Sexy vegans

You crazy Americans have the most funny ideas:
www.casadiablo.com

"Expect hairy, untamed, hippie radical bush," my boyfriend joked when I told him I was covering the grand opening of the world's first self-proclaimed vegan strip club in Portland.

Wrong.

Casa Diablo Gentlemen's Club, stranded in outer industrial Northwest Portland on St. Helens Road, features attractive, well-shaven dancers, working for a man so dedicated to veganism he swears he'd rather give up sex than eat meat.

When I walked in around 11 pm on opening night, Friday, Feb. 1, Casa Diablo was pumping arena rock over a black-lit stage. A limber stripper with long, curly auburn locks seduced a sparse audience of five casually dressed men. About 20 customers, from older couples to bachelors, were shooting pool or ordering drinks at the bar in the open, lofty, timber-framed building.

The menu is vegan, though it doesn't advertise that fact. But with no food—vegan or otherwise—in sight the night I was there, it was easy to see where the hope for profit lies: T&A.

Our stripper-happy city's new joint is owned by Johnny Diablo, a 44-year-old Los Angeles transplant. He opened a vegan restaurant in September 2006, Pirates Tavern, in the same building that now blends strippers and soy. Pirates Tavern went out of business in December 2007, Diablo says, because most vegans live at the poverty level or below.

But Diablo, a self-described "ethical vegan" of 23 years, thinks Portland will support veganism and vaginas in part because Casa Diablo is Portland's only smoke-free strip club.

Sexy carnivores are welcome to dance on his stage, although Diablo says most of his strippers are vegans or vegetarians. He says he tries to convert the meat eaters by offering them free vegan food and preaching his vegan ways.

The club's main claim to veganism seems to be that strippers cannot wear any leather, fur, silk or wool. If a dancer slips up and sports snakeskin heels, Diablo says he pulls the woman aside to talk about "not bringing murder victims into the establishment."

For vegetarian Casa Diablo stripper Aria Winters, 20, who hates meat, Casa Diablo is ideal. "I would eat a steak and then have nightmares about being sliced up and burned," she says.

But Faye, a 23-year-old Casa Diablo stripper with a blond bob and tattooed inner thigh, confesses that she really likes steak. "I'm just trying out a new place to work," she says. "I don't care if you're vegan or eat meat."

An all-vegan strip-club!!!!
I guess we'll have to go there...
Since we're in the neighbourhood...
No?

Couchsurfing

It's so beyond cool, this couchsurfing thing. It's fairly simple. Everyone owns a couch and mostly it's vacant at night (except for those nights when the misses sent her husband walking or the occasional huge dog), so this creates a sleeping opportunity in every home for a person who's travelling in the neighbourhood. So.... if you have a couch and you don't mind it being slept on... why not open that up to the world?
It allows you to meet lovely, adventurous people and it helps you make travel cheaper than it is now (because hotel prices can be outrageous). Forget about B&B! Couchsurfing goes beyond that!

Since we hosted some couchsurfers before and had nothing but good experiences with it, we decided to surf America's couches during our trip. We already found someone in LA, Portland and Phoenix, so if you know anyone who's open for a new experience and lives in Seattle, NY or Salt Lake City, give us a hollah!

Preparing for the unpreparable

How can one prepare for something he can't even grasp?
We're going to cross the Western states of the US and we decided to throw in some NY too (since we're there). Why? Because the dollar's so damn weak (hihi) and because we need a big bad evil break!

The plan's to visit NY for a couple of days, then head out to Seattle, rent a car, drive to Portland, SLC, Phoenix, LA and SF (and throw in some nice views, secret cool town and some animals). Since we've been walking around on European soil all our lives, we don't know squat about what to expect and are extremely siked, but at the same time scared of not being prepared.

So we're planning, reading, searching, mailing...

First difficulty: we're veggie and vegan so we will have to prepare every step on the tummie-filling way and bring a huge bag of trail mix.
Second difficulty: we're couchsurfers, so we need to find enough couches to get us through the trip. And let me tell you, it's not easy! Every couch in NY seems to be 'booked', so the search goes on. If you're willing to share your couch with us, please let us know.

Planning continues... and we'll keep you up to date.

Saar and Niko salute you...