"A Setting For Sea Stories ..."

 

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(US Navy Sailor's Mail GIRL IN EVERY PORT 1940-46 Hand Written Letters)

 

"Norfolk - Sailors' Hell Hole" is a complete and original magazine article from the 1950s on the vice and trouble lurking in Norfolk, Virginia, for red-blooded American Sailors. Some great photos accompanied the article including one of a burlesque house with a neon sign for "Girlie Stage Shows". Sailors had no problem finding much to spend their money on. "Joe the shitrag” had plenty of fun with small-time racketeers lining up at every corner from snake oil salesmen to drug pushers and pimps. Norfolk could facilitate all a sailor’s needs. From titty bars to saloons there were all the vices you could handle.  

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(Norfolk Prostitutes, Alcohol, Girls, and Burlesque Shows)

In Norfolk, amongst the bars, brothels, and tattoo parlors they had a place called the Strip Tease Palace. It was the Gaiety Theater, a seedy burlesque house on the notorious East Main Street. It was a place where top-name comedians performed, but only as warm-ups to the real entertainers, the strippers. Seemingly all the young crackerjacks who were alive and breathing snuck in or tried to with fake IDs. And all young women were told by their mothers never to go near the place, but at least a few did anyway. Visits to Norfolk were on a seaman's budget where they were warned by Commanding Officer that the Grandby, East Main corridor were “off-limits!" It was before my day, but it must’ve been a sight to see for a young virtuous sailor who hadn’t experienced life past the boundaries of his own county fair. These are the places our no-shit Sea Stories are made …