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Part 1: In 2023, North Hollywood’s Star Garden reopened as the only unionized strip club in the U.S. Emma Alabaster tells us the behind-the-scenes story of the workplace conditions that pushed the dancers into action. 
CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes sensitive content about sexual assault.
For sexual assault and harassment support and resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, which is a service of RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network).

Strippers Union: Part 1

Part 1: In 2023, North Hollywood’s Star Garden reopened as the only unionized strip club in the U.S. Emma Alabaster tells us the behind-the-scenes story of the workplace conditions that pushed the dancers into action. 
CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes sensitive content about sexual assault.
For sexual assault and harassment support and resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, which is a service of RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network).

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It was history in the making Thursday night as Star Garden reopened as the only currently unionized strip club in the U.S. — and the second ever in the country. (The very first, the now defunct Lusty Lady in San Francisco, unionized in 1996.)

It was part union rally, part sidewalk party, part reopening celebration at Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood. Customers were lined up outside waiting for its doors to open at 8 p.m. A group from the United Farm Workers chanted, “Si, se puede!” Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine played union songs on acoustic guitar to the sidewalk scene.

Among the crowd, in bikinis, corsets and crop tops, were some of the strippers who used to dance inside this bar. After almost a year and a half of being on strike, much of it on this same sidewalk, these dancers were finally going back inside.

“I've been on strike 17 months and now I'm going back in. It's very surreal,” said one Star Garden stripper, whose stage name is Wicked. (For safety reasons, we are using stage names for all the strippers in this story.)

Five dancers — Charlie, May, Wicked, Sinder and Velveeta — gather outside the Star Garden strip club on opening night to celebrate their successful unionizing efforts.

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Even though the dancers and their supporters are celebrating, their work isn’t over.

The club was reopening under an interim contract, but negotiations for the more permanent contract are still underway. Dancers say they want more say over scheduling, protection against retaliatory firings, as well as security protocols to protect dancers from aggressive customers and anti-discrimination provisions in hiring.

“Bargaining’s not over. Nothing is done yet,” Wicked said. “So it's a little uncomfy to be going in under less than ideal circumstances. But my friends have reminded me that you have to take your little victories where you find them. We fought for it, we worked for it, we bled for it, we cried for it. We made history.”

An Nguyen Ruda, Star Garden management’s chief labor negotiator, said club management was “happy to have its customers there to support it and its employees.”

“We continue to negotiate in good faith with the Union as we continue to rebuild business,” Ruda said in a written statement. “We look forward to a continued and successful weekend reopening, and to continued productive discussions with the Union.”

A tense opening night

Inside the club on reopening night, the tensions between management and the dancers were palpable. The bar previously did not have a cover charge but was charging $40 per person on opening night, about four times more than other strip clubs in the area. The drink prices were also significantly increased. And the lap dance booth was not open since workers and management have not come to a financial agreement yet on that aspect of the workplace.

On this opening night, patrons wait to get in and celebrate the unionization.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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In another surprising move, the club was also going cashless, unusual for a strip club where customers normally tip dancers by throwing money onstage.

A dancer named Reagan came prepared with her own stack of singles and walked around the club breaking up larger bills for customers. There was no DJ, so the dancers played their own songs.

Also present in the crowd was Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity, the union representing the Star Garden strippers. She reflected on what she called the “unpleasant surprises” of the night.

“It seems to me consistently baffling that management does not see a path for everyone to come out of this a hero and for everyone to make a lot of money,” said Shindle.

Ruda, Star Garden management’s representative, said the cover charge and cashless systems were “a business decision which is lawful and not retaliatory.”

Wicked said she hopes management will find value in the club’s new era.

“We want to prove to them how things are different now in a great way," she said. "Being a union club makes us notorious. It makes us really something special. Something people will come from other places to go to.”

Shindle said she was proud of the Star Garden dancers' ability to carry on.

“They've hung in there for so long and have been so tough and supportive of each other. It’s consistently felt like their solidarity is the thing that's kept this together,” she said. “We got this part done. Now we still have some serious ground to cover.”

At one point, while onstage, dancer Reagan led the customers in a chant that they previously used on the picket line:

“Whose club?”

“Our club!”

Sinder, one of the strippers at Star Garden, who worked to unionize the club.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Charlie and Wicked pose together on the reopening night of Star Garden after unionization.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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The backstory

The Star Garden strippers’ fight for a union started in 2022 when they had various workplace health and safety concerns, including unsanitary bathrooms, broken equipment and assault from customers. The dancers were also unhappy with the cut management was taking of their tips. The dancers delivered a petition to management demanding better working conditions. The club owners responded by locking the dancers out.

