Shakers Studies: Charlene Hoeppner

TUSCL.com is a website that stands for The Ultimate Strip Club List. It has some repulsive comments and reviews from customers that most dancers don't like to read, but the site is also a great resource for traveling dancers who need to find a club. I used it throughout most of my career, in conjunction with StripperWeb.com. TUSCL.com has a review of Shakers that describes the dancers as “Corn fed girls!!!!” and goes on to describe them in other unflattering ways.

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Charlene Hoeppner is one corn fed woman who has worked at Shakers for a very long time. She uses Charlie as her stage name, and speaks in a vernacular dialect found in urban settings. She used to roll around on stage and allow customers to peer into her anus hole while her head was between her knees, pointed toward the floor. In the dressing room, she has stated that she usually gives customers her personal contact information if she likes them. She has a lesbian life partner named Jozette Cotton, but Charlie is also fairly sympathetic to male desires at work. She doesn't seem to understand women who have boundaries. Charlie's photograph is used on a large advertising vehicle that Shakers purchased prior to getting sued. Her photograph is also used in the front entrance of Shakers that customers see upon entering. She is good friends with the Shakers staff and is allowed to bully whoever she wants, whenever she wants, while she is at Shakers.

There are Shakers dancers who I have posted about, but have clarified that I don't actually hate. Charlie is not one of them. I fucking despise her and would shout with joy if I read a news report tomorrow that she died in some horrible roadside accident, if her brains were splattered all over the pavement and she left Earth forever. I'd sigh with relief that she no longer walked the planet. The world would be a much better place without her in it.

Charlene Hoeppner was horrible to me long before anything about my stripper labor rights activity came to light. During my early days at Shakers, should would go out of her way to approach customers who I had in my clutches, while I was already walking them to the lap dance rooms. She would strike up conversations with them if she had ever met them before, during times when they were handing me money or within steps of a lap dance booth. This is a low, scummy thing to do to another stripper, but that is the type of disgusting and repugnant territorial beast that Charlene Hoeppner is. Sometimes she loudly talked about me with customers while she was giving lap dances, and I was giving dances in nearby booths. She would inform customers that she did not like me and that she was happy I usually left before midnight. She would be a listening ear to men who complained that they could not put their hands on me or sexually violate my boundaries. People like Charlene Hoeppner are the reason why many strippers prefer not to work around escorts. Often times, escorts promote rape culture and sympathize with men who want sexual services.

To understand Charlene Hoeppner, one must understand what a typical Midwestern tundra pig is like-- territorial, chubby, spitting their venom at women who make them feel threatened, defending men who sexually assault women, with the temperament and attitude of Miss Piggy. Charlene Hoeppner has family origins in Florida, but she has been a Nebraskan for years. She's the type of gross Midwestern tundra pig that is mean to women who are quirky, attractive, intelligent, don’t go to tanning salons and are eclectic-- women like me. I avoided Charlene Hoeppner like the bubonic plague while I was at Shakers, as most travelers or interesting people would want to avoid a territorial, snortling charging beast like her. Most strip clubs have one. Many fast food places have them, as well as a large range of other places, such as the DMV or TSA. Charlene Hoeppners of the world are petty, confrontational, and they're not too afraid of assault and battery charges. They're usually friends with management or authority figures, who will protect their asses if things go wrong.

Charlene Hoeppner once came to Chicago to try to dance here, but she did not succeed financially. She cannot succeed anywhere outside of Shakers, where she can terrorize whomever she wants with the approval of Dan Robinson. She is not attractive of socially skilled enough to succeed elsewhere. She left Chicago angry and disoriented.

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Except for my first couple of weeks, I didn't see Charlene Hoeppner much while I was at Shakers. Fortunately, she was off doing other things. Prior to my coming to Shakers, she ventured into co-owning a Nebraska tanning salon called Caribbean Tan. She is dumb though, so she lost about $15,000 with her shitty business plan. She also tried to be a business partner for a company called Westgate Travel. She's a crappy business person, so she still has to dance to make ends meet.

Charlie returned more frequently during my last week or two at Shakers, after Bergen&Seamans started going crazy. She pleasantly approached me on my second to last night of work. That was out of the ordinary. She asked me why I wasn't going on stage any more. I said that I didn't want to talk about it. She didn't bother me for the rest of that shift. Then, on my last night at Shakers, she went back to being horrible.

