Hollywood Showgirls owner Craig Duffy celebrates 10th birthday of his Surfers Paradise strip club
HOLLYWOOD Showgirls’ Elvis-loving, pool-hustling owner reflects on a decade at the icon strip club.
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IT’S 9.30pm on Thursday a week ago and Craig Duffy sits at the marble-topped bar inside his plush strip joint or — as the Hollywood Showgirls catchcry says — “nightclub with a difference!”.
He’s facing away from a catwalk-like stage where a woman with an all-over tan writhes around a pole in a G-string and impossibly high stilettos.
About 30 other dancers, swanning around the dimly-lit Orchid Avenue venue in ball gowns, look like they’ve sashayed off the pages of Penthouse magazine. And that’s because some have — staff include Penthouse Pets, models, beauticians and students. For $55 you can get a 10-minute lap dance and touch them anywhere you like except genitalia. An hour’s $300.
THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN COAST WEEKEND’S DECEMBER 13 EDITION. DON’T MISS COAST WEEKEND INSIDE GOLD COAST BULLETIN ON SATURDAYS
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Despite being a special occasion — the 10th birthday of this Surfers Paradise institution — owner Duffy won’t be indulging in any of that.
“Never. You have to maintain an element of professionalism,” he says.
But that’s not because he thinks the place is sleazy: “I don’t think we cross that line of sleaziness. I’d like to think Hollywood is above that.”
It’s not his only venture — the ex-Australian pool champion turned entrepreneur who made a truckload from a software company in the early 2000s has an online marketing firm, a small stake in a $300m Brisbane subdivision project and recently got an Australian patent for a casino game he’s devised and wants to flog here and overseas.
Strip club, property, technology, gambling, whatever. It’s all business to this man brought up poor in a caravan and who — says one acquaintance — would “fight you for 10 cents”.
A waitress in a corset accentuating a bulging chest serves another round of vodka, lime and mineral water. She knows who he is but still bills him. Not even the owner gets free drinks.
Duffy, 47, swirls his glass, smiles and says: “If they give me a free drink without me paying money or using a card, it’s instant dismissal. It’s a business. I like to keep track of stock.”
THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN COAST WEEKEND’S DECEMBER 13 EDITION. DON’T MISS COAST WEEKEND INSIDE GOLD COAST BULLETIN ON SATURDAYS
So just who is Craig Duffy?
He loves Elvis, goes to Vegas a lot, plays poker in big-money events. He reckons he never had an alcoholic drink until he retired at 30 from pool and snooker otherwise “you couldn’t be a world champion player”. He’s been engaged for 21 years to Yvonne — “marriage is just a piece of paper” — and they have two sons, 13 and 11. He’s dined with Tom Jones and Mike Tyson, played golf with ex-Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and counts Elvis Presley’s Vegas-based best man, Joe Esposito, as a friend.
Growing up, Duffy dreamt of being a millionaire businessman. Tick. It wasn’t always so peachy.
At age 13, Duffy recalls cold nights in his bedroom, a tent add-on to a small caravan his family lived in.
There wasn’t much to do at Advancetown Caravan Park but it did have a pool table. Craig played a lot and entered pub contests underage.
“We were a very poor sort of family. I think that upbringing helped more than hindered. It makes you appreciate if you become successful.
“You learn a lot about all aspects of life growing up in a pub playing pool for money against older people. You have to learn how to deal with people quick or you’re in trouble.”
By 16, he was travelling Australia hustling matches and playing events.
“You’d go to places, pretend not to be very good and win — but not by much. You want to win everything the guy’s got. Once I became Australian champ, I couldn’t do that.”
A 13-year pool and snooker career earned two third-placings in 1995 and 1996 at the World Nine-Ball Championships plus multiple Australian titles. He retired at 30 to focus on sharemarket software company Tomato Technologies, which he started with Glitter Strip nightclub boss Jamie Pickering.
Tomato, which sold software for $6000 and once listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, is where Duffy says he made his fortune. At its peak, he claims global offices, 30,000 customers, and a $180 million worth.
