WHO WAS CAROL DODA?

 From Wikiwand: Carol Ann Doda (August 29, 1937 – November 9, 2015) was a topless dancer in San Francisco, California, who was active from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was the first public topless dancer.[1]

In 1964 Doda made international news, first by dancing topless at the city's Condor Club, then by enhancing her bust from size 34 to 44 through silicone injections. Her breasts became known as Doda's "twin 44s" and "the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco."

   That's the official story. I knew Carol from my time at the other North Beach landmark, The San Francisco Art Institute, as a student in the seventies and later when she was a part time student and I was teaching in the 1990's. I think she liked to draw. 

   Off campus I knew Carol because Karen Finley worked at the Condor as a cocktail waitress, as did my girlfriend Cookie a few years later. She was always friendly and one night my buddy El Prof and I took in the show as Karen served us drinks. The warm up acts to Carol's grand entrance were a motley crew of skinny punk rock couples, doing lazy pantomimes of something that passed for simulated sex. It was obvious their hearts weren't in it. Still, the tourist crowd erupted in approval and Karen was pouring heavy. El Prof and I were having a ball.

   Suddenly the lights dimmed, the disco ball was hit with the spot and from the ceiling descended Carol Doda astride a rhinestone bedazzled, gleaming white, baby grand piano. Cue music. After greeting the crowd warmly she turned to El Prof and I. "You boys having a good time?" We waved and nodded furiously. "Where ya from gents?" she asked in a kittenish voice, spinning her tassles with enough force to power half of North Beach. "OKLAHOMA!" I blurted out, caught up in the moment. She drew her hands six gun style and blasted El Prof and I with finger bullets. "Careful boys. Yer a long way from home." The crowd roared. "Karen. Give these cowboys another round on me." The soon to be seminal performance artist, and fierce feminist voice of the late twentieth century art world brought us another couple of beers and bowed to Carol. What a night!

    A few years later I was living with Cookie. She got the name Cookie because when she wasn't going to college she worked in a cookie store selling Mrs. Field's cookies for minimum wage. I don't remember how or why, but she also ended up as a cocktail waitress at the Condor Club slinging drinks, as night after night Carol descended on her piano.

   I would drive Cookie to North Beach, then go home to the Mission and pick her up after her shift. The Condor had a skeezy manager by the name of Jimmy the Beard.  He was always trying to get Cookie on stage or at the very least sex it up for the customers. "Stick 'em out fer Christsake." he was fond of saying. "You got a great pair. Own em!" Cookie didn't take any shit. She told the Beard "ok." and went about her business. She needed the job, but not that much. Other girls were not as lucky to be able to escape Jimmy's persistent charms. 

     One night after closing Jimmy stayed behind to snort a little coke with one of the dancers. One thing led to another and before you knew it the Beard and the girl were on top of Carol's baby grand, defiling her stage. Maybe it was an accident caused by the booze or the coke, or the desire to take a joy ride on the ascending instrument, in either case the piano started moving with Jimmy now astride the girl. And in the heat of the moment Jimmy the Beard was not paying attention, misjudged the distance between the piano and the ceiling and that was all she wrote. With the dancer safely slid back on the baby grand, Jimmy's head got wedged with such force he was killed instantly, trapping the girl under him. The janitor discovered the hysterical girl sandwiched between Jimmy and the piano when he came in to clean up the next morning. He called the police. 

     Cookie and I knew nothing of the tragedy at the Condor until I took her to work the next day. There was yellow police tape everywhere and the club was closed. Jimmy being the now dead manager, nobody had thought to call the staff, the dancers or Carol and tell them the club was shuttered for now. We had to be told by the police and read it in the newspaper. It was a sad night for North Beach. Cookie quit the Condor the next week. So those are my Carol Doda stories. Carol died on Nov. 9, 2015. I shot that buck on Nov. 15, 2020. R.I.P. to both incarnations. We hardly knew ye.