The city of Houston granted a demolition permit yesterday to a company called Magnolia Services, allowing it to demolish the Pleasures Men’s Club, aka Pleasures Cabaret, off Highway 290 at 34th St. As aficionados of Houston history (as well as lurkers on the website of the shuttered strip club) will no doubt recall, Pleasures was the latest incarnation of Gigi’s Cabaret, where in 1991 the former Vickie Lynn Hogan, fresh off stints working at Walmart and Red Lobster, gave a fateful lap dance to her future husband, octogenarian oil (and breast) man J. Howard Marshall II. The rest, as they say, is history. As was Marshall, only 14 months after the wedding.
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Smith died in 2007. The 5,211-sq.-ft. stucco feeder-road compound at 11150 Northwest Fwy. where she first shimmied her way to attention reached the apex of its international fame early last year: The Gigi’s meet-and-greet scene and the strip club’s vintage interior were featured on the London stage in Anna Nicole, an opera based on Smith’s tragic-fairy-tale life that premiered to rave reviews. And now, according to today’s demo report, the building is set to be torn down.
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: The End of Pleasures, Miracle at 34th St. and 290: The London Opera Debut of Houston’s Pleasures Cabaret
Photos: Candace Garcia
12 Comments
Shouldn’t it have a historical marker?
More like a HYSTERICAL marker! Eh? Eh?
We can still put one up in front with a highway sign.
“On this spot in 1991…”
What a shame to live in a city that cares nothing about its history.
The Gilly’s of the ’90s…I thought things were supposed to get better in the future?
Once they clear out all that atheistic gobbledy-gook about the Big Bang and dinosaurs, they’ll have room for this in history text books.
I’m surprised the place hasn’t already caught fire, like Gilley’s did.
I declare this post a classic.
Make sure no one puts a black light to the debris— bound to blind you!
This comment “From Purdueenginerd:
Make sure no one puts a black light to the debris— bound to blind you!” actually made me feel ill for a split second. I just imagined a black light somehow falling upon this mass of debris and there being glowing splotches all over it. Ick.
The guys who tear this down will need to wear hazmat suits and it will soon be declared a superfund site by the city.
New strip center? heh