A Lil Bit O’ Naughty: A Photoessay on San Francisco Cabaret, Vaudeville, and Burlesque

In a bar on the seedier side of town, a tattooed bartender makes a heavy drink for a couple in their 70s. Indie haircuts dot the club. Kitten on the Keys plays piano, tinkling keys and twinkling eyes. Decked out in a red and black corset, she belts out one of the many songs she’s written, “Grandma Sells My Panties on eBay.”

During the chorus, we see her matching skivvies and realize not a single frilly detail was overlooked. She’s a sexy cartoon, a naughty rag doll, a very dirty girl, and really friggin’ funny. Tonight Kitten performs at the Rite Spot, but soon she’ll be charming the pants off the crowd at another venue.

From the Teas-O-Rama Convention to the Miss Exotic World Pageant, from Teatro Zinzanni to the stages of Paris, London, and Tokyo, she’s seen a million places and rocked them all. She’s also been on more TV networks than Brady Bunch re-runs. After the show, she tells me her influences: old Shirley Temple movies, Freddy Mercury, Alice Cooper, Liberace, and singing in her church choir. Yep, this saucy little lady went to church. Who knew?

“I like the naughtier side of everything,” says Kitten (shown left), better known on her driver’s license as Suzanne Ramsey.

This would explain how she developed her act of raucous musical numbers, dripping with double entendres and unbridled cleverness. She is a well-known character in the international burlesque and cabaret community. And for good reason; not only does she write most of her bawdy tunes, she also plays instruments like the piano, ukelele, and accordian. A consummate show-woman, her hand-made costumes alone have won many awards.

Burlesque reached the height of its popularity sometime around the Depression, continually evolving from its roots as a form of striptease. In the past ten or fifteen years, it has enjoyed a resurrection worthy of Easter, rising from the ashes of defunct vaudeville theaters and ascending out of the dust of old costume trunks.

Sinister, gothic, and ultimately carnie, if cabaret had a chapter of the Hell’s Angels, [The Yard Dogs Road Show] would be it.

Cabaret has also come a long way since its own beginnings in the 1880s. Generally defined as a smorgasbord of theatre, comedy, singing, and dancing, cabaret lends itself well to hybridization. For example, Dark Cabaret drew on punk and goth influences to birth the likes of Siouxsie & the Banshees. Cabaret continues to mutate in San Francisco, counting among its Bay Area incarnations everything from dirty Betty Boop performers like Kitten to circus and vaudeville-flavored acts.

Clear your head and imagine you’re four again…standing in the middle of a carnival, cotton candy in hand. Festive music is playing and lights are flashing. You strain to absorb it all, but there’s just too much on which to focus. It becomes one big magical blur. You can’t decide what to ogle first…what ride to run to…what sensation to mainline.

Take this feeling and add several heapings of what French kissing a “bad boy” in high school did to your underwear and you’ve got a night with Yard Dogs Road Show or Vau de Vire. These are the real reasons you wanted to run away with the circus.

Along with “Kings of Klown-Fi” Gooferman, Vau de Vire hosts the monthly Bohemian Carnival at San Francisco’s DNA lounge, filling the club with “beautiful circus freaks.” On stage at the Carnival, a band is dressed in clown regalia. To the left and right are goth/clown/vaudeville dancers shaking their tail feathers. Above, acrobats are executing high flying feats just within arms reach.

With all the delicious sartorial crowd participation, it can be difficult to tell the regulars from the performers in the sea of fishnets and sexy costumes. To add to the visual chaos, the performance leaves the stage and joins the parted Red Sea masses of candied-up lasses and lads.

Next up on stage are the fire performers and acrobats. So close is the audience to the stage that it feels the splash of the hot liquid blown out of the mouths of the fire breathers. It’s a dizzying blizzard of splendor, swirling between air, stage, and dance floor until the early morning hours.

Mike and Shannon Gaines started Vau de Vire in an old church in Colorado where they held events and taught accredited performance classes. When it grew too risque for their town, they moved to San Francisco, where they were free to bare a bosom if the act called for it.

As their bio states, “This Avante-Cabaret community consists of classically trained dancers, some of the nations most acclaimed Acrobats, Aerial Artists, Contortionists and side-show acts, an array of Fire-Performers, a handful of Thespians, and the most enticing go-gos.”

This powerhouse of talent continuously collaborates with other highly respected performers like the San Francisco Ballet, Cirque du Soleil, Dresden Dolls, and more.

And then there is the Yard Dogs Road Show, a thirteen-member band (or better yet, experience) that makes you go all noodley in the knees. In addition to musicians, they count among their attractions “sword swallowers, dancing dolls, fire eaters, and sunset hobo poetry.”

Their infectious sounds speak in the tongues of rock, gypsy, circus, and vaudeville. The first song sets the pace. “What’s this!!?? A CROWD! Woooowww! Step right up; don’t be afraid!” At that moment, your body succumbs and from scalp to toenail all of you wants to dance or do headstands—it’s difficult to decide when you’re so fully charged.