By Liz Navratil. After 40 years in the business, Minneapolis' last neighborhood strip club held its final dance. BJ's survived 27 years after the city tried to move all nude entertainment downtown. It kept rolling after the city ordered BJ's to stop the dancing in A new cutoff of Jan. Broadway Av. And so the regulars gathered Monday to bid it farewell β with one last drink from a bartender they consider a friend or one last lap dance from the women they've grown to know over the years.
Working there, she said, is "something we all planned on doing for a long time. They've been reminiscing a lot over the past week, and many describe the bar the same way. It's like "Cheers with topless girls," bartender Chuck Daszkiewicz said during an interview last week. Jan Ohnstad began working there 34 years ago. She started as a waitress and frequently served a men's softball team.
One night, all of the guys moved up to watch the dancers β all of the guys except for one. She asked him why. He told her he liked the view better where she was. They're married now, and they have two adult children. Today, Bjurstrom considers Ohnstad his right-hand woman. She coordinates the dancers' schedules but also fills in as a bartender and works anywhere else she's needed.
Every morning, she texts them to confirm their schedules. Her phone breaks out in a Minion giggle ringtone each time they respond. Stay long enough, and someone will offer to buy a drink. Or a lap dance. Or both. They know each other's spouses. They know their health conditions. They go fishing together, or catch a baseball game. Bjurstrom's father, Jerry, opened the bar in , when it was still legal to have strip clubs throughout the city.
In , Minneapolis officials passed an ordinance that required new strip clubs to be located downtown. A decade later, they passed a new measure that required nude dancing to be phased out at clubs outside of downtown, including BJ's Liquor Lounge. Jerry Bjurstrom eventually reached a deal with the city to do away with the dancing in , but the city worked with him as the deadline passed.
