But if Ground Zero has been made sacred by tragedy, it’s hard to say the same for the Pussycat Lounge one block south of the site. The front entrance of the strip club and bar, which has been there for more than four decades, offers a clear view of the ongoing construction at the World Trade Center site. There weren’t many customers on Wednesday afternoon, when a television reporter stood in the middle of the street filming a report on the Park51 controversy.
Inside, a bartender who said her name was Dasha offered brief remarks against the proposed Islamic center. She said she’s uneasy about organized religion in general.
But Chris, the stripper who volunteered in the Ground Zero recovery, sat on a barstool in a tiny, shiny red dress and defended Park51. “They’re not building a mosque in the World Trade Center,” she pointed out. “It’s all good. You have your synagogues and your churches. And you have a mosque.”
Chris said she lost eight friends on Sept. 11, 2001 — firefighters from the Brooklyn firehouse next to her home at the time. “The people who did it are not going to the mosque,” she said.
BTW, Palin thinks tassels go the opposite way in Australia.