On my last night working at Shakers, I was sexually assaulted by a customer who touched my breast. It happened on the floor, before I even took him to the VIP room. Because Seamans&Bergen had already slandered me to all of the other customers, I had to talk to a disgusting guy who assaulted me. I took his money to the front podium and notified the staff that I was doing a VIP. Dillon had me go in room #7, because that was the only room with a camera in it. Dillon wasn't trying to protect me from sexual assault. I never saw Dillon protect any woman from sexual assault. The club was just trying to get footage of me engaging in prostitution so they could get rid of me. I am not a prostitute though, so they didn't get any footage. None of the other VIP rooms had cameras in them, because lots of hookers and rapists are at Shakers. Dan Robinson doesn't want to have footage of that and get in trouble for trafficking.

The customer who I took to room #7 left the session early, because I wouldn't fuck him or let him touch me. The customer spent the remainder of his time sitting at the bar, trash talking me with Seamans&Bergen. Seamans&Bergen spent a lot of time being complicit with sexual predators and rapists. They are sexually predatory themselves, so it didn't surprise me that they were hanging out with this guy.

After that customer left, I found another guy who didn't assault me, and took him to the ATM. While he was at the ATM, Charlene Hoeppner approached us. She was drunk and slurring her words, while swaying aggressively. She stepped her body in front of the customer and I and the ATM, and repeatedly urged him not to spend money on me. Steve Loe noticed what she was doing and chuckled, then walked away, because he is a low functioning coward who is friends with her.

Charlene Hoeppner and many other rapey people at Shakers make assumptions about the specific things I said to customers while I hustled there. Because I talked dirty and discussed sexually explicit subject matter, because of my intense eye contact, and because customers are often dumb, they often assumed that I was offering sexual services to them. Not once did I ever offer to have sex with a customer. Not once did I ever offer services to a customer that he did not receive. That didn't matter though, because customers would often leave disappointed, because I didn't do sexual things that all of the Shakers prostitutes did for them. That was never my fault. I never offered, but customers would make assumptions, then lie and complain about the specifics of what I said to them. Charlene Hoeppner and other predators at Shakers did think that this was my fault. Misogynists take a man's word and don't believe women, so there was a lot of that going on at Shakers. It's a symptom of rape culture, and Shakers financially benefits from rape culture.

On my last night at Shakers, Charlene Hoeppner followed me around. Unlike Lil' Sash who, in all her creepiness, kept a bit of distance while I was with customers-- Charelene Hoeppner put her body in between customers and I. I was tempted to punch her in the face, but I was so very outnumbered. It would not have ended well. Hoeppner would tell customers that I am a liar and urge them not to get dances. She would tell them that I lied to other customers and intentionally got them kicked out of the club. I never did that. I talked dirty, offered nothing, and said I wanted to do dances for them.

Seamans&Bergen didn't know quite how to fuck up my hustle once I was actually with a customer, because they weren't as aggressive and ruthless as Charlene Hoeppner. Molly Ruterbories assaulted me once, but that was about it. I was still able to make money if it was just Seamans&Bergen who I was up against, but not Hoeppner. At one point during my last shift, after Charlene Hoeppner took hundreds of dollars in sales away from me, she walked past me, winked, and said,

Thaz how yew do it, Boo.”

Bergen looked astounded and awe-struck with her. Then, the two fat lesbian hookers walked away and took my stolen customer to the VIP room together. I left early while Dan Robinson smiled and cheered that I was never coming back.

Rape and sexual assault happen at places like Shakers. If you are a dancer who is attractive, makes eye contact, or says sexually explicit things, that doesn't mean you are going to have sex with a customer or do anything you don't want to do. So often at Shakers, I witnessed sexual assault. So often at Shakers, men expected sexual services that I was unwilling to provide and never offered. So often at Shakers, men complained that I did not give them sexual services. So often at Shakers, staff and dancers believed what the men said. So often in society, people do not believe women. Shakers is a terrible place for new dancers to work at, because they don't know any better. Management doesn't do anything to stop it from happening. Shakers is a toxic place, partly because of people like Charlene Hoeppner.