The Zanzibar Tavern.

“Zanzibar Tavern was opened in 1959 by David Cooper, who said: “You used to be able to hit 12 strip bars between Bloor and Queen.”^[2] The bar originally opened as a live music venue, one of several on Yonge Street between Gerrard and King in the 1950s and 1960s. It featured jazz and blues in the early 1960s before becoming the multi-media “Zanzibar A-Go-Go” dance club featuring rock and roll and go-go dancers. During this time, the bar also became the first to advertise for topless girls after many regular go-go girls refused to go topless. They hired six of the girls who responded and repurposed the uniform to be topless with red pasties and a red collar. This helped the bar’s transition into a strip club during the 1970s, reflecting the transformation of the Yonge Street strip from a live music center in the 1960s to a center for the sex industry in the 1970s“