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Liv Osthus, a dancer at the oldest strip club in Portland, was driving to her job at Mary’s Club last week when she noticed newly placed street cleaning signs in her usual parking spot, between 4th and 5th avenues on West Burnside Street.
But compared to the city’s typical street cleaning signs, which usually restrict parking along blocks every few months or once a week, Osthus noticed that these signs seemed unusually restrictive. They blocked parking from 7 pm to 8 am seven days a week until Nov. 26—directly overlapping with the strip club’s business hours, which run from 11:30 am to 2:30 am.
The stretch of Burnside across the street from Mary’s Club is where Osthus says most employees and customers park. Following unsuccessful efforts by managers and employees to reach out to the city and remove the signs, Osthus posted her frustration, accompanied by a picture of the sign, on social media. It was then that the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which handles street cleaning, commented on Osthus’ post that it had removed the signs and would “consider less restrictive measures in the future.”
Still, Osthus tells WW, “It feels like a slap in the face.”
She says for some employees of Mary’s Club, the no-parking signs felt targeted and unreasonable, especially for a business working to keep the lights on downtown. As a result of the sign installation, Osthus says Mary’s Club saw a significant drop in customers—a hit to business it can ill afford.
“For street sweeping, that’s absurd,” Osthus told WW. “They do not care about these small businesses that are struggling so much, and they say they do.…It’s really frustrating.”
After Osthus’ post and PBOT’s notice to Mary’s Club that it had removed the signs, the bureau did not immediately respond to WW’s request for comment on why the city would need to clean the street every night for four months.
Osthus, who ran for Portland mayor in 2024, says she and many other employees choose to park on that block instead of nearby parking lots for safety reasons; she says dancers have been assaulted in lots and that the bar’s employees sometimes leave as late as 3:30 am.
“I always park there when I go in for my midshift,” Osthus says. “It’s just safer to walk to my car at 9 o’clock, I don’t really feel comfortable walking to the lots by myself. Dancers have gotten jumped.”
Intense street cleaning seems to be a shift for PBOT, which, in 2023, eliminated annual cleaning on residential streets due to budget cuts. Though the bureau is reintroducing periodic street cleaning in 2026 through various pilot programs in residential areas, PBOT’s website says night shift crews will sweep downtown weekly—potentially correlated with the signs outside Mary’s Club.
