A Nashville Civil Rights Landmark Is Now Hosting Male Strippers

Back in February 1960 in Nashville, a group of mostly Black college students famously took seats at the lunch counter of Woolworth’s five-and-dime downtown to stage a nonviolent protest against segregation. Next month, the historic building will become home to shirtless men in G-strings.

According to The Tennessean, the Thunder From Down Under male revue will take up residency in what is now the Woolworth Theatre beginning Sept. 26. It will reportedly be only the second permanent residency for the Australian strippers; the other is in Las Vegas.

The announcement is the latest eyebrow-raising news to come out of the Woolworth, which after a 2010s stint as a restaurant was converted into a theater in 2022. Since then, it’s hosted the Cirque du Soleil-type show Shiners, which the Nashville Scene described as a “Pigeon Forge [Tennessee] dinner theater — if Pigeon Forge allowed a lot more sexual innuendo,” and, more ignominiously, the October 2022 premiere of alt-right talking head Candace Owens’ anti-Black Lives Matter movie The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. That screening featured guests like Kanye West, Kid Rock, and Jason Aldean.

The Thunder From Down Under revue will apparently gyrate and glisten in tandem with Shiners. According to a spokesperson for the Woolworth Theatre, Shiners experienced its best year since opening in fall 2022. “The Shiners schedule will continue as-is indefinitely,” they wrote in an email to RS. “There is no plan to close Shiners.”

While male dancers aren’t anywhere near the detritus that Nashville has been attracting this summer — like the neo-Nazis who protested in front of a chicken fingers shop — it’s still hard to square bawdy and bare-chested entertainment in such a reverent space. Part of the lunch counter remains on display in one of the Woolworth’s front windows overlooking 5th Avenue North, which in 2021 was renamed John Lewis Way by Nashville’s Metro Council in honor of the late U.S. Congressman. Lewis was among those protesting at Woolworth’s in 1960 and received his first arrest for civil disobedience after being assaulted by customers.

Nashville has become increasingly closer to its “NashVegas” nickname than its “Music City” moniker in recent years, with a reputation among tourists as a place to drink to excess. In a new story by the Nashville Banner that looks at the dynamic of the city’s Lower Broadway entertainment district — a few blocks south of the Woolworth — one former security guard describes the environment as “a drunken rodeo.”

Meanwhile, the city continues to wrestle with the fall-out of the lunch-counter protests, including a still unsolved string of bombings in 1960 that is the focus of author Betsy Phillips’ new book Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the KKK, the FBI, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control.