The Pink Poodle

"The Poodle is like the South Bay's true to life ""Porky's,"" where every high school senior in the 1980s and 1990s saw his first BARE, supple breasts, a long way away from the prudish, hairy muffed riff raff that walked the halls of Leigh and Los Gatos High School.
Sure, the prices here are outrageous, and the adult bookstore next door is straight out of Machine's bedroom in the film ""8mm,"" yet there is something endearing about having the option to revisit the first place where every local senior first learned how GODDAMN expensive a strip club is.
Back in the day, a lap dance was $10, yet this isn't 1994 anymore and the price has jumped to $40, which is why the Poodle has a plethora of one and two star outrage on its Yelp page. They now sport an option called the Shower, where one gets to watch a pretty girl take a shower. Based on the other reviews, it sounds like maybe that's so YOU can take a shower after touching the bondage magazines next door.
Either way, the Poodle deserves props and respect, not just for its longevity and its holding of its (stinky) middle finger (pinky) to the Yahoo and Ebay complexes that have over-run Silicon Valley, but for being one of the only South Bay destinations that every kid that didn't get along in high school can now bond together and say, you know what, the Poodle is the shit. It takes small steps to heal the world, right? The Poodle may be the first baby step in bringing world peace. Or, if anything, it keeps the local dry cleaners in good graces for years to come! And that's supporting small business! So make a statement, cum your pants. Support small business."

About Us

Pete Kuzinich got into the skin trade by accident. Certainly he didn’t start out to become the area’s pre-eminent purveyor of female nudity.

In September 1963, at age 31, Kuzinich purchased Victor’s Club, a gloomy little bar at 328 S. Bascom Ave., a two-lane street with angle parking. By finally becoming boss of his own establishment Kuzinich thought he was settling in for a nice, peaceful life.

He had no idea.

One evening in the early fall of 1965, Pete took a night off and went to the county fair. The next night he found the bar surprisingly packed.

“A couple of the go-go girls had a few drinks and took their tops off,” is what the bartender told Kuzinich, who immediately had a brainstorm and “suggested” that the dancers repeat their impromptu performance. Meanwhile, he checked with a lawyer, who told him there was no law against topless dancing.

Kuzinich closed for a week, did some minor remodeling and renamed the bar the Pink Poodle. A week later he was in the adult cabaret business, complete with a live band, national headline strippers, singers, comics and novelty acts.

And business was great. So great that the following year “beer, juke box and nude babes” establishments started opening up all over California, including nearly two dozen in nearby cities such as Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Campbell. There were so many brawls and problems in those places that in 1969 the Legislature outlawed nude dancing in establishments serving liquor.

Kuzinich’s business dropped off immediately and a return to the normal bar format did not fly. “I was running a legitimate business and they stopped me even though I had no police problems,” says Kuzinich, who still tells his saga proudly. “My dignity was taken away because I could not support my family and was losing my house and cars and had kids to feed.”

In 1970 he installed X-rated movies, supplied by the Mitchell Brothers of “Behind the Green Door” fame, and charged $5 admission to a place that served liquor. Business took off again, but the Alcoholic Beverage Control board was miffed about the new format. And then the district attorney’s office came after him on pornography charges. On a weekly basis Kuzinich was hauled off to jail, about a dozen times, and 25 films were confiscated.

“They put me in a corner, and the only way I could see was to use movies to pay my bills, even at the risk of going to jail,” Kuzinich says. “It was my only way of getting my day in court.”

His day in court became three years of short, successful trials that ultimately allowed him back into the nude dancing business (without his liquor license) by 1973.

Then in 1984 a decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cities had the power to zone away adult businesses. But in a stroke of good fortune, the court ruled that the one previously existing nude dancing establishment would be forever grandfathered in: the Pink Poodle.