We’re showcasing a few new stories in our blog over the next few days to highlight all of the problems, harassment and illegal activities that happen across our county in strip clubs and gentlemen’s clubs.
We’re proud to feature a very gutsy woman named Brandi Campbell who has worked tirelessly and ultimately became a champion of women’s right in dealing with unfair pay and tactics used at her former club. She was successful in suing the club and won her legal case.
These are her stories. First here is the opening statement you’ll find when you visit her stripper rights advocacy website. http://stripperlaborrights.com
My name is Brandi Campbell.
Across the United States, most strippers are employees lied to by their bosses, who tell them they are independent contractors or lease holders. Under these mislabels, we experience difficulties in attaining Title VII protections, healthcare, workman’s compensation, retirement benefits, the ability to unionize, bread and roses and a host of other benefits available only to employees. In addition to lying bosses, the strip club industry is rife with scabs.
I made this website because I was dissatisfied with the mainstream media depictions of my litigation and stripper labor rights activity. I was also dissatisfied with the politically correct, dishonest landscape of the sex worker rights movement.
Strippers are suing their workplaces for the recognition of their employee status and all of the protections that come with it. This website is dedicated to articles discussing the movement and related subjects. This website is in solidarity with all strippers who are fighting for employee protections, and exists to give a platform to them, regardless of who they are or their politics outside the context of this struggle. Strippers of the world, unite.
Song Wars – A Method of Harassment from Strip Club DJ’s.
January 25, 2019 – San Diego, CA. Preface – when I first saw this story from Brandi’s site, I had no idea of the level of harassment, intimidation and lack of basic respect that women face daily while simply trying to do their work at strip clubs. Please be aware – the following contains strong language and profanities.
Brandi’s story originally published on her site January 12, 2019.
Ladies and Gentlemen, next up on Shakers Studies I’d like to present to you…. STEVEN MICHAEL LOE, douchebag DJ extraordinaire, let’s give him a hand! Living his best life as a strip club DJ, Loe is clinically obese, in his late forties, resides in a Nebraska trailer park, and is a recovering alcoholic! 
DJ Steve Loe’s voice sounds like a cross between Tom Hanks in Cast Away and a whiny Neal Young song. He gets to dominate the club through his microphone. Loe is the mad hatter in the wonderland of Shakers, and he wants an Alice to drink tea with and humor his insanity. He has come up in a few Shakers Studies posts already. Loe, like many DJs with nothing else going for them, likes to be a puppeteer in a strip club theater, pulling strings and queuing laugh tracks. Loe may be big and violent, offing strippers one by one like King Henry VIII did to wives, but on the inside Loe is a very small person.
What are Song Wars in Strip Clubs?
In strip clubs when DJs want to fuck with a particular dancer, there is a standard protocol that they follow. Long ago, I dubbed this a Song War. A Song War is where a DJ will select songs based on the things that a target may be wearing, saying or doing.
For example, a dancer might be wearing the color yellow, so a DJ will put on songs with the word yellow in the lyrics. If a dancer’s name is Sunshine, a DJ may put on songs with the word “sunshine” in the lyrics. If a DJ is trying to get a dancer to think that he likes her, he may play love songs with lyrics that may relate to what she looks like. If a dancer then asks if the songs are being played for her, DJs may try to make the dancer think she is crazy, by denying any intention of playing those songs on purpose.
Eventually the dancer will become so obsessed with listening to and analyzing song lyrics, that she will find meanings in songs that aren’t there, in completely arbitrary songs that have nothing to do with her. At this point, a DJ may play songs like “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell, or “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger, in an effort to try to drive her off the edge. I have witnessed this many times in many strip clubs all over the country. The DJ snickers away in his booth, in his sad little life, at the torment that he inflicted on a young woman half his age. That is what DJs like Steve Loe are into– frantically googling song lyrics with one hand, dick in the other hand, thinking— “Yeah, this song will really get her!” Most of these fucking yokels can’t play any musical instruments themselves.
I noticed that Loe did Song Wars as soon as I started working at Shakers. Unlike other DJs who do Song Wars, Loe would say things into the microphone like, “Subliminal songs” really fast, and make other remarks about putting subliminal messages in his song selections, as though he thought he was being sneaky or original. He wasn’t, of course. Song Wars breathe life into the otherwise miserable waking hours of DJs like Loe. When Loe first started directing annoying songs toward me, it was as though he thought I would be freaked out by it, as though he was unaware that I have experienced a Song War before.
He found the online photo of me holding one of my rabbits, so he started playing songs about rabbits. He began playing songs about going “crazy,” and songs about lawsuits. He would spend lots of time staring me down through the many mirrors at Shakers. I don’t know if I have ever encountered a male coworker more obsessed with bothering me in my life. The best thing for a dancer to do in a Song War is to ignore the sad ugly dweeb in the booth who is starving for your attention. Steve was genuinely confused that I wouldn’t give his Song Wars attention. I didn’t flinch when he started it, because by that time I had nerves of steel when it came to ignoring DJs, as that was not my first rodeo.
Inside Shakers Strip Club
If a DJ is truly decent and gets along with the dancers, he doesn’t need to stop them as soon as possible and notify them that he is a good person. But, I told him that I didn’t think he was a douche, in order to get him to leave me alone. For all of the sweetness and charm that the club had at times, Loe was like a big fat worm munching his way through the apple that is Shakers, rotting everything with his volcanic anger. Loe was a big fat elephant on the microphone, omnipresent in every room of the club, through the speaker system.
