CHICAGO – Pole dancing is heating up the Windy City, but not everyone is enamored with the new exercise craze.
A grandmother is threatening to block liquor from being served at Flirty Girl Fitness, a Chicago fitness parlor that specializes in pole dancing. Flirty Girl Fitness is next to the Montessori Academy of Chicago, where the grandmother’s 18-month-old grandson attends, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
At Flirty Girl Fitness, ladies are invited to bring their bikinis and one of the parlor’s towels, head to a private enclosed patio and “relax on our lounge chairs while you sip deliciously healthy smoothies or our yummy cocktails,” according to the parlor’s Web site. One of the drinks offered at Flirty Girl Fitness is a “Flirtini,” or a customized martini.
“Seeing how close that is to the school, drunken ladies in their bikinis doesn’t seem appropriate,” grandmother Kelly Pucci told the Sun-Times.
The patio where the bikini-clad women are invited to drink is scheduled to open in July. Flirty Girl Fitness owner Kerry Knee told the newspaper that the patio will be “completely enclosed.”
There is a question of whether Montessori Academy is a school or a day-care center. That would have to be determined by the Department of Business Affairs and Licensing, which is awaiting public comment from Pucci and other voters who live within 250 feet of Flirty Girl Fitness before deciding whether to issue the “incidental” liquor license, the newspaper reported. Liquor licenses are prohibited within 100 feet of a school, library or house of worship.
Ironically, in a separate story, the S Factor Chicago opened this week to offer classes on striptease-based fitness. The founder of S Factor, named for the curvy S of a woman’s body, is actress Sheila Kelley. Other actresses who are taking the class include Teri Hatcher, Kate Hudson and Allison Janney.
“To say this is a striptease workout isn’t quite right,” Kelley said in today’s Chicago Tribune. “It’s gentle yet strenuous. It’s an intimate, strong, feminine workout. To me, it’s really beautiful and natural.”