The decline and fall of Toronto's strip clubs

Downtown Yonge Street in the mid-’70s was a much different scene than the gradually gentrifying shopping and restaurant strip we know today. It was a place where no self-respecting storefront went without a giant neon sign—flashing words like “nude,” “girls” and “XXX”—and where seediness was a simple fact of life. (See this map for proof.)

At the time, Yonge was home to countless so-called body-rub parlours, where the discerning gentleman could duck behind the street’s glittering facade for a quick massage, complete with happy ending. For do-it-yourselfers, the strip’s erotic movie houses screened the finest pornography the decade had to offer.

Interspersed were other businesses that offered comparatively simple pleasures. Places like Starvin Marvin’s (313 Yonge), Le Strip (237A Yonge) and Zanzibar (359 Yonge) featured nude or semi-nude stage shows. These clubs helped form the nucleus of an X-rated scene to rival anything in New York at the time. Even before the city had attained its current skyscrapery grandeur, Toronto’s sleaze was world class.

Almost 35 years later, Yonge Street has changed dramatically. Most of the seediest businesses are gone and the remaining strip clubs seem like stragglers living on borrowed time.

Read the rest at The Grid

Jack Layton keeps digging a hole with his tongue

The location of Layton's "shiatsu" 

"It didn't look sketchy to me at all, or else I wouldn't have gone in"

That's what NDP leader Jack Layton had to say about the Velvet Touch rub-and-tug Massage Parlour he paid his now infamous visit to back in 1996.

The "Masturgate" issue for Layton, as far as I'm concerned, is not about whether or not Layton was manually or orally pleasured in a bawdy house 15 years ago. If he was, I don't care. I'd make fun about him for it becoming public fodder, but I do not believe that it should disqualify someone from being Prime Minister of Canada. If every sexual peccadillo were grounds to eliminate someone from the political sphere, we'd be left with a very sorry offering of leaders (maybe that explains the current state of politics in this country).

Layton's handling of the matter, now that it's become news, is the issue. It gives us some insight into how a Prime Minister Layton would deal with a crisis, and that picture isn't nearly as pretty as an Asian erotic masseuse.

What have we learned about Layton from all of this:

1. Collapses under pressure

A smart leader would have said, "I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't commit a crime nor was I ever charged with one. This is just desperation on the part of my opponents, and you can tell how desperate they are. I'm not going to talk about this anymore; I'm sticking to the real issues of the election." and left it at that. He should have refused to say anything more about it. Instead, he panics, and keeps blathering idiotic, unlikely nonsense that makes him look foolish at best and guilty and foolish at worst.

If Layton crumbles like this when dealing with a minor public relations blip, what kind of ineptitude could we expect from him in the face of a real crisis were he to be Prime Minister? The result could be catastrophic.

2 Can't keep his mouth shut

There's a time to talk and a time to shut up.

Though Layton is not a religious man, he would have done well to have listened to the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 18, Verse 28:

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise, and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

Invariably, politicians get in trouble for what they do say, not for what they don't say. Layton doesn't have the basic wisdom or understanding of that simple rule, which does not suggest he will make a good leader.

At the time of the incident, Layton was a long-serving downtown Toronto councillor. He claims he didn't see anything sketchy about the Velvet Touch Massage Parlour, which Layton now refers to as a "community clinic" on the second floor of a shady facade of a seedy area in Toronto's Chinatown. According to reports, the place has a coded red light/green light system to indicate when police were coming up the stairs.  For his "therapeutic massage" Mr. Layton was found totally nude by police.

Layton's answers raise more questions about his competence and judgement than staying silent would have.

3. Layton is incapable of not making himself look like an idiot over a minor matter

Mr. Layton is a very intelligent individual, who had lived in the downtown core for a long time. If he is telling the truth, Layton is saying that he lacked the savvy that just about every other resident of downtown Toronto has.

What is Layton's spin? That he's the kind of guy who couldn't even get laid in a whorehouse? It's doubtful that would be a particularly encouraging message to voters doubtful about whether he would be a strong Prime Minister.