I don’t know how Dan Robinson enforced club rules prior to getting sued, but I worked at Shakers after he lost the lawsuit. What I experienced was a heavy dependence on Steve Loe to enforce the rules that broke labor laws. For example, I wrote this article without naming him, while working at Shakers. Loe is the DJ who tried to bully me into not reading. He told dancers rules that Dan and Dillon didn’t want to say, for fear of being sued. At times, he told me to talk to customers who had no intention of giving me money, including regulars who had previously assaulted me.
Bouncer’s Not Bouncing or Protecting Women’s Rights in Strip Clubs
Loe is also a bouncer at the club, although I never saw him kick out and predators who had sexually assaulted women or took photographs. While his songs were playing, he would walk around and tell dancers certain rules. It is a lot easier for strip clubs to win lawsuits if they can blame the DJ for enforcing rules. Clubs can just say that the DJ is not a manager and that his commands were mere “suggestions.” Loe does the dirty work, as is standard in a lot of clubs that try to weasel around labor laws. It is unlikely that any of Loe’s behavior was substantial enough for me to sue the club, even as it walked a fine line, and was at times abusive on a personal level.
Loe makes statements over his microphone about a disdain for “negative people.” He makes public proclamations about being a fan of peace and love, and is an enthusiast of Rastafarian culture. Like many people who proclaim to be dedicated to Peace, Loe spends his time making the lives of vulnerable people hellish, harassing labor activists, paling around with customers who sexually assault dancers, and protecting exploitative business owners like Dan Robinson. His behavior is similar to the way that crazy Christians get excited about their church, but then secretly abuse vulnerable people who they have access to within their organizations.
Other forms of Strip Club Intimidation – Lights, Camera, Disgusting Comments
What’s important for dancers to remember is that might doesn’t equal right. Loe is a company man, who uses his physical intimidation and harassment to get rid of whoever the club wants gone, or to do things that he wants them to do. When he thought I was seizure-prone, he flashed strobe lights in my eyes. Somehow he found out where I was staying in the Lincoln area, so he would make comments about that over the microphone too. While in Nebraska, I was donating and visiting a local women’s support network. They know all about Steve Loe, the strip club DJ who harasses women. If you are reading this and have experienced Steve’s abuse, feel free to privately contact me and I will direct you to services that can empathize with you. For most of my time at Shakers, Loe was focused on getting me to crack psychologically, so Dan Robinson would have a reason to get rid of me. He did not succeed on his own.
Shakers Van
At times, Loe has a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to interacting with women. As a result of that, as is the case in most strip clubs, there are dancers who are loyal to the club or who are otherwise angry/envious/insane. People like that do not like people like me working in their clubs. When Steve recognized this type of advantage, he used it to harm me and my livelihood.
I was posting The Seville Series while I was working at Shakers. Thin-skinned Steve was freaking out about it, talking loudly regarding my posts and comparing himself to the individuals who I posted about from Seville. He and a couple of other dancers orchestrated a pincer effect, with both he and they coming at me from different angles.
He spent time shouting things about me over the microphone, playing music to motivate violence, and encouraging people to harass me. He would bounce up and down and rock back and forth in his seat, giggling and making deep, warlock cackles into the microphone. He would state, over the microphone, that bothering me makes him feel like he is “high.” He would scream into the microphone about how he loved to “push buttons” and then play songs about “pushing buttons.” As a recovering alcoholic, Steve has participated in therapeutic support programs. However, during the time I was working there and he was harassing me, he stated over the microphone that bothering me was his “therapy.” Steve would state over the microphone that I was past my prime because I was in my 30’s.
He read on The Seville Series that some of the Seville workers were bothering me about their perception that I needed to work out more, so Loe started saying the same types of things over the microphone. It was strange to be fat-shamed by an obese man when I am healthy and fit. I said I wanted him to stop doing those kinds of things, but he just gas lit. He is a weakling, a flimsy person, barely floating above survival and sobriety. It was no surprise to find someone like this in a nowheresville Nebraska strip club, but still traumatizing when experiencing it. I didn’t deserve it.
Asking for Help in the Strip Club – Getting None from the Owner.
I wrote a letter to Dan Robinson near the end of my time at Shakers, describing some of Loe’s abuse and asking that it stop. Dan denied everything in a response letter that he gave to me. When Dan delivered this letter to me, Dillon smirked and swiveled about, following Dan every which way like an abandoned puppy. I don’t know if he was supposed to be acting like a witness or what the fuck.
Loe never stopped harassing me, even until my very last night at Shakers, attempting to get under my skin with his demented blood lust. I intentionally avoided him and his stupid songs. As stated, his type of abuse and harassment did not necessarily pertain to labor laws, so I chose not to sue Shakers. While I did have the option to report him to police, I chose not to do that, because I dislike police and didn’t think it would do any good. If I stayed at Shakers, he probably would have motivated someone to kill me. His frenzied emotional state was beyond bizarre.
The following entries on Shakers Studies will examine the dancers with whom Loe and the Robinson family shared a mutual disdain for me. As a final bit of advice on Loe, for future dancers who may experience his harassment or intimidation— just imagine Loe stumbling, bending over, spreading his butt cheeks apart for jail police after his drunk driving arrests, putting on his jump suit and crying himself to sleep on a cement slab while his wife and daughter went hungry. That is who he is. When Loe is doing everything in his meager power to break you open and cause harm, just think about that blowhard in those moments.
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Ladies have you been a victim, or do you know anyone who has been the target of harassment, violence, intimidation, or unfair pay schemes in a strip club or gentleman’s club? If so please contact us today by calling 1-800-214-1010. You have all the rights to hold these businesses accountable for fair pay and and safe practices.
