The Foxhole: Go for the pie, stay for the pole dancing
Strippers, alcohol, rivalries and pickup trucks? Behind the scenes at one of rural Ohio's most notorious nightspots
Hannah Curran
Issue date: 11/9/06 Section: Features
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As I teetered atop 6-inch platforms in the strip club dressing room, draped in Mardi Gras beads and surrounded by half-naked girls showing off tattoos in places I didn't even know tattoos were possible, I realized that I may have learned more in the past 20 minutes from girls making $25 per lap dance than in an entire year of my $40,000 Kenyon education. Perhaps that's why even seven years after opening, the Foxhole continues to fascinate Kenyon students.
Rumors involving one-armed strippers and frat initiations underlie most of the Newcastle, Ohio institution's sketchy reputation. Ignoring all the disgusted faces and the fact that I don't look old enough to vote, let alone enter a topless bar, I borrowed a truck last Friday night to interview the infamous one-armed "Ivy" myself. After bribing a female friend with a stop to Peggy Sue's, a pie shop across the street from the Foxhole, we drove 25 minutes east down Route 229 to enjoy the best of Newcastle's pie-eating and pole-dancing activities.
Picture an oversized outhouse surrounded by pickups, heralded only by a slot-lettered sign advertising "Topless Dancers!" and you have the Foxhole. The cover charge of $10 includes a free "pop," although the older Caucasian men constituting nearly all the audience bring coolers of their favorite beer to enhance the show. After assuring the intimidating bouncer that we were not rival dancers, we clutched our Diet Pepsis and each other's hands past a curtained "private lap dance room" to a smoke-congested, mirrored lounge, complete with stage and pole surrounded by chairs. A DJ booth hid behind an old Pac-Man machine, which the strippers idly played in their thongs as they await their turn onstage. From behind, the deep-throated announcer called out the girls' stage names and reminded the audience to pay for the dancers' services.
None of the truckers seemed to respond to this; rather than jostling up front for physical interaction, they sat against the back wall, passively muttering to their boys and munching on Doritos as if this were Sunday Night Football. Three males that looked hardly 15 huddle in a corner, daring each other to approach the stage. I was starting to feel slightly uncomfortable; after all, I was sporting a polo shirt, a ponytail, and a uterus. Suddenly, a nipple ring rubbed against my shoulder and a beer-scented voice whispered, "Gay crowd, huh?"
Rumors involving one-armed strippers and frat initiations underlie most of the Newcastle, Ohio institution's sketchy reputation. Ignoring all the disgusted faces and the fact that I don't look old enough to vote, let alone enter a topless bar, I borrowed a truck last Friday night to interview the infamous one-armed "Ivy" myself. After bribing a female friend with a stop to Peggy Sue's, a pie shop across the street from the Foxhole, we drove 25 minutes east down Route 229 to enjoy the best of Newcastle's pie-eating and pole-dancing activities.
Picture an oversized outhouse surrounded by pickups, heralded only by a slot-lettered sign advertising "Topless Dancers!" and you have the Foxhole. The cover charge of $10 includes a free "pop," although the older Caucasian men constituting nearly all the audience bring coolers of their favorite beer to enhance the show. After assuring the intimidating bouncer that we were not rival dancers, we clutched our Diet Pepsis and each other's hands past a curtained "private lap dance room" to a smoke-congested, mirrored lounge, complete with stage and pole surrounded by chairs. A DJ booth hid behind an old Pac-Man machine, which the strippers idly played in their thongs as they await their turn onstage. From behind, the deep-throated announcer called out the girls' stage names and reminded the audience to pay for the dancers' services.
None of the truckers seemed to respond to this; rather than jostling up front for physical interaction, they sat against the back wall, passively muttering to their boys and munching on Doritos as if this were Sunday Night Football. Three males that looked hardly 15 huddle in a corner, daring each other to approach the stage. I was starting to feel slightly uncomfortable; after all, I was sporting a polo shirt, a ponytail, and a uterus. Suddenly, a nipple ring rubbed against my shoulder and a beer-scented voice whispered, "Gay crowd, huh?"