E-Mail This Article to a Friend Cinderella story The Glass Slipper turns 20. How much longer can Boston’s oldest full-nudity strip club survive? BY CAMILLE DODERO
	Related Links Centerfolds Boston The Web site for the Glass Slipper's neighbor, one of only two full-nudity strip clubs in Boston. City Councilor James Kelly Web site for the Boston city councilor representing the Chinatown district.

Dressed in lacy lingerie and six-inch plastic heels, an exotic-looking brunette sashays down a thick-banistered staircase that falls from the second floor like a permanently sprung trapdoor. She’s headed toward a small stage tucked behind a moat-like bar. Behind her is a mirrored wall scalloped with a burlesque touch of red drapery. When she finally reaches the bottom step, she doesn’t start her striptease, drop into a split, or even wave. Rather, she grabs a roll of paper-towel and a spray bottle sitting on the steps and wipes down the brass stripper’s pole, dutifully cleaning up after the stage’s previous tenant.

The Slipper's rotating cast of between 35 and 40 "exotic dancers," as the front awning calls them, is not of the same breed as the prefabricated, silicone-pumped, cellulite-siphoned pin-ups found in most strip clubs. They're (mostly) attractive, but in a comfortably familiar, supermarket-cashier way. "René," a sandy-blonde librarian-sexy grad student who's worked at the Slipper for six years, wears glasses onstage. "Destiny" dons flattering costumes that conceal what seems to be a post-baby tummy. Real breasts mostly triumph over their surgically doctored counterparts. As general manager Danny Wong likes to say, the dancers he hires tend to be "more natural." Or, as another recent visitor remarked, "They're like the girls you felt up in high school."

To get there, you wander down LaGrange Street, an inconspicuous alleyway that always seems wet no matter how long ago it rained. Two decades ago, the stretch was just one small part of the Combat Zone, a crime-addled, prostitute-infested, sex-industry district confined to roughly four blocks in Chinatown, with Washington Street as its vital artery. The city has cleaned up the downtown neighborhood considerably since the Zone’s halcyon days, but LaGrange still bears an unshakably seamy reputation left over from an era when the road was still a "cesspool," as Boston city councilor James Kelly remembers it. Which is probably why one Tuesday night, on my way to meet Slipper owner Nicholas Romano, I get mistaken for a streetwalker.

There is a story: the locally owned strip club celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall. This is something of an accomplishment given that city officials have devoted the past three decades to sweeping up every last scrap of the Combat Zone, itself established in 1974 to segregate "vice" from the rest of the city. The only other full-nudity strip club is Centerfolds, a national franchise (here since 2001) with a hulking silver façade that sits directly across the street from the Slipper; the two businesses and one XXX retail shop are, in effect, all that remains of the adult-entertainment district. The only local club with nude dancing beyond the Zone was grandfathered in: Aga's Highland Tap in Dudley Square, a topless bar open since 1947. Beyond Boston, the closest strip clubs are King Arthur's in Chelsea and the Squire in Revere.

The Slipper's death knell was about to sound two years ago when the Boston Redevelopment Authority announced plans to seize the property, along with the historic Gaiety Theatre (which was destroyed earlier this year), by eminent domain to build a 30-story luxury-condominium development called Kensington Place. Owners William Bennett and Romano couldn't come to an agreement with the Kensington developers, and when Bennett passed away in 2004, Romano continued to battle the seizure in court and lost. Bennett's son Michael is taking over his father's half of the Slipper; meanwhile the BRA plans to usurp the LaGrange Street structure within the next year.

But the Slipper just won’t die. Under the rules of eminent domain, the BRA has to help the displaced company find a new home. Since adult-entertainment businesses can’t operate outside the Chinatown area zoned for adult entertainment, it seemed the Slipper’s chances of finding a new home were slim. But then, a vacancy opened up next to Centerfolds, and the Slipper’s owners began the still-ongoing process of getting their permits approved to relocate.

It’s no secret that the city and the surrounding Chinatown community want to eradicate every last remnant of the Zone. And that makes dealing with the administration, which seems intent on replacing its idiosyncratic charm with homogenous chains and fancy hotels, tenuous.

"I guess I’m keeping my fingers crossed," says city councilor Kelly, who’s never been inside the Slipper. ("You’d gotta be wearing a mustache and phony eyeglasses to go in there," he says. "I wouldn’t want to be spotted coming out.") "From what I’ve heard they’re going to clean up their act. And if they do — if no one knows they’re there because they’re not drawing any attention — that will be a step up." He adds, "In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any facilities of this nature."

ROOM WITH A VIEW

In Boston, there is nothing else like the Slipper. Walking down LaGrange, you head for a glowing mud-flap girl shaking her horse hips on the business’s beacon-like sign. You have to walk under her legs, pass a notice begging DANCERS WANTED, and slide into one of the Slipper’s barstool perches where you’ll get stared down by the regulars. On the walls, the décor seems copped from a ’70s-era bachelor pad — especially the two bronze-relief female nudes splayed out on romaine-lettuce-shaped leaves like naked-lady Caesar salads. It’s open 365 days a year from noon to 2 am, but spend a few successive hours there and you feel overwhelmed, like you’ve eaten too much Halloween candy or stared too long at the sun. There’s nothing coy, seductive, or mysterious about the joint — it’s unapologetic about the ruthlessness of the flesh.