NEW YORK, NEW YORK – On a recent evening on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Weirdie Girl is go-go dancing for tips in glittering, heart-shaped pasties and cheerfully making out with female patrons attending a bachelorette party.

Angie Pontani, courtesy angiepontani.com
She’s performing at the Slipper Room, the home of the longest-running burlesque show in New York City.
After her dancing, Weirdie Girl takes the jewel-box stage as a despondent beauty pageant contestant. Her sash reads “Miss Understood.” Slowly working her way out of a red ball gown, she reveals a beaded bikini and another sash across her chest, this time with the words, “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
The Slipper Room opened in the mid-1990s, amid a burlesque revival in New York that began at loft parties and underground clubs. Many dismissed it as a passing nightlife fad — another reaction to the crackdown on adult entertainment by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But the audience for burlesque has continued to grow steadily over the past decade. Read the rest of this entry »