dancers in most Montreal clubs are customarily free to roam around and start up conversations with clients, in 888 unoccupied dancers sit in a corner until a customer selects them from a photographic menu for a table dance.
   During one brief encounter with a reporter, a dancer from Thailand was called away for a phone call as soon as she was spotted mingling. She returned only seconds later but walked right past, refusing to make eye contact.
   The club’s manager refused to grand the Mirror private interviews with any of the dancers. Hall said he wanted to protect them. But when pressed on what the dancers needed protection from, he grabbed the tape recorder and ended that portion of the interview.
   As a result, the interviews I could get cost $5 a crack- the price of a tale dance. During one such exchange, a Filipino dancer said, “We are now allowed out. It is very strict.”
   Hall denied the charge. These ladies come and go as they please,” he said. “They are not under lock and key.” However, Serre boasted to Allo Police that anybody calling on his women for a date get a rigorous interrogation.
  Hall later admitted that the club monitors the dancers’ social lives. “We don’t want any of the girls getting hooked up with any of the Mafia, any drug dealers,” he said. “We do checks on the customers and we tell them that. Like the club has no drugs- no problems with that at all – neither at their residence.” When asked how the club can keep such close tabs on the dancers’ social lives, he said, “They usually ask us, you know ‘who is this guy?’”
   Controlling the dancers can’t be too hard. Immediately after every shift, they are driven by club staff to apartments rented by the club at Durocher and Sherbrooke. They all live on the seventh floor. “Just try getting in there,” said Sgt-Detective William Livesey of the MUC police gang squad, “And I’ll call you in the hospital.” While admitting he may be exaggerating a bit, he did insist that any interloper would be greeted aggressively by guards on Serre’s payroll.
   “They have transportation with us,” Hall said. “They have apartments. All their food and everything, their health care, everything is taken care of with us.” When asked if these arrangements were part of the contracts, he said they were “extras.”
   Police suspect the dances are overworked and ripped off. Hall wouldn’t divulge the details of the contracts, simply stating that their contracts were “not anybody’s business.”
   I asked a dancer if she had been working a lot, she looked both ways then turned to me and said “Too much,” A number of dancers supported the claim, saying they work 12 hours a day, six days a week –exactly 28 more hours than the standard work week under Quebec labour laws. Hall refused to say how many hours the dancers put in. As far as exceeding the accepted standard, he said “that depends on the employee and if they want to.”
   Hall added that if the dancers were unhappy, it would show. “If we were seeing slaves, we’d see a lot of unhappy women working on these floors,” he said. “There’d be no smiles.
   I didn’t see any carefree laughter during a recent visit to the club. Nor did the dancers blow any kisses my way. And saddest of all, Layla, the Thai woman who once professed her love for me, didn’t even recognize me.
  The solemn mood, however, didn’t seem to bother the clientele. They overlooked the uninspired dancing on the centre stage because virtually every patron has a table dance- a rare event, even for a successful club.
   Unlike the fleshpots of Bangkok where stage dancers feature such props as cigarettes, boiled eggs and full, then empty, then full, bottles of soda pop, the acts at Club 888 are tame. While Bangkok strippers use their turn on stage to provide the visuals of a complete gynecological exam, the women performing at Club 888 only display a glimpse of curly hair in the dying seconds of their act.
   The real action is up close in the table dances. The women perform a sort of dorsal Braille on the laps of patrons that promotes images of a bad driver’s parallel-parking technique: lots of backing into the nearest object. When a dancer’s knee casually reaches the crotch on a patron’s lap, customers don’t bother to point out that such touching is technically illegal.
   The men who frequent the club seem to enjoy these table dances. Even a local radio talk show host know for his diatribes against the harsh manner with which Canada treats its immigrants was spotted at Club 888 with a stunning 90-pound Thai woman on his thigh.
  This contact may explain why patrons find the table dances a good deal for $5, but unlike other clubs, where the striper deals directly with the client, at Club 888 the “guy in the red bow tie” takes the $5 for a dance an gives a plastic token to the client which is then given to the dancer.
   Without Hall’s cooperation of full-length interview with any dancer, it proved impossible to find out exactly how much the dancers earn. But under the menu system, where cash exchanges are handled by management, they likely make less than strippers at other Quebec clubs.
   For putting a $5 rise in a customer’s Levis, one dancer told me under her breath that, in fact, they get half the take. “That’s theft,” said Rene Thibert, a long time strippers’ agent. “The only other place in Quebec which uses such a system is in Three Rivers and they’re always in trouble.”
   Thibert, who has organized an association for strip club owners, said a code of honour exists under which owners take the profits from alcohol sales and cover charges while giving cash from table dances directly to the dancers.
   Thibert should know. His company sends dancers to clubs that specialize in la danse a dix, $10 dances that involve some touching and, though illegal, flourish in clubs outside the city. So at $2.50 per dances a dix table dances, the imported women at Club 888 receive a quarter of what local gets for the same work.
   But this isn’t’ the worst of it. According to MUC police, the biggest rip-off occurs when the dancers are returned to their countries. They say Serre’s employers do not have bank accounts; they rely on being paid upon boarding their flights home. Livesey said police interviews with dancers conducted at the Fairbank Hotel revealed that Serre’s men “take them to the airport and instead of paying them the promised rate, they give them whatever they want and say, ‘take a walk.’” Livesey, an expert in Asian gangs, added that since the club expects those from the Philippines to make the most fuss about underpayment, they get a better deal than the more complacent Thais.
   Hall categorically denies the allegations. Even if Club 888 is breaking contracts, Livesey said it would be impossible to do anything about it. “After a dancer has left the country, what can you do?” he asked.
   Nothing. These women are being shipped to Montreal as a commodity to be used for the pleasure of men, a practice common in Thailand but which seems depraved in a supposedly modern country like Canada. The women are not being given the opportunity to integrate into Canadian society, nor to apply for permanent residence. Police and immigration officials claim they can’t do anything about it. These women are being left in the dark about their rights, and even if they did try to improve their lot, they’d probably find themselves back in their homeland the next day.
   When I expressed my concerns about the treatment of dancers at Club 888 to an 18-year-old Filipino dancer, she just looked confused. “You no like this place?” she asked. “You think is no good?”