Duffy won’t reveal what he made but says he sold his 30 per cent in 2006 when the company — which he calls a sharemarket analyser and portfolio manager — was worth $50m.
Duffy: “At the time we copped a lot of flak. It was common for stockbrokers to charge clients one to two per cent a trade which was 100s of dollars. We were allowing people to take control of portfolios and execute their own trades over the internet at $20 a trade. The stockbroking community wasn’t too happy.”
Tomato is key to Hollywood’s birth. Two years prior to selling out, Duffy with Pickering bought Sante Fe Gold and adjoining Berlin Bar off Billy Cross for their strip club plan.
Duffy reckons they spent $4m buying the venues and creating Hollywood essentially as it is today.
“I was in London and got taken to a place very similar. I went ‘this is fantastic, something like this in Surfers Paradise would kill it’. I said ‘I’ll build a five-star venue I personally would want to go to’. Tomato allowed me to do it without a budget.”
Hollywood entertainment director Craig Pesco — there since day one — recalls meeting now good mate Duffy out at Sanctuary Cove in 2004.
Pesco, a Freddy Mercury impersonator for a Queen tribute band, had just done a show attended by Duffy.
“Duffy had a stretch limousine outside and offered me a lift. I thought ‘Who is this eccentric guy?’. We are both big Elvis fans so we sat there driving around in this stretch limo listening to Elvis all night.”
Pesco, who coincidentally worked at Santa Fe Gold, says “next thing I knew Duffy had bought the place”.
Pesco isn’t the only long-termer on Hollywood’s roster — promotions manager Jimmy Ozturk has been working the front door for 10 years and says: “Duffy is very honest, very smart when it comes to business. He looks after all his staff, pays well. If you have a problem, you can talk to him. He’ll actually try to help you.”
One of the dancers comes up to Duffy and tries to buy him a 10th birthday drink (she’s already paying a $50 shift fee). He’s having none of it and sorts her out a drink from his tab.
“It’s a very good club, relaxed. You can make a lot of money,” she says.
Another dancer ‘Ally’ later tells Coast Weekend one girl made $1700 on Tuesday night this week.
“The money varies. On a bad night you’ll make $400, good night $1500.”
The showgirls keep all tips but pay 20 per cent of lap dance money above $400 to the club — plus $100 Friday and Saturday shift fees.
Hollywood decor is weird and wonderful: Chesterfield couches, glass-topped tables with mechanical moving interiors and the cocktail menu lists a $500 drink called the Elvis Presley. It copies the Sidecar, the world’s most expensive — a mix of Cognac, Cointreau and lemon twist.
Duffy admits he’s only ever had one — on its launch night. Laughing, he says: “It tastes terrible.”
He had a two-storey waterfall installed at the back of the stage because “I thought that’ll be unusual”. Above, is a giant painting, depicting the club full of punters like Tiger Woods, Mick Jagger, Elvis and ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
“Remember the time Rudd got caught in a strip club?” Duffy laughs. “That’s why we added him.”
At the entrance inside a glass case is a life-size statue of a naked woman — Duffy reckons its Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s interpretation of the perfect woman and Hefner had it commissioned by a famous sculptor.
“The artist was told they could make one other statue and then had to break the mould. There’s one in Hugh Hefner’s mansion and the other is here. I think I got it for $20,000. I’ve no idea how I came across it but I thought it would be perfect for what we’re trying to do.”
Pickering, who sold his share of Hollywood three years ago, recalls they shelled out $25,000 for the ‘perfect woman’ — probably “from some shop in Southport” — but as for it being an authentic piece commissioned by Hefner, he laughs: “We could’ve made that up ... who knows.”
Whatever the case, Duffy admits going over budget with the fitout: “But the fact I went over budget wasn’t a major drama because I had the technology company and was making good money on the stock exchange. I got carried away. I spent $40,000 on the bar top, it’s all marble. It wasn’t just ‘put any bar in’.”
As for the name, Duffy says: “When you think of the most glamorous girl, you think of a Hollywood movie. Hollywood Showgirls says everything about what we’re about. I thought it was the coolest name.”
