Reading the City: Deja Vu

Last night, Chase and I headed down to Deja Vu, which is at the corner of First and Pine, across the street from Seattle's venerable Pike Place Market. It's a combination sex shop and strip club, one of less than half a dozen strip clubs in Seattle. It was around 9:00 and dark, and the Vu's garish neon signs provided about 60% of the light on the block, advertising the products in the store (you can't help but giggle when you look up to see the word "lubes" flashing in blue neon 12 feet high over your head) and the schedule at the club. It's hard to miss.

Deja Vu's placement is one of it's most peculiar features. The rest of the street mostly houses mostly restaurants, clothing shops, and stores aimed at tourists, mostly ranging towards the upscale. Several major construction projects are currently in the works, including a Four Seasons Hotel less than a block away, with rooms and residences. As is true of much of downtown Seattle, condos proliferate. We didn't notice anyplace on the street that resembled a "seedy" bar, the type of place that you could imagine patrons of Deja Vu "loading up" in before heading to the non-alcoholic club.

Chase and I set up camp across the street at an outdoor table in front of an African restaurant, and ordered tea to sip while we watched. The atmosphere in the neighborhood was strange, with about 50% of the people around looking like up-scale tourist power-couples, and the other 50% looking like... well, like what you expect in an urban downtown.

As we sat, I kept an eye on the people as they walked in front of the spectacle that is Deja Vu. 80% of the men (no matter which of the demeaning and limited categories that I invented up there) turned their heads to look as they walked past, while only about 10% of the women did, either trying to pretend it didn't exist or avoid being blinded. The ages of male "lookers" ran the gamut while the female"lookers" skewed younger. A steady stream of men entered during the hour or so that we observed, mostly in their 20's and 30's. We only saw two women enter the establishment, both on the arm of a guy, and both couples re-emerged shortly thereafter, suggesting they were more interested in something in the store than the show happening in the back.

The position of the club and the generally bemused reactions of most of the people walking by suggests a tolerance of the establishment and their goods and services. Its presence not only amid such generally high-class surroundings but also at the tourist epicenter of Seattle lends further credence to the tolerant assumption: if Seattle didn't want everyone who comes to visit seeing the direct evidence of its seething undercurrent of vice in the form of the Vu, odds are someone (the city, surrounding businesses, etc.) would have it closed or moved. The young-ish male skew of the people actually entering the establishment is in keeping with my expectations of who the clientèle or intended audience was likely to be.

After a stint of people-watching, Chase and I decided to go and talk to the parking-attendant in the lot adjacent to the Vu. As we approached we noticed that the attendant was talking to a twenty-something year-old man in a sharp suit who, when we got closer, looked at me with a glint of recognition and said, "Jack?" Turns out, this guy was actually the friend of a friend who I had met only once, and who on that occasion had done a commendable job of pissing me off (I'll spare you the details of that evening, but the curious are welcome to ask). This guy was now a bouncer at Deja Vu, and was happy to answer the lingering questions that Chase and I had about the club, its relationship to the rest of the block, and the atmosphere around it.

We asked him his impressions of how the club is viewed, both by visitors and neighboring businesses. He confirmed our previous assumption that people will generally ignore it, look at it bemusedly, or go in. He claimed that relationships with neighboring businesses were good. Its neighbors acknowledge that it is a draw for certain people, and that there is spillover from the club to their own businesses, particularly those of the alcohol and food variety. The club owners have actively reached out to its neighbors, try to be understanding and respectful of their concerns, and have acted swiftly to address problems around the club. He acknowledged the presence of certain groups of social undesirables (mostly crack-heads in the back alley) and the fact that there are occasionally problems like fights and drugs that have to be dealt with in the club, but the fact that much of this happens late at night probably means that it is not much of a concern for either neighboring businesses or the tourist crowd. The approach from the outside seems to be very cost-benefit oriented: as long as the costs in terms of social disruption are not too great, those in the neighborhood accept the benefit of increased business traffic and refrain from moralizing.

During our conversation, the scene around Deja Vu remained very much the same: people trying to navigate the tiny parking lot, groups of young men walking in, other groups walking past. A man in a priest's collar did walk by in the company of several others, speaking loudly of salvation and the word of God, punctuating his sentences with "Hallelujah!" though he didn't seem overly concerned with the club itself. He neither slowed nor looked askance, and his sermonizing could still be heard as he made his way further up the block.

After talking with our informant for about 20 minutes, we walked on, politely declining his offer of half-off admission. On the way back to the car we stopped briefly across the street from the Lusty Lady about a block away, but there was nothing at all happening there, and with the rain starting we decided to call it a night.

I was surprised at how much can be deduced about a place by stopping and watching it. Watching the people, both those walking past and heading in, one could begin to make assumptions about the club's social standing and some generalizations about the cultural impressions of vice. If people had scowled, if more people had refrained from staring, if it had been located in a different part of town, etc., I would have guessed that people's views on the place were somewhat more negative. These are all assumptions and should not be taken as fact in isolation, but can provide a blueprint for understanding.

The fact that I knew the bouncer was an amazing bit of coincidence, and highlighted the importance of finding informants. Speaking to people who work in the coffeeshops and around the Red Light in addition to observation is a useful way of understanding both the behavioral expectations and the realities. Especially as regards industries of vice, the impressions of business owners around the area are good sources for information as problems that arise are going to probably affect them more directly than most other people. That will definitely be something to keep in mind when I hit the ground in Amsterdam.