Jumbo's Clown Room in East Hollywood has long held a unique place in Los Angeles's cultural lore, drawing creative types to its dim red glow. However, the venue is undergoing a shift: its dancers are moving from muses to authors, actively shaping L.A.'s burgeoning literary scene.
Cecilia Fairchild, a longtime dancer at the renowned bikini bar, has encountered aspiring screenwriters hoping to interview performers. Her typical response to their requests is pointed: "Don’t you know we are all writing that too?" Fairchild views the assumption that dancers lack the ability to produce their own literature as presumptuous. She suggests alternative narratives, musing, "I want a sniffer’s memoir."
Fairchild herself is a prolific playwright, poet, and memoirist. Her recently finished memoir, “The Poison + The Spit,” explores tumultuous love affairs and a period dancing in New Orleans with whimsical, surreal, and deeply emotional prose. She also hosts "The Downpour," a popular monthly literary salon at Bar Covell, and directed "Fool in the Pool," a play that premiered in Silver Lake this past summer. Fairchild sees a connection between dancing and writing, highlighting that "Vulnerability is one of the most interesting things about dancing."
Other dancers at Jumbo's are also making their mark. Scarlett Kapella has published a cookbook titled “Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me.” Danielle Henderson, who writes under the pen name D.M. Faulk, is crafting "Meridian," a science-fiction novel set in a dystopian American wasteland where pregnant women face surveillance and control. Henderson found inspiration for her novel in the comically tiny dressing room at Jumbo's, where conversations among dancers about reproductive rights intensified after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. She states, "I’m incredibly inspired by the women I’m with who are incredibly sex positive and strong."
Claudia Musikul, also known as Honey Ryder, is a dancer and screenwriter focused on creating authentic representations of strippers, a subject she believes is often misrepresented in film. She cites Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls” as a film that deeply resonates with her experience, calling it her "very favorite movie." Poet and dancer Caroline Blaike finds a connection between her art forms through observation, noting, "When you’re a dancer, you’re very observant." She is developing a poetry collection on love, queerness, desire, and personhood, often composed on her cherished "1951 Olympia typewriter that is my child."
Jumbo’s has a long-standing reputation as a magnet for writers. Local legend suggests Charles Bukowski frequented the bar in its earlier days, and David Lynch reportedly wrote his classic screenplay “Blue Velvet” there, with local lore crediting an iconic opening shot to a dancer with one ear. Quentin Tarantino is also reputed to have written at the bar. While the venue has garnered a mythology as a place for collecting impressions, its dancers are now asserting their role as artists themselves.
In recent years, the bar has cemented its place as a gathering spot for contemporary authors. Allie Rowbottom, author of “Lovers XXX,” discovered Jumbo's in 2011 and sees it as a venue uniquely dedicated to intersecting sex and art, providing the "dissonance and tension" crucial for good literary work. She has rented tables for literary figures like Jon Lindsey, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic, Sammy Loren, Morgan Krantz, Tex Gresham, and Nada Alic. Aiden Arata's 2025 essay collection, “You Have a New Memory,” also features a charged scene at Jumbo’s, describing its dancers as "starlets, athletes, artists."
This burgeoning literary interest at Jumbo's Clown Room reignites the ongoing discussion of who gets to tell the stories of sex work. Claudia Musikul expresses hope that the club’s literary legacy will increasingly belong to the dancers at its core. She says, "It’s the actual dancers’ turn to have that kind of recognition."
