The Puritans get a lap dance

By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

Lets face it: Bay Ridge has long had a reputation for being an uptight, prudish community, but all that is about to change.

That’s because four women were kind enough to help local straphangers pass the time by doing erotic pole exercises complete with lap dances, and lots of flesh — and it was all caught on video.

But it wasn’t just for fun. The clip, titled “Sexy Pole Dance Girls in NYC Subway,” started getting noticed after it was submitted to Darejunkies.com, a Web site that bills itself as “Jackass” meets MySpace, and offers cash prizes for contestants who perform dares on camera. The perpetrator(s) of the craziest stunt can win $10,000.

The footage on the Web site (also available on YouTube) shows four scantily women, straddling various subway poles and grinding up against several guys who look like they are enjoying the ride (the subway ride — get your mind out of the gutter!).

Mouths drop to the ground as the girls show off their moves before a packed car of stunned commuters — including small children. At one point in the video, NYU theater student Marissa Lupp, 20, even performs a lap dance that would make the strippers at Scores blush.

The ladies — who call themselves the “Pole-ite Girls” — say they got their warmest reaction right under the streets of conservative Bay Ridge.

“The R-train got held up in Brooklyn so we were on it a long time and we were surprised that the passengers were so friendly and kind,” said Lupp, 20, who along with Isis, Jessica Wu, and Laura Lee Anderson hatched the scheme for the two-hour ride last March. “Everyone was so engaged, they were cheering us on and giving us lots of encouragement.”

Our community is known for many things — but wild and crazy times it is not.

After all, Bay Ridge is the place where a poster for the Showtime series, “The L Word,” which featured snuggled-up lesbians, elicited mass protests from state Sen. Marty Golden.

Of course, it wasn’t just Bay Ridge that got treated to a free show — straphangers on the N, Q, and L lines also got their two bucks’ worth, and it is hard to say exactly how many commuters were actually local residents.

But no matter how many of them were real Ridgites, it was evident that the pole girls certainly had their share of local fans — the end of the clip shows the entire car of commuters applauding, with one woman even dropping some cash in a hat.

“We missed our stop about six stops ago,” one smiling man told the camera. “We stayed on for the show.”

But don’t look for this to become a trend — Bay Ridge isn’t about to become one big strip club anytime soon. It is, after all, still Bay Ridge.

“These girls aren’t performing artists,” one woman who saw the video said. “These girls are a bunch of damn whores!”

OK, maybe the community isn’t in for a big change, but that doesn’t take away the fact that for at least one brief moment in time Bay Ridge and risqué went hand in hand, or at least lap in lap.

Matthew Lysiak is a freelance writer who lives in Bay Ridge.

The Kitchen Sink
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