Comments (0) Ducky Doolittle - 2006
Sports & Sex
New Yorker Since 1988Do you have a favorite neighborhood?
I'll always love the Lower East Side. That's where I first came to in the city. Everything's changed. I was one of the squatters down there in the '80s.
Any good places to eat around there?
Hmm. I have always loved Veselka.
How about in the rest of the city?
I love Ruby Foo's.
In midtown?
Yeah.
Is Babeland still your number one sex toy shop?
Oh, absolutely.
Any close seconds?
I really love Eve's Garden. They're America's first women-owned and -operated sex toy store. They hold a very special place in the world.
You do a lot of performances. Where do you go for clothes?
Allan & Suzi. It's a vintage place where you'll find people like me and Lil' Kim shopping there. I came across it when I used to do a lot of performing in gay clubs in the '90s.
If you could stage a dream performance, what New Yorkers would you include?
Oh wow, Lenny Bruce. He's a real freedom fighter.
What would your ideal New York of the future look like?
My fantasy New York would have more affordable housing. I think real estate is an insane monopoly that has got to come down to earth. And a greener city where the trees can grow old. I don't know—I love this city. There's not much I would change.
What do you think of Times Square now?
To me Times Square is like a graveyard. I know what's buried there. There's a big Tex-Mex restaurant called Chevy's on 42nd and Eighth Avenue that used to be a questionable sex emporium where they advertised "Texas Couch Dancing," an extreme form of lap dancing. To me it's very romantic: the idea that it still has that Texas theme. When it comes to things like sex, prostitution, and vice, you can zone and try and move it out of any neighborhood you want, but it's always going to exist. You can't stop people and vice.
Do you have a memorable Big Apple anecdote?
For a long time I did burlesque as Knockers the Clown. I used to sit in flaming birthday cakes—that was my show—and I had a gang of clowns, and we would go out and have bowling nights and things like that. On one of those nights we ended up at a radio station that's now defunct. They told me I could do anything I wanted, so I showed up with 35 drunken clowns—we had been at Hooters before that—and they locked the clowns in this office. While I was doing the radio interview, the clowns took hold of the Xerox machine and xeroxed their private parts and finished a mailing for the radio station. When they left they took the mailing and put it in the mailbox. Then on our way to Times Square we flagged down a double-decker Apple Tour bus, and they let us get on top, where we were heaving chunks of birthday cake at passing tourists. It was like such great revenge as a New Yorker to be on top of the Apple Tour bus in Times Square heaving chunks of birthday cake.
If tourists had one day in town, where would you send them?
Starshine Burlesque is a beautiful thing happening in the city right now.
Any local burlesque performers you're a fan of?
I would have to go with Julie Atlas Muz. I have the biggest crush on her. She just won Miss Exotic World for this year.
How about scandalous figures past or present you admire?
Mae West. She was banned from Broadway with her show called Sex.
You do a lot of sex workshops. What are New Yorkers like in these?
The thing I like about them is that in a sex workshop sort of situation New Yorkers take a lot of notes, and as soon as it's over they rush home to try out what they learned. New Yorkers are doers. We don't fuck around. I have taught all over the country, and there is no other city that has quite as ambitious fuckers as New York.
