Ketchikan has a long history of brothels. As of Feb. 8, a new red light is illuminating the First City. It marks the grand opening of an adult boutique and burlesque venue with a unique twist. The madams of the Red Lantern plan to honor the history of Alaska’s original red light district, while also bringing attention to issues of consent, femininity, and inclusive sexual health.
Content warning: This story may not be appropriate for some listeners.
Sultry tunes fill the Red Lantern as its owners prepare for opening day. It’s snowing lightly outside, prosecco is on ice, chocolates are on the lounge tables. Frill and lace and plush velvet fill the little space above the Totem Bar.
If it wasn’t for the large, ornate red lantern hanging above the well-known dive bar, you might miss it. The store upstairs is being opened by friends and co-owners Jillian Piazza and Jacqueline Pope.
“A couple of times throughout this process we’ve looked at each other like ‘too late now. We’re already in too deep. Don’t back out on me.’ And now it’s our opening day. It’s all come to fruition,” Pope says.
“I’ve always wanted to start an adult toy shop. So that was an idea about 10 years ago,” Piazza adds, laughing.
She and Pope have been working together for seven years, as servers at Ketchikan’s New York Café. They began going into business together two years ago.
“We really busted our butts, mostly the last six months,” Piazza recalls. “It’s been just grind, grind, grind to get today to happen.”
The pair moved into the space in June and renovated it themselves, with the help of their partners and friends.
“We were in here every day after our regular day jobs and on the weekends. We just kind of poured all of our own – along with our partners’ – blood, sweat, and tears into this place,” Pope says, to which Piazza replies, “I just pricked my finger today. So, fresh blood.”
They also threw themselves into raising money for the boutique – by doing pop-up burlesque shows around town. The most recent was a Christmas-themed show at the Sourdough Bar. Piazza heckled the crowd as a sexy, scantily-clad Grinch, fully painted green and barely recognizable.
It’s an art form that Piazza and Pope say is new to them. They chose burlesque names – Evelyn Roe and Lacey Lupine, respectively – and started with a few shows to raise money for the shop.
The Red Lantern will soon have a stage, which is currently being built with the help of Pope’s husband Conner (burlesque name: Seymour Derriere). Piazza says with addition of the stage, the burlesque troupe will have a dedicated venue space for performances, as well as other things.
“Even like yoga classes,” she adds. “We’re also working with someone to do sexual education for adults, and things like that.”
“We also focus on a lot of health things,” Pope says. Sexual education is a core component of what they hope to bring to Ketchikan. “All of our lubes and stuff are organic and good for your body. And some of our nice lingerie sets are actually nursing bras because we want to highlight new mothers.”
For the owners of the Red Lantern, an important part of that education is inclusivity. They say their goal is to cater not just to straight couples or female sexuality but all genders, as well as the queer community.
“It’s very, very important that people don’t just think of sex as this naughty pleasure thing. It’s your body. It’s anatomy. It’s science. So we want that to be obvious. It’s very comfortable and pleasurable in here, but it matters that we’re paying focus to how our bodies need health and care,” Piazza says.
This is reflected in the space’s design. The pair says they avoided flesh-toned products or toys with raunchy packaging – more suggestive than graphic. According to Pope, they wanted it to look like someone’s living room you’d hang out in – a living room that just happens to be filled with lingerie and body oils.
“It’s sexy,” she says of the space. “We definitely tried to choose color palettes and lighting and stuff that is not typical for this type of shop – very purple and green and there’s florals and gold accents everywhere.”
“We also leaned into the 1920s, 1930s Prohibition Era to go along with our theme of what we want to be talking about during our burlesque show. It has an antique kind of dusty vibe although I swear we’re not dusty. We’re dusting continually,” says Piazza.
The so-called “dusty, antique vibe” plays into the theme of the burlesque shows they plan to put on when cruise ship season starts: a history of Ketchikan’s Creek Street brothels and the women that staffed them.
“There’s something to be said about the people that worked Creek Street. I mean, that owned brothels. Those were some of the first female entrepreneurs and there’s this stigma because of the work they were doing, they were looked down on but they were incredible, hardworking people,” Piazza says.
The pair wants to honor the tradition of those original female entrepreneurs but also the abuse the women of Ketchikan’s prostitution industry faced.
“Just getting to tell the true history of things,” Piazza adds. “Things that aren’t so fun to talk about – about Ketchikan or specifically Creek Street, we want to bring light to that.”
“So we’re trying to find specific stories that happened in and around Ketchikan, with the women of the Creek Street,” Pope says. This coming season, they plan to host that burlesque show, which will be geared towards tourists, up to three times a day on weekdays.
Besides that though, the store’s owners say the Red Lantern is specifically geared towards year-round locals more than the tourism industry. And that’s the scene today at the opening as some locals begin to filter into the space and look around – flitting through lingerie sets and books about trauma-informed sexual wellbeing or Japanese bondage.
Get in touch with the author at jack@krbd.org.