This set off eight months of the strippers picketing outside the club with the support of an advocacy organization called Strippers United.

A turning point in the battle came in August 2022, when Actors’ Equity, a union that represents over 51,000 live theater performers and stage managers, announced that they would be representing the Star Garden strippers.

The dancers went on to cast their ballots to vote for union representation.

The union vote was challenged by Star Garden management, so the National Labor Relations Board set a hearing on the matter. In the meantime, the club declared bankruptcy and closed for several months.

But right before the NLRB hearing date, Star Garden dancers told us, management reached out and decided to close the bankruptcy case, sit down with the dancers to negotiate and recognize them as unionized employees.

Which brings us to this week.

What now?

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The strippers we spoke with on the scene are hopeful that things can become less tense.

“Hopefully we can prove to [the management] that there's a future where employees and employers can all have equitable contracts and systems. And everyone makes the money that they deserve,” said a dancer who goes by the stage name Charlie.

In this so-called “hot labor summer,” the Star Garden dancers have also brought their pole out to dance on the WGA and SAG picket lines in support of those ongoing strikes.

And they're supporting another unionization effort by dancers at Magic Tavern strip club in Portland, Oregon. The Magic Tavern dancers have been on strike since April. In June they announced they, too, will be joining Actors’ Equity.

“Once we have it set up, others will follow,” Wicked said. “It will be something that people can take up and be like, this is solid. This can be implemented. There is a pathway.”

Her dream? That other clubs will follow Star Garden’s lead, leading to "more union strip clubs where strippers are safe and well paid.”

What’s happened since reopening over six months ago?

Since Star Garden reopened in August 2023, tensions have persisted between dancers and management as they’ve continued to negotiate their first union contract – a process that often takes more than a year.

In the meantime, dancers told us they felt management was taking steps to weaken their position at the bargaining table, inhibiting customers with the high cover charge cost and by not providing cash change.

Recently, Star Garden has reinstalled an ATM, lowered its cover charge from $40 to $25 and hired an human resources consultant.

The dancers also said they felt the club’s management was trying to undermine them by writing up dancers for various HR infractions they felt were unfair.

Dancers sent us copies of written warnings they’ve received from HR, which included write-ups for “simulating a sexual act.”

“We're not allowed to touch ourselves on stage. Lots of girls have gotten written up for that,” said Star Garden dancer Wicked (stage name). “And I'm like, do you not understand what this performance art is?”

Star Garden management declined our request for an interview, but in an email, their attorneys wrote that the rules are there for “general safety” and that the club’s goal is to get the business to “cost neutral, rather than unprofitable as it has been since reopening.”

In the months after reopening, Actors Equity union filed several Unfair Labor Practice charges (ULPs) with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the club was bargaining in bad faith, had gotten in the way of strippers’ earning tips, that management was taking undue disciplinary actions toward the dancers, and had refused club entry or charged higher fees to some union supporters.

In December 2023, the strippers went on a weekend long picket to draw attention to the charges.

In a news release sent to LAist, the club’s attorney alleged that it was the dancers who were disrupting business and making it unprofitable and that "Star Garden denies engaging in any unfair labor practice."

The NLRB has yet to rule on the charges. Since the strike, dancers and management have resumed bargaining over the union contract.

News that Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale has Hollywood buzzing. The legendary film studio, which has grown to include streaming services and cable channels, is currently accepting non-binding bids until Thursday. According to company spokesperson Robert Gibbs, they expect to have a decision about the sale by Christmas.

It's become something of a Hollywood parlor game to guess who will ultimately take over the business, which was founded in 1923 by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner. They owned a movie theater in Pennsylvania before coming to Hollywood to make movies.

Warner Brothers Pictures found one of its first silent picture stars in a German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin. By 1927, the studio made history with its feature-length "talkie" picture: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

Over the years, Warner Brothers has made or distributed countless iconic films including: Casablanca, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon in the 1940's. The list goes on, with titles like A Clockwork Orange, Goodfellas, Barbie, as well as Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons.

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN.

The planned split has not yet happened, and a new buyer might get the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery and its film and TV libraries.

As the film industry continues to consolidate, there's speculation that Warner Brothers' old rival Paramount could take over. Having just merged as Paramount Skydance, CEO David Ellison has already made several overtures.

The idea of streaming giant Netflix buying the company has raised antitrust concerns on Capitol Hill. In an earnings call last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors, "We've been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks. There is no change there."

Industry watchers suggest other suitors could be Comcast, Amazon, or an investor who's not already in the entertainment business.

Regardless of whoever does end up buying the company, theater owners say they hope making movies for cinemas will be a priority.

