NEW PALTZ- While restaurants, bars, hair salons and clothing shops remain shuttered in this Hudson Valley college town, one of the first businesses to close plans to re-open tonight: Blue Moon Cabaret.
The grand re-opening will feature a half-dozen “Corona Cuties”- masked dancers who will take the stage dressed as various essential workers, including nurses, public health workers, vaccine researchers, Central Hudson linewomen, and grocery store clerks. “By dance’s end, all she’ll be wearing is the mask!” promises a press release. The songs they’ll dance to are being selected to go with the theme of the pandemic and lockdown, and include Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go,” “Isolation,” by John Lennon, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams and “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers.
Every visitor will have his (or her) temperature taken at the door and every 20 minutes, all customers and staff will need to clear out while the entire club is dowsed with bleach and Lysol.
Lap dances – the bread and butter of any exotic dancer’s trade – proved a challenge. Glass shields, similar to those now in place at grocery stores, were installed and modified to allow contact between the dancer and the customer’s lap, while shielding the customer’s upper body to prevent exchange of airborne droplets.
“I’m glad to be back at work,” said Candy, no last name given, who has been working at the Blue Moon for the last 18 months. “I tried to get unemployment but the website wouldn’t work. I’ve got bills to pay!”
The re-opening comes following the governor’s new executive order on essential businesses, which was broadened to include adult entertainment. “We acknowledge that no lockdown can be 100 percent, or society will blow up like a steam engine without a safety valve,” said the governor. “That’s why liquor stores are still open. I mean, they’re basically selling drugs, and that drug happens to be the most destructive of all, but do you really think we could keep New Yorkers at home all this time if half of them weren’t getting blasted every night? Similarly, we don’t want lonely men trying to go out to find love and spread the disease, so me and my team decided re-opening gentleman’s clubs – with sufficient precautions – was a prudent response.”
