Mon. August 3, 2026
CHICAGO, ILL. -
By Michael Oboza, Special to GoPride.com
Tales from the $trip (TFTS) is a platform for current or former strippers, sex workers and adult industry professionals to share their lived experiences through the art of storytelling.
On Sunday, Aug. 2, during a busy summer night packed with a Chicago Cubs game and Lollapalooza, a well-attended crowd gathered for TFTS at The Newport Theater, 956 W. Newport Ave., known as "Chicago's Home for Fringe Theater," in Lakeview.
The mission of TFTS is "for those of us in the sex industry to tell our stories the way we want them to be told."
"We aim to amplify the voices of a community and an industry that are often spoken for and misrepresented," organizers explained. "Our voices are powerful and our stories are vital to the visibility of what we choose to do for a living."
Founded in New York in 2025, TFTS is created, produced and hosted by Peekaboo Pointe, a lesbian storyteller.
"Our histories as strippers, sex workers and adult industry professionals are important," Pointe said. "If we don't share them, who will?"
The Chicago showcase featured Jenn Freeman, also known as Po'Chop, a Black queer interdisciplinary artist. Freeman is the co-producer of the drag king-centered cabaret "Notes on Masculinity," creator of The Black Burlesque Directory international archive, and co-founder of the Black feminist artist studio House of the Lorde.
Reflecting on queer Black joy, Po'Chop remembered "my mentor Jeez Loueez, who taught me what was possible, especially as a Black burlesque artist. I met love, a place of becoming, at Jeezy's Juke Joint."
Also featured was Zahradka Tonic, a mixed-race Second City alum, award-winning Chicago bohemian burlesque sorceress, writer, feminist and multidisciplinary artist.
"'Pretty' is a privilege. 'Pretty' is a responsibility," Tonic said. "Being 'pretty' doesn't prove one's enoughness. Living outside 'pretty' is letting oneself go and finding one's truth and living one's truth."
The lineup included Adèle Wolf, an Indigenous artist with Potawatomi and Muscogee heritage and an international award-winning burlesque performer.
"As with drag artists, some of us burlesque artists have burlesque mothers," Wolf reminisced. "I miss my burlesque mother, legend, the late April March."
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