HARDBACK
STRIPPED OFFERS INSIGHT INTO GALARDI CLUB
BY DOUG FRENCH

Some very interesting dialog has hit the papers from the San Diego Operation G-Sting political corruption trial. The story defines “juicy” and the best part is that there will be a sequel right here in Las Vegas. Both trials revolve around the goings on of strip-club scion Michael Galardi, his reputed political bagman Lance Malone, and various politicians. 

But the accounts in the papers don’t hold a candle to the stories told by ex-Galardi employee, Brent Keton Jordan in his book Stripped: Twenty Years of Secrets From Inside the Strip Club. 

Jordan was a bouncer at Galardi’s Cheetahs Topless Club in Las Vegas from its opening in 1991 until June of 2003 when he was fired, so he’s seen it all and 

is now telling all. The book’s publisher, Satsu Multimedia Press, tells the reader that the book is satire, “a parody of a life and of an industry — at least I pray it is.” 

Anyone with knowledge of Cheetahs knows that Jordan’s Stripped is not fantasy — at least not entirely. And despite not being particularly well-written, the book is impossible to put down. 

Surprisingly, Jordan names few names. Other than Mike Galardi, ex-City Councilman Michael McDonald is the only person mentioned by name in the book. What Galardi and McDonald share in common is Jordan’s utter contempt. It seems McDonald was wont to throw his considerable weight around Cheetahs causing “[t]he club [to] turn into a pathetically comic dance, with bouncers and cocktail waitresses rotating to the opposite side of the club from the tubby tyrant.” 

Ironically, the author doesn’t spend a lot of time on politicians, other than McDonald, given the extent of Operation G-Sting. But, Jordan does imply that everyone from beat cops to fire marshals were on the take. One funny story has it that a female health inspector was constantly tagging Cheetahs with health-code violations until she was set up on a date with a male bartender she took a fancy to.

Jordan’s account of Galardi’s illegal and/or immoral business practices is one of the book’s major themes: racism, watered-down booze, rigged promotions, violent, drug-addled floor staff, bogus incident reports concocted for Metro, underreported income to the IRS, and even murder. 

In sharp contrast to his disdain for Galardi, management and staff, Jordan views strippers in a heroic light. He goes to great pains to tell of how intelligent and normal entertainers are and the stream of verbal abuse they endure to earn a buck. Jordan describes a typical “upper level Las Vegas topless entertainer,” who makes her living “through persistence, intelligence and diligence” as a 26-year-old BMW-driving woman with only a high school diploma making $700 per night in cash. Sounds like just your ordinary neighborhood gal. 

Where Jordan’s book excels is his keen observation of why men go to strip clubs and why entertainers don’t date or marry successful men. Men go to strip clubs for the attention, not for sexual stimulation. The customer essentially leases the time of a young, beautiful, mostly naked, girl who gives him what he needs most: “the feeling of being needed, of virility, of power — the root core of primal man …” 

Dancers gravitate toward losers in their personal lives because they can “simply purchase a boyfriend,” Jordan contends. Twenty-something-year-old dancers can’t find men their own age with strong enough self-esteem to accept the dancer’s profession, and at the same time be gainfully employed. Older men, who would not be intimidated by an entertainer’s income and profession, “have little in common intellectually, spiritually, recreationally, or sexually with anyone at the age of twenty.” 

Jordan saves his harshest words for Galardi and his management staff, all of whom graduated with their future boss in 1984 from Western High School. The managers’ only job skills were being Michael’s “lap dogs.” Jordan describes Galardi as a punk, “a little, chubby, braggart of a man who grew up choking on his dad’s silver spoon, surrounded by a host of sycophantic parasites who were paid well to laugh at his jokes and coo at every pearl of wisdom dribbled from his lips.” 

This reviewer knows a few of Galardi’s managers. One of the nicest of the group died tragically in a car crash. Jordan called this manager “a self-administered DUI victim” who was “so browbeaten and degraded on a daily basis” that he drank himself nearly comatose nightly. This review is written in your honor, Lonnie. May you rest in peace. LW