March may be cold, but it's hot and heavy here at OnMilwaukee.com as we celebrate our first-ever Sex Week. We're taking a mature look at local video and sex toy shops, area strip clubs, sexy Milwaukee events -- and even some connections between Brew City and Playboy magazine. It's serious, responsible, adult-themed content -- but don't worry, parents, we'll keep it PG-13 in case junior stumbles upon these stories as OnMilwaukee.com turns a pale shade of blue for seven days.
If the city of Milwaukee made a New Year's resolution this year, it may very well have been to bring sexy back.
This January saw the launch of the Erotic Milwaukee Show's Foreplay Mondays and let's just say that the start of the work week has never been so steamy.
It goes down every Monday at the Miramar Theater, 2844 N. Oakland Ave., but it's got the sauciness of a Saturday night. In fact, it's probably the most action you're going to get all week.
The event begins at 8 p.m. with a performance by Milwaukee's own burlesque troupe, The Alley Cat Revue. An erotic poetry and short story session follows. From there, it can go a number of ways: perhaps tonight you'll enjoy a visit from Madam Amanda, a professional dominatrix. Maybe there will be strip tease courtesy of the ladies at Miss Pole, a New Berlin gym specializing in exotic aerobic dance. Or maybe it'll be the guys who strip down?
The evening is as mysterious and unpredictable as sex itself, though it's not a wild pornographic free-for-all. Director Termain Davis sees it a progressive class act.
"It's kind of like a strip club you can take your girlfriend to," he says. "It's a place to be sexually expressive about yourself. You don't have to be in the closet about liking a fetish --- everybody accepts you for who you are."
He says when Foreplay Mondays began two months ago, they were primarily centered on sensual poetry. Participation was regular, but it didn't take long before guests were asking for more.
"So we introduced strippers, lap dance competitions, dancers and other features," he says. "It's now an evolution of what the people have demanded."
But it's more than just sultry entertainment; it's an education in the erotic as well. Laura Anne Stuart, owner of The Tool Shed and seasoned sexuality educator, hosts a weekly question and answer session where guests are invited to submit inquiries anonymously and get a straight answer from an expert.
"There is no question that can faze me," she says of her 15 years working in the field. She has a master's degree in public health and works as a health educator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Norris Health Center.
Stuart sets up a Tool Shed booth each week where people can purchase sex toys and accessories and she raffles off a few at every event.
Davis says the event is for everyone, regardless of gender, age (that is, if you're over 18), lifestyle and sexual orientation. So far, he says the turnout has been high, with about 100 people attending.
"We encourage all walks of life. We have transsexuals come in, we have gay people, straight people. The main push of the show is to bring in multiple different sexual expressions."
The show has been known to get pretty risqué -- full nudity isn't out of the question -- but the Miramar Theatre has a cabaret license, so as long as it remains artful, the show is completely legit.
But if he wants it aired on television, as he hopes, he'll have to tone it down. Davis has spent the last couple weeks reformatting the show in hopes of adapting it for television on local channel 96.
But for now, it's live every Monday on Milwaukee's East Side and it costs $10 at the door. Tickets are available in advance via the Web site.
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