He’s never auditioned one of the dancers himself but keeps a close eye on standards when he pops in weekly or fortnightly: “If you take your finger off the pulse, things deviate.”
Dancers — there are 90 on the roster — are regularly weighed by the dance manager, with an ex-showgirl telling Coast Weekend: “Every month we stood in a line and got on the scales.
“I never saw anyone get fired but the idea was if we gained more than five kilograms we got a warning and more than 10kg we were fired.”
The ex-dancer adds: “The club does have some beautiful girls and is definitely a little more classy than the average club but it is still a strip club at the end of the day.”
Duffy admits girls are weighed: “If they hit that percentage where they are not looking their best, they’re encouraged to take out a gym membership. It also lets the girls know they are taken seriously and encourages them to lead healthy lifestyles. Customers are coming to see beautiful girls and that’s what we give them. If some girls find that offensive, don’t work here.”
Hollywood’s 10th birthday guest performer Brooke Peaches, a Gold Coaster and award-winning exotic entertainer, says Duffy is one of the few strip club owners “who still has a heart — he’s a fantastic person, very quirky, very genuine, down to earth and very generous.”
Peaches, who later gets nude on stage to Prince hit Cream while pouring a bottle of it all over herself, says she first met him when she was the opening act at the club’s launch in 2004: “The first impression was the lasting impression — he’s very consistent, never unhappy, always great.”
Gold Coast businessman Billy Cross, who sold Duffy the bars that became Hollywood a decade ago, says: “I really like the guy. He’s a stand-up guy, he’s a good bloke. He also thinks he’s Elvis — someone needs to tell him he’s not.”
Of the 2004 bar deal, Cross recalls: “You’re not dealing with a nightclub guy, but an entrepreneur. He had a vision, money to back it up and made it successful. You have to like seeing that — he had an idea and went for it … 10 years later it’s still going strong.
“I admire him for what he’s done.”
Pickering, in his office above his clubs Sin City and Vanity which are across the street from Hollywood, adds: “He’s done well from his background. He had a pretty tough upbringing, had to look after himself basically.
“We worked well together. He’s got a totally different way of looking at business. He’ll fight you for 10 cents whereas I’m more ‘who cares? Let’s get on with business and make money’. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t a good team.
“He’s a funny bloke. His style is 1980s and he’s never moved from it.”
When it came to Duffy buying his share of Hollywood three years ago, Pickering says his then-partner offered a “pretty good sum I thought I wouldn’t get at any other time”.
“We’re still mates, go play golf. There was no animosity, I still go over, have a drink. I like the place.”
Duffy admits some of the Gold Coast business set probably look down on him for his strip club ownership: “They would never admit it, but they do. In a perfect world they don’t want businesses like mine in a public sense but at the end of the day it’s legal, it’s done properly and it’s what happens as part of our society.
“I can see their point of view, they view it as a non-family friendly environment. The other side of the argument is Surfers is a bit like Vegas and if you don’t like gambling, you don’t go. If we don’t have exciting night-life to frequent, then the Gold Coast would lose its edge. Part of what makes the Gold Coast what it is the night-life. People come for the night-life.”
As another Penthouse Pet struts past punters in the club — including a smattering of female patrons — he says: “I’m quite proud of Hollywood, I’m proud of the staff. There’s plenty of people out there who’d kill to own this place.”
What does his mum think?
“Well, y’know, she looks past the industry stigma and — for her — I’m doing this as a businessman so it must be a good thing.”
Duffy, with a lease until 2066, has no plans to get out of it any time soon: “I’m here forever, I love it.”
Getting back to the start, Hollywood was borne of his vision for a place he’d like to frequent himself — so does he enjoy it in here?
“Funnily enough, I do,” he laughs, adding: “…which is why I try not to come in too often because I really do enjoy the place — like anyone else.”
THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN COAST WEEKEND’S DECEMBER 13 EDITION. DON’T MISS COAST WEEKEND INSIDE GOLD COAST BULLETIN ON SATURDAYS
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