Openings

Red Hook’s Paris Burlesque Club Set to Open Saturday

It’s been a few months since David Ruggiero, owner of Paris Burlesque Club in Red Hook, took his case in front of Community Board 6’s Public Safety Committee and emerged victorious. Despite the name, the Paris Burlesque Club, he argued, would feature nary a runway or stripper pole; instead the “dames” would peel down to “bikini bottoms only” and would be backed up by a crew of mimes, jugglers, comedians, jazz musicians (but perhaps sadly, no Aguilera), and “world class security.”

Vintage loveseats.
Vintage loveseats. Photo: Home and Apartment by Marc

Now it seems the Paris Burlesque Club is hurtling toward a Saturday grand opening; in recent months, its facade has gotten an upgrade in the form of some gold-painted handrails and an Eiffel Tower painting on a cinder-blocked window. Print advertisements (“Located outside the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel”; “Plenty of free parking”) have started to appear in the local free newspapers, like the one here in the Red Hook Star Revue depicting a fish-netted and whale-bone-corseted dame — way to bring it back to Red Hook’s ancient seafaring traditions! While the club’s interior has been kept under wraps, a few dimly lit photos showing an eclectic layout are up online. We spotted a cluster of vintage pleated love seats (see above), a panoply of gold-framed mirrors, and a semicircle of regal bergères set up around a low platformed stage, all of which suggest less of a strip club and more of a very naughty furniture party, the kind of thing that happens when the lights go down inside the Goodwill showroom for the night.

Paris Burlesque Club; 18 Commerce St., nr. Columbia St., Red Hook

Red Hook’s Paris Burlesque Club Set to Open Saturday