Strip clubs were a huge industry in Montreal. Over 70 clubs dotted the island in the late 70s and other new ones were being opened all the time.Many of these clubs attempted to attract clientele by employing outlandish gimmicks.
- The Shack on St. Catherine at Drummond featured a silhouette of a dancer beamed in the window for all to see below.
- Nick's Palace on the Main at Port Royal - which advertised on late night TV - featured a small but smelly aquarium where dancers would swim like mermaids. One time a stripper banged her hair badly after slipping in the adjacent shower.
- Caleche du Sexe on St. Catherine west of Sanguinet briefly had a perilous contraption which allowed strippers to sit naked on a platform which was then flown around the club.
Booths did not exist, as contact dances were illegal at the time, so this innovation war entirely out-of-bounds.
The club sat in the Jarry Mall near Viau in a strip mall later famous for hosting the Consenza Social Club, where the Rizzuto-Mafia hung out.
The Tango Vert started as a legit ballroom dancing place in 1981. It was initially owned by someone named E. Caruana, a patronym that comes up frequently as connection to Mafia money laundering schemes.
So one evening in about 1983 a longtime and very-familiar Montreal mafia boss - now dead - came into the strip club alone.
He took a shine to a dancer from the Magedellan Islands.
The dancer was a tall, slender, blue-eyed, brunette. She had come to Montreal to pursue a modeling career and she was very alluring.
She had a boyfriend who was in the Hells Angels but was apparently not very high up the ladder because higher-ups did not allow their girlfriends to work as strippers. The boyfriend was in prison and might not have known that she was a stripper.
The dapper thirtysomething Mafia boss instantly took a shine to the young temptress and invited her to dinner.
The stripper was not permitted to leave according to club rules, as her evening shift had just begun. But she found him handsome, well-dressed and alluring, so she agreed to split.
Her departure might have been seen as a sign of disrespect to the club.
Once in his car, the Mafia boss told her that he could not take her to a restaurant because he was a high profile figure. He proposed eating in private at a motel.
So eat they did, inside a private room. Soon they were having sex.
The mafia boss had some intense ideas about sex and smacked her buttocks so hard for so long that she bled.
He also took advantage of her in another way without her permission. You can probably imagine what way that would be. The woman had never experienced this act and did not enjoy it.
Afterwards the woman moved back to her hometown and never returned to Montreal.
The well-known Mafia boss later attempted to give her $1,000 in compensation via a mutual acquaintance, either to assuage his guilt or to avoid a vendetta with her biker boyfriend.
The stripper responded by suggesting that the Mafia boss stuff his $1,000 up his backside.
The Tango Vert strip club lost its license soon after and closed but not before people associated with the bar discussed its fate over massive amounts of cocaine and coganc.