Well, shit, everyone. It’s June. That means I've been writing for Exotic for a whole year now. This month, I'm going to celebrate the occasion by treating myself, as the title suggests, to a little shameless self-promotion. You see, I am, as are countless of my friends and colleagues within the strip club industry, a creative type who is slugging it out—working in nightlife as a means to an end while I seek to bring my creative vision to life. In seven years of bouncer work, I’ve become friends with a dizzying assortment of creative people. Musicians, painters, writers, filmmakers, authors, comedians, clothing designers...it blows me away to think about the kind of talent that resides within my sphere of existence.
I don’t do this job out of necessity. I could be living a much more comfortable life right now if I were making use of the mechanical engineering degree I earned, at this point, seemingly for no reason. I could be making an excellent salary and awesome benefits. Hell, I probably could have bought a house by now. I've chosen to stick with bouncer work for the moment, largely because of that abundance of creativity around me. I lost touch with my inner artist for a bit while I was serving in the Marines, and I'm convinced that I'd lose touch again if I tried the nine-to-five cubicle grind. Nightlife is right where I'm supposed to be while I madly chase my white whale of a creative dream.
The seed of that dream was first planted in October of 2016 when I still worked as a gun salesman at Northwest Armory. Portlandia needed a gun shop set for an episode they were filming, and they decided on my place of employment. I ended up getting to be an extra in the scene they shot there, and I even got to do a one-on-one bit with Fred Armisen. Not to brag, by which I mean totally to brag, at the end of the first take we filmed of Fred and me, Steve Buscemi, who was directing, called cut, burst out in a huge belly laugh, and had to stop and catch his breath before we continued. He later told me, at the end of filming, that I play the comedic straight man really well. I can't possibly express in words the kind of high that gave me—it's a high I'm still riding to this day. That experience lit up a little fire in me—I wanted to do something like that again! I wanted to feel like that again! The problem was that I had no idea how to go about it. Portlandia was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and I didn’t suppose lightning would strike like that twice. So, I just set that thought aside and went on with my life.
The following summer, I got laid off from Northwest Armory and found myself needing a job. I contacted a friend of mine who was a manager at Dixie Tavern, who had offered me a security job any time I wanted, and in July 2017, I kicked off my bouncer career. I loved it immediately. It felt right. It was fun and exciting, and the work hours meshed well with my lifelong night owl tendencies. Working at Dixie, I became really good friends with J.E., one of the other bouncers at Dixie, who had started just after I did. When I first met J.E. at a different bar, he immediately picked me out as a fellow Marine vet. It turns out we were both preachers' kids and had an aptitude for writing. It was no time before we started brainstorming ideas for writing projects and working together to develop and focus those ideas. Then, one day in 2018, he emailed me a script he had been working on and asked me to collaborate with him. The script was for a TV sitcom set in a Portland strip club titled Strip City. After overwhelmingly positive feedback from the people we asked to read our work, we started to seriously consider seeking out a TV deal, reviving that long-dormant spark that had first been kindled on the set of Portlandia. Since we were looking to write about strip clubs, we both branched out from Dixie and picked up some strip club shifts. If we wanted to write about that world, we figured we should get to know it well.
As it turns out, my reason for getting into strip club work has proven to be an asset on the job. Any given moment of any given night is potential material for an episode, so I tend to take in as much of my work environment as I possibly can. That kind of situational awareness comes in pretty handy as a bouncer. Getting into this world has also led to some cool opportunities that I wasn’t even seeking out, like being interviewed for Elle Stanger’s podcast, They Talk Sex, as well as for a soon-to-be-released documentary about Portland’s strip club scene and acting as a judge for Dick Hennessy's stripper competitions. Hell, even this column is something that fell into my lap because Bryan, Exotic’s esteemed general manager and Erotic City author, overheard me talking to someone else about our script and, upon learning that I have a bit of writing ability, informed me that he'd long wanted to start a bouncer column in the magazine and encouraged me to submit something. In fact, the piece I sent him that became my first Exotic article, Stages of Grief (June 2023), was an adaptation of a scene I’d previously written for future use in Strip City, based on a realization I had one night working with J.E. at the front door of Dixie.
The reason I’m writing about all this is because J.E. and I are still seeking the connections and/or money we need to make our show a reality. I'm hoping someone reading this might just happen to know someone who knows someone, who knows some TV producer or studio executive, who might take a look at our stuff and give us a shot. Short of that, I’m making an appeal for resources. It’ll cost us some money to film this pilot professionally. To that end, I have a Kickstarter set to launch the same day this issue of Exotic is released, and I’ve got some fun perks available, so scan the QR code I’ve included, consider contributing, and share it with all your friends. Pretty please? We’re also looking for some of that creative talent within the industry that I mentioned earlier to help us get it done. We need actors. We need crew and equipment. If you have one or more of those things to offer, please hit me up to get involved!
Through the course of my strip club work, I’ve fallen in love with our unique little microcosm, and I’m hoping to share that love with a wider audience. Strip City is a solid concept deserving of a chance to exist. It would serve well as a cultural counterpoint to Portlandia, shedding our city’s quirky hipster image in favor of examining a grittier side of Portland.
Nate Hazen is a bouncer at X Exotic Lounge who is rolling the dice on doing something cool in life. Follow his TV show's Instagram @stripcitytv and maybe chip in some money to his Kickstarter to help make it happen. And if this article made its way to some big TV networks or streaming services, that would be pretty cool, too! (Shameless.) He can't do it without you!
