So, we’re all happy in Castlereagh Street and we thought we better register an official business name.
I suggested we call it Bobbi’s Pole Studio…
“we’ll be like Toni and Guy, like if you get a haircut by them I reckon you pay more, so we can get people to pay more for a lesson with you! Also, what if we open somewhere else, not in Sydney.
Bobbi, being very humble, was like “nah, as if we’d open anywhere else and I don’t need it named after me”
but I nagged her and she eventually agreed.
Not long after, Bobbi’s sister Kim opened a studio in Perth (aha, I was RIGHT!).
Suzie Q became a teacher around then too, I believe she was 17! Maybe 18, not much older, she was just as fabulous as the others!
Foxy was a student (later a teacher) and her and her husband gave us a proposal which included a logo and website idea (really? We need a website?) but the clincher was the little folder came with 2 business cards for me and Bobbi, SOLD!
Toward the end of the first year someone contacted me from overseas, (I think he called me, MAYBE it was an email) to see if we would run an Australian pole competition and send the winner to the world finals. By then pole Divas had opened in Melbourne, I think there was Princess Meme in Wollongong and Christy Love had opened in South Australia. So we were like “sure why not”.
We found a venue, the Bourbon and Beefsteak in the Cross that had an upstairs function room. We got some judges and a photographer. The photographer took photos of all the finalists and we thought we’d do a calendar but I had some foresight (go me!!): The comp was in August, so by the time we got the photos back and made a Calendar (back in the days when you had to order 1000 of something to make it cheap) that just MAYBE, even though we were SO popular haha, they wouldn’t sell out.
So we made a WALL BOOK (first and last of it’s kind I think)….the idea was you could put any photo up, and change it whenever you wanted to a different pole dancer and it would last FOREVER (no dates needed) so yeah, we got 1000 printed, or 500 or A LOT! And ten years later the prize for MPDA was that you DIDN’T get another wall book! We sold them at the merch stand for YEARS, then they became a gift with purchase, then we ended up walking around to all the mechanics in Miranda giving them away!
Ah, the old Wall Book, byeeeeee! Wish I’d kept one though haha
Oh, so, back to Miss Pole Dance Australia 2005… a student offered to do backstage catering, bless, and we wondered why competitors weren’t chowing down on her epic seafood platters before they went on stage hahaha. She made AMAZING super expensive crab and lobster and oyster and prawn platters… again, didn’t really think that one through. Catering, tick!
Maxi and a couple of Burlesque Dancers were doing a half time show but we’d only bought 2 spot lights for the main stage and they were doing their show on plinths up the back, so off someone went to the hardware shop to buy a couple more lights, those workmen lights, not ideal. Last minute technical issues meant it was WAY overcrowded, you COULDN’T move and only like 30 of the 200 people in the audience had a seat. I actually couldn’t get to the judges so their sheets had to be handed through the audience so we could tally them up (fuck, we didn’t bring a calculator!!) Live and learn huh?
Jamilla won with a Jade Split (it was obvious when she did it!)
We were witnessing history, nobody had seen anything like it, incredible!
SO that was our winner off to the world finals! BEAT THAT BITCHES!!
Alas, a few weeks before the world finals she got injured PLUS the organiser said she couldn’t have brass poles (they were using 45mm stainless) so she didn’t go. I’m not sure it even ran, it was either that year or the next year that he ran off with everyone’s money. Bullet dodged.
Time went on and we got an extra room for hens nights two floors down.
Have I even mentioned that we had no air con and the toilets were two stories down and you had to get a key to open them? I decided that when people went to the loo they could read promotions so “loo news” was born! Instead of something big to attach the key to, we made laminated sheets to promo workshops and stuff, we called it LOO NEWS… (when we moved that became STEREO NOTICES (loo news was better!)
A chick in my mothers group was a journo so organised this cringy Women’s Day article but from that we got HEAPS of press, TV shows, gigs, we opened an agency Bobbi’s Babes cause we were getting so many gigs. Oh, and a student got our logo as a tattoo. I went back to my corporate job for a month and was making calls during my lunch break “do you want g-string or full nude for the stripper for the hens?” cue 20 meerkat coworkers sticking their heads up to see what was going on, bye corporate!!!!
There’s still SO MUCH TO TELL, I haven’t even started on mirkins and nudie runs, I’ll write more next post.
Ness x