"As long as we have more movies," says Daniel Loria, senior vice president at The Boxoffice Company, which analyzes data from studios and theaters. "That doesn't mean the same amount, doesn't mean less, but more movies. I think you're going to find folks in the movie theater industry support any business decision that gets us there."

Loria recalls that after Disney purchased Fox and Fox Searchlight, their combined studios significantly reduced the number of films they released in the theaters. Crunching the numbers, Loria says in 2016, a year before the merger announcement, Disney and Fox released a total of 38 theatrical films. This year, the consolidated studios released 18.

That's a problem for theater owners who've been struggling to bring audiences back to cinemas after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down; they're competing with movie-watching on TVs, computers and phones.

Some theater owners and cinephiles also fear studio conglomerates will only greenlight a few big-budget blockbusters, leaving the lower budget indies behind.

"The concern is you're going to see less of that risk taking, less of that experimentation and less of that embracing new directors, new filmmakers in the future," says Max Friend, the CEO of Filmbot, the ticketing platform for independent cinemas in the U.S. "It's really important that there are studios that are funding and supporting, cultivating that kind of work."

He points out that this year, Warner Brothers made a string of critical hits, including Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the horror film Weapons and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.

Friend wonders if the next owner will take similar risks with future original, creative films.

Warner Bros. Discovery is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A downtown hearing kicked off Wednesday, during which a federal judge will consider holding the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court. The hearing is the latest step in a long-running legal saga regarding the city's response to the region’s homelessness crisis.

The hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing a settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners. L.A. Alliance sued the city, and county, in 2020 for failing to adequately address homelessness.

Several witnesses are expected to testify during the contempt-of-court hearing, including Gita O’Neill, the new head of the region’s top homeless services agency, and Matt Szabo, the L.A. city administrative officer.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger watched at least part of Wednesday’s hearing in the courtroom.

Why now?

Carter said in court documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations under court orders. During a hearing last week, the judge pointed to several delays, including recently reported issues related to data and interviewing city employees.

The judge noted that similar concerns have come up at previous hearings. Carter told attorneys for the city in March 2024 that he “indicated to the mayor that I’ve already reached the decision that the plaintiffs were misled” and “this is bad faith,” according to court transcripts.

The judge said in a Nov. 14 order that he’s concerned the “delay continues to this day.”

The contempt hearing is expected to cover whether the city has complied with court orders and provided regular updates to the court under the settlement agreement.

Reducing delays

Attorneys for the city have pushed back against the hearing, filing objections with the judge and making an unsuccessful emergency request with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block it from happening.

City authorities also asked the appeals court to press pause on the judge’s order to appoint a monitor in the case to make sure the city stays on track with the settlement. The city argued that Carter handed the monitor “a blank check to interfere with the democratic process,” according to court documents.

The appeals court partly denied the city’s request. It allowed Wednesday’s hearing to move forward, but it agreed to pause the appointment of Daniel Garrie as monitor.

In light of that response, attorneys for the city have argued that looking at the city’s cooperation with Garrie “would be inappropriate” during the hearing and that L.A. “cannot be held in contempt for either the substance or the manner of its compliance with the order,” according to court documents.

Previous hearings related to the settlement have elicited tense questioning of witnesses and harsh words from the judge, who has been vocal about reducing delays and moving the case forward.

In an opening statement Wednesday, Theane Evangelis — one of the attorneys representing the city — urged the judge to “turn down the heat” on the closely watched case. Evangelis said the “city is constantly under fire” in court while L.A. has made “enormous strides” in getting people off the streets.

Elizabeth Mitchell, lead attorney for L.A. Alliance, said the city treats transparency as a burden.

She said Wednesday that the “city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness” and that the court should address L.A. 's “consistent” delays throughout the case.

What’s next?

The hearing will resume Dec. 2, when more witnesses can appear in person.

City authorities told the court they believed a one-day hearing wouldn't be enough time to go over all the evidence.

If the judge does find the city of L.A. in contempt of court and that it "isn't doing what it promised to do," the consequences could range from nothing all the way up to serious sanctions, according to Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance.

Umhofer told LAist after the hearing that sanctions could include the court ordering more intensive monitoring of the city’s performance, imposing new requirements on the city, monetary penalties or possibly a receivership.

Carter previously stopped short of seizing control of the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in homelessness spending and handing it to a court-appointed receiver, deciding against that option in a June ruling.

L.A. Alliance is considering asking for an extension to the settlement agreement, Umhofer said.

“The city has gotten away with not complying for a very long time,” he said. “So extending the agreement can be among the things that we might ask for ... given the pattern of delay and obstruction."

Evangelis and Bradley Hamburger, another attorney representing the city, declined LAist’s request for comment after the hearing.