Frankly, I'd rather have a Prime Minister who isn't stupid and got a hand job than one who is stupid and didn't. In either case, Mr. Layton has babbled himself into a position where he would have us believe he was stupid. That's not how a competent leader does things.

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One sign of the times is the CBC radio news report I heard this morning. Usually, they try to picture Stephen Harper in the worst possible light, while portraying Layton as a leader. They must have had a whiff of the way the winds are blowing, because this morning the report had Harper sounding Prime Ministerial with a report about how Liberals who want sound economic policies will find the Conservatives the best choice this election. The report about Layton was all about the (alleged) hand job.

If you're a socialist that the CBC has bailed on, you've got to know you're in trouble.

UPDATE: Just in - The Toronto Star shows a poll that says Tories may be headed for a majority. And as will come as a surprise to no one, the NDP has the least committed voters.

Not ready for prime time: Jack Layton goes limp under pressure

Jack got the infamous rubdown here.
Too soon to tell if a "happy ending" is in store for the rest of the NDP

Whether or not Jack Layton was masturbated by an attendant at a massage parlour in Toronto in 1996 is of no moral consequence.

However Layton's reaction to the story, the timing of which is obviously political, that in 1996, police found him naked in a "house of ill-repute," is further demonstration, if any more was needed, that the NDP leader is not fit to be the head of Canada's government.

Aside from the obvious lack of judgement demonstrated by a well-known city councillor, as he was in the 1990's, in receiving services of any kind at a bawdy house, Layton's response to the news of it does not bode well for his ability to react to pressure with grace.

Sex has got a lot of men into trouble over the years and most politicians are men with a lust for power, so the term political sex scandal is almost tautological.

There are ways to handle it and there are ways to deal with it effectively and what one does shows a lot about leadership skills.

Layton went to the book on this scandal by immediately claiming "smear" and having his wife issue a statement of support. If that sounds familiar, it's because Bill Clinton did much the same thing. The difference was that in Clinton's case, his scandals didn't break two days before a general election.

And unlike Layton's, Clinton's excuses also had the advantage of not making him look stupid.

Layton has claimed that he went to the massage parlour, pictured above, to get a "shiatsu."

He said he believed the location was a legitimate massage parlour and that he did not receive any sexual services there. That might be true.

But look at the facade of the massage parlour in question, in a seedy part of Toronto's Chinatown, an area that Layton would have been very familiar with, since he was the municipal representative for that area.

If you told me that place is a "legitimate" massage parlour, I'd laugh at you.

There's also a certain incongruity, which is my polite way of saying hypocrisy, to someone who wanted to ban lap dancing and said, "a strip bar is not a petting zoo" who then goes to the sort of place where the clients are the ones being petted.

Layton's reaction was to be rattled, to decry a basic component of the political process that he voluntarily and heartily pursues, and to look and sound beaten.

Being Prime Minister is about leadership. Layton himself has made leadership a central issue of his campaign. Lame, implausible excuses, self-pity and bad reactions are not the way leadership is best exercised.

Canadians are lucky they found out what Jack Layton's version of "Canadian Leadership" is before it's too late.

UPDATE: In a song-and dance interview with the CBC about his little visit to The Velvet Touch Massage Parlour (now if that name isn't a giveaway!), Layton casts more doubt on the veracity of his story than if he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

The NDP leader, responding to reporters' questions, said he went to the clinic around 9 p.m., recalling that it was probably after a workout. 

"I went for a massage at a community clinic"

You can see the alleged "community clinic" above. Does that look like a community clinic? Have you heard of many legitimate massage clinics that are open at 9 PM?

Harper talked about Layton being all smiles and snake oil. He got the smiles right, but that would be massage oil, Steve.

(h/t to Blazing Cat Fur for the update)

UPDATE 2: It looks like "Velvet Touch" is a popular name for massage parlours. Here's one I found in Edmonton. And here's one in Youngstown, Arizona, and another in Melbourne, Florida. And here's a Miss Velvet Touch in Niagara Falls who offers massages (among other things)! I bet the clients of these other Velvet Touches all mistook them for 'community clinics' too!