Prancers and Vixens

Beautiful women stroll the darkened room, stopping to chat with beer drinkers, dancing close and topless for those with cash to spare.

A curvy woman in sparkling lingerie asks the DJ, “Will you play a country song next?” Three cowboys just walked in; maybe they’ll feel right at home listening to Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.” And with the right tunes, perhaps the dancers can lure more dollars from the cowboys’ wallets — and thus have more Christmas cheer to spread among needy Northland families.

Russ Stewart, entertainment director for Diamond Joe’s, sits in the DJ booth and describes the bar’s philosophy: To operate a strip club, one need not rely on the preconceptions of how a strip club operates.

When owner Joe Mandacina converted his bar on Northeast Chouteau Trafficway to allow adult entertainment in 1994, there wasn’t much the neighbors hadn’t complained about. The business had been a country bar and then a rock club and had earned a reputation for being a loud joint with trouble always a step away.

But since the bar became Diamond Joe’s and began featuring exotic dancers, it has turned over a new leaf, building a relationship with the community now embodied each December by a touching gesture from the no-touching club. For the last four years, Diamond Joe’s has adopted families for the holidays. “It’s a feel-good situation for both parties,” Mandacina says.

The tradition started when a dancer named New York Nikki suggested the business adopt just one family. Several dancers and waitresses began contributing a portion of their tips after every shift, and they raised $1,600 — enough for six families. Armed with wish lists supplied by neighborhood leaders, the women took to the stores and bought enough gifts to fill their dressing room. “There were presents everywhere,” says three-year dancer Athena. “We got so involved in wrapping that we didn’t even think of working.”

Each of the past two years, Diamond Joe’s dancers have contributed more than $2,000 to local families in need of gifts and food for the holidays. Such charity has drawn praise from area leaders, who consider Diamond Joe’s a valuable gem. “To me, it’s more of an asset than a liability,” says Frances Moore, president of the Winnwood-Sunnybrook Community Council. Moore, who grew up in the area and remembers the bar’s earlier incarnations as dives, calls Diamond Joe’s one of her organization’s most generous benefactors. “I do not hesitate to call if I need something,” she says.

Diamond Joe’s has helped locate a computer for the community council, provided food and cooks for picnics and purchased an electric wheelchair for an elderly woman in the neighborhood. “I think a lot of the older people in the area had a bad impression of Joe at first,” Moore says. “I know he’s changed a lot of their minds.”

“I think it boils down to how you run your club,” Stewart says. “If you want to be a benefit to your community, you can be. I think the relationship here is that the community understands this is a business. And when things are going well here, we don’t eat alone, so to speak.”

Things haven’t gone as well this year, however. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Diamond Joe’s and its dancers saw a decline in revenue. For a while, it looked as though the Christmas tradition might be canceled this year as the dancers found fewer dollars in their garters each night than last year.

But just as stock market numbers rose and wary Americans tiptoed back to malls, patrons started spilling back into the cabaret. So while the club has gotten started a little late this year, Diamond Joe’s dancers plan to chip in money every night until the Friday before Christmas.

“Our total may not be $2,000 this year,” Athena says. “But that’s not going to stop us.”