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Portland has a robust history of strip club chronicles. We’ve had memoirs, art shows, documentary films, fiction, opera, a few Willamette Week covers. And we’ve had a handful of magazines and fanzines, the latest of which, Diviiine, is the brainchild of present and former Mary’s Club dancers Miss Prys, Penny Dreadful and Sunny Day.
In the spirit of trailblazing publications like Danzine, Diviiine is made by and for strippers and sex workers. “Diviiine Magazine celebrates the power, distinctiveness and inherent value of SWorkers without reservation,” reads the opening statement of the first issue, which came out in April. “We aim to dismantle the patriarchal themes and biases that have historically affected our community.”
That first issue was devoted almost entirely to the lore of Mary’s, Portland’s oldest strip club, and includes interviews with founder Roy Keller’s daughter Vicki, who ran the club for many years, and her own two daughters, Virginia and Tracy, who run the club today. Following the strip club custom, the mag sticks to first names and stage names.
Penny Dreadful’s interview with Tracy includes the rarely told story of how she began to strip herself (originally at another club, without her mother’s knowledge). There were also talks with Scarlet, the dancer and artist behind many of the new murals at the club’s still-newish West Burnside location, and erstwhile mayoral candidate Viva Las Vegas.
Both Viva Las Vegas and Sunny Day have graced the cover of this newspaper, Viva in 1997 and Sunny (then dancing as Artemis) in 2021. So we’ll forgive Diviiine for incorrectly stating that “Willamette Weekly” [sic] wrote an article “shaming” Mary’s when it began featuring dancers in 1965 (we’ve only been around since 1974).
Diviiine’s second issue, which came out July 15, features interviews about the experience of being a queer and/or nonbinary dancer and bears the theme “Three Cheers for Boobs and Queers.” Having covered (or uncovered) boobs in Issue 2, Issue 3 promises to go below the waist.
See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2026 here!
