Sex Before The Internet

Narrator: In the '90s, sex and scandal were in the air.

Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's sex tape

was making the rounds...

Bill Clinton denied having an affair...

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Narrator: And in a once-progressive place

like New York, Mayor Rudy Giuliani

was trying to rid the city of smut.

While the strip clubs in the Big Apple were covering up,

one club in Atlanta was taking it all off

and raking in some big bucks.

It was called The Gold Club.

Cook: This big, black club with gold lions out front

and a gold neon sign.

And you wonder, "What's going on in there?"

Lynch: It was just something

that I had never experienced before.

The women there were so beautiful.

Norman: There were blends

and just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful women.

Cook: One year, I sold over $380,000 worth of champagne.

The guys liked to drink

from the.

So you would stand and arch your back,

and somebody would pour the champagne

down the stream of your back, and a guy

would be right there -- TCKK! -- it all up.

Norman: It was, like, a very live, bumping club.

All kinds of famous people coming in. I met Madonna there.

Narrator: Celebrities reportedly flocked in

from all over the country to get a taste of The Gold Club.

Anybody who's anybody has been in that club.

So you're talking Patrick Ewing,

Dan Aykroyd, Michael Jordan.

Narrator: But all of the press also caught the eye

of federal prosecutors.

As the '90s came to a close,

The Gold Club was about to go on trial.

Just a rumor mill. "Oh, the feds are watching. The feds are..."

And I'm like, "No, they're not. No, they're not.'

And next thing you know, yeah, they are.

Sadow: At that point, The Gold Club case

was the largest racketeering case

in the history of the state of Georgia.

Guart: Patrick Ewing. He was a New York Knick.

He says he got sex in one of the VIP rooms

in The Gold Club twice.

Cook: And, of course, there was going on

and there was sex going on.

That was the nature of the beast.

It was a forbidden beast, but it happened.

Cook: Everybody has something, a story to tell.

Mine just happens to be

a little bit dangerous at times and risqué.

But it was fun.

It was so much fun.

I would do it all over again. I wouldn't change a thing.

So, the first time I started dancing, it was by accident.

It was my 19th birthday.

Some friends of mine took me out in a limo,

and we were having a great time,

and they said they were going to take me to the bordello.

So we go in. It's a strip club.

And there's this girl up there,

and I felt bad for her because I'm like,

"She's not that cute and she can't dance."

And just as the music shut off at the end of her set,

I go, "I could do a better job than that."

I got up there, and I did it.

It was off the chain. I had so much fun.

The guys were so into me, and I just --

I felt sexy and free

and woke up the next day hung over,

but I opened my purse, and there was $900 in there.

And I'm like...

And that's how I started.

Narrator: In the mid-1990s, Atlanta was on the rise.

The city was growing and hosted everything

from the Super Bowl to the Olympics.

It meant that travelers from all over the world

were coming into the city with plenty of cash to burn.

Cook: Back then, the strip-club industry as a whole

in Atlanta, it's second to Coca-Cola.

It's a huge deal.

There's strip clubs all over the place.

Gardner: Atlanta nightlife was something spectacular.

It started from 8:00 that night to 8:00 the next morning.

A strip-club Mecca anyway.

You know, it's the home of the strip club.

So, you know, that was -- that was always moving,

and then you had your after-hours spots.

It was another life.

It was like the Vegas of the South.

Narrator: But this Vegas of the South

had something that very few other cities

were offering at the time.

Sadow: Strip clubs in Atlanta became a big deal

because you had total nudity.

And at the same time, there were other places

that had partial, but nothing like Atlanta,

and it was publicized as being so.

Atlanta was, at that point in time,

still kind of a wild, wide open type of social scene.

Narrator: Wide open with total nudity

thanks to the musical "Hair," which came to town in 1970

and challenged local laws around full frontal.

Prosecutors tried to block the show

for violating obscenity laws,

but the show producers fired back and won a lawsuit.

The next day, all of the Atlanta strip clubs went fully nude,

unlike many other cities in the country,

which ushered in a slew of adult entertainment clubs

in the middle of the Bible Belt.

Man: "Girls," "babes," "babes," and "fannies."

Sadow: Unlike some of the bigger cities,

it was just coming into its own,

and a lot of celebrities and athletes liked coming here

and needed something to do while they were here.

You wouldn't go to Stone mountain

if you were an athlete or a celebrity.

You were looking for more fun, late-night fun.

Narrator: But among Atlanta's many

storied adult entertainment venues,

one club stood out among the pack.

Cook: The Gold Club brought that element of taboo.

Back then, that was like, "Ooh!

Going to The Gold Club."

Other strip clubs in Atlanta, you know,

it was more catered to, you know -- for, you know,

the hip-hop scene, you know, your Magic City's.

But The Gold Club?

Ah, it was -- it was a standard.

That set you apart right there.

The club itself was iconic, and it was huge.

And all the girls in the city,

that was their goal, to make it to The Gold Club.

You had the floor,

and it's just rows of seating and then tables,

and then you have this massive stage,

and then there's stairs that go up from each side of the stage,

and it wraps all the way around with gold rooms.

And then you had this balcony area

that looks over the whole entire club.

Gardner: Dancers, they were very selective.

The house moms, the management,

they made sure they select some of the best young ladies

that the city can offer.

They ranged from beautiful brunettes,

blondes, redheads.

You had exotic women.

You had some Black, Caucasian, Latino women.

There was some of the best that came out of "Playboy."

Narrator: The Gold Club was known nationally

as the place to be, the place to work,

and literally the gold standard for dancers and patrons.

We had a couple girls that went down to The Gold Club,

and they said the money was so good

that they didn't want to come back to Milwaukee.

It made you like. "I want to go."

It was intimidating because I thought,

"Oh, my God. Look at this place."

I walked in the front door.

I didn't know it was fully nude. Fully nude!

And I said, "I'm here for an audition

with the general manager."

And he said, "Would you like a shot?

You look a little nervous." I was like, "I would love one."

So he got me a shot of vodka.

We go in the dressing room, and he says, "Drop your dress."

And I'm like, "Drop my dress?"

So I just let my dress down.

I had sweat running down my arm. I was terrified.

He's like, "Now turn around."

Then he goes, "You give her any night she wants."

"What?! I just got hired at The Gold Club?!"

I was so excited. So excited.

I got a job at The Gold Club.

By the time that I hit 18, I was ready to go

to, like, a professional place where it was, you know, classy.

I had girlfriends that had made a lot of money,

and it was easy to make money.

The goal?

My young version?

Like, a goal to be, like, in "Playboy"

and also to be an exotic dancer.

When you think about songs like Motley Crue writing...

And you're seeing these beautiful girls do this.

I'm like, "I can do this. I want to do this."

When I first started dancing,

I took it extremely serious with the way that I would dance.

It was almost like a performance, like being a Fly Girl.

The first song, you keep your top on.

The second one, you take your top off.

And the third, you take your bottoms off.

And that's if you have enough money.

People would tip you 20s, 50s, 100s, whatever.

I kept it on until the end.

But, yeah, you definitely got to --

When you're on the main stage, you could pick the music

that you wanted to dance to.