Topless Coffee Bar Burns to the Ground

The news reached me at work on June 3rd. The Topless Coffee Bar had burned down, and the verdict was arson. As outrageous as this was it seemed somehow fitting. The entire enterprise has been one scandal after another, and things like that just tend to dilate, given time. Weeks earlier there had been complaints filed about some of the girls, topless, being out on the smoking deck, in plain view of busy Route 3. An article had run in the KJ, and it was mentioned on all the local news channels. It seemed a girl had simply stepped out to prop open a door (I recalled how ungodly hot it had been in there, and that was in March) and had been spotted, by some rabid anti-nudity Vassalboro Gentry perhaps. She was quoted as saying she was covering herself with her arm, and at no time was actually exposed. Well, how delightful and coy. No charges were filed, of course, as nothing at all had actually happened, and criminalizing nudity is and always has been a ridiculous farce.

I immediately thought that the fire, called arson from day one, had perhaps been set by some locals, upset by the press and excitement over the unseemly establishment. "Not in our town!", they'd bellow, while upending a gas can and brandishing torches. And many of the news articles ran with this slant in mind. But as a fate would have it I got the whole story from none other then "my friend the topless waiter", a friend of mine who has been the lone male waiter at the coffee shop these many months (see "A Visit to the Topless Coffee Shop").   It seems that one of the waitresses had become very friendly with the owner Crabtree (who apparently lives in the semi-abandoned hotel on the premises). There was a boyfriend, and he caught wind of this (it does bring up the issue of dating people in the topless industry, like dating people who work in massage parlors (the sleazy ones), I mean, what are the expectations exactly, where is that line in the sand?) and there was a big dramatic break up, which took place at the coffee shop, and the scorned boyfriend was heard by many screaming  "I am going to burn this F***ing place down." And so it seems he did.

My friend the topless waiter said he had more work lined up. Crabtree asked all the employees to play the pity card and to tell the media that they were now out of work and what not, but from the sounds of it my friend the topless waiter has bailed, and probably no one cares, as he was a token dude from the start and no one really wanted to see him topless anyway. More recent reports have the girls in a tent propped up before the blackened rubble selling that miserable coffee and taking "donations". The picture that ran in the paper showed the ladies sitting on folding chairs in sweatshirts (we've had cold rainy weather of late) and looking grim. They really loose their dazzle when they put on clothes. There was also talk that they are cleaning up one of the empty motel rooms to set up a temporary venue for the topless waitressing. I have a general love of nudity in all it's forms, but you wont find me sitting in some run down motel room drinking bad coffee. That's just a bad scene all around.

And so continues the saga. Will they rebuild, will the ladies go on tour, a traveling topless coffee pouring bonanza, coming to a town near you! Only time will tell. I wish them all well, and hope they do rebuild. It would be a good excuse for me to take another drive out to Vassalboro, and take in the view.