{"id":1686,"date":"2006-10-23T10:18:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-23T18:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/10\/manhattan_borough_of_shoes.html"},"modified":"2006-10-23T10:18:25","modified_gmt":"2006-10-23T18:18:25","slug":"manhattan_borou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/manhattan_borou.html","title":{"rendered":"Manhattan: Borough Of Shoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enterprising bikini traffickers try their hardest to erase whatever culture remains in Manhattan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Owners of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, an 800-person-capacity restaurant that just opened on 49th Street, recruited ambitious women from pageant competitions across America as its first wave of bikini-clad employees. Those women have since been joined by 82 local waitresses.<\/p>\n

The out-of-towners live in a dorm-like apartment on the Upper East Side — it’s “The Real World” meets “Gidget.”<\/p>\n

“It is a great opportunity for me to get closer to my dreams of becoming a model,” said Jennifer Johnson, a 26-year-old who left her job teaching fourth grade in Dallas after winning the Miss Texas Hawaiian Tropic contest.<\/p>\n

Her roommate and fellow Texan, Sarah Jo Lammers, a 24-year-old from Corpus Christi with a finance degree, bolted the business world to pursue a modeling dream here.<\/p>\n

The Texans live with eight other recruits in two three-bedroom pads in an eight-story walkup on the Upper East Side owned by Dennis Riese, who owns the Hawaiian Tropic Zone with PM nightclub honcho Adam Hock.<\/p>\n

Under the terms of their Hawaiian Tropic Zone deals, the models live rent free for six months, pay $200 for the seventh month, $400 the eighth and $600 a month until they leave. They also get discounted gym memberships and tanning, because they’re required to take part in both.<\/p>\n

In return, they weave in and out between crowded tables as waitresses for the restaurant, welcoming guests, serving drinks and taking dinner orders while wearing Nicole Miller bikinis.<\/p>\n

Every night is a beauty pageant. The waitresses strut their stuff twice a shift in front of the usual crowd of suit-clad bankers and brokers who quiet down and cast their paper ballots for the hottie they most admire.<\/p>\n

The pageant winner gets a $100 bonus on top of $100 for each eight-hour shift and tips as high as $100 per table.<\/p>\n

“I went out and bought shoes, which are everywhere in this city,” Johnson said, recalling a whopping gratuity from one admirer.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enterprising bikini traffickers try their hardest to erase whatever culture remains in Manhattan: Owners of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, an 800-person-capacity restaurant that just opened on 49th Street, recruited ambitious women from pageant competitions across America as its first wave of bikini-clad employees. Those women have since been joined by 82 local waitresses. The out-of-towners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manhattan","category-what_will_they_think_of_next"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}