For over three years, dancers from Big Daddy's Cabaret competed against the best strippers from the Lumberyard Topless Club in Des Moines, traveling 400 miles one way.  Then the Iowa girls would drive down to Missouri for the return match.  By the time a third club, Iowa Playhouse,  joined in, Big Daddy and Big Mike, GM of the Lumber Yard were going on the road selling their wrestling shows to strip clubs willing to buy the complete S.P.E.W. package which included a portable wrestling ring, five Iowa dancers going up against five Missouri girls, Big Daddy as D.J. and Big Mike as the event's engineer. 

With famous feature entertainers such as Leah Layne for referees and the owners of three top notch strip clubs behind it, S.P.E.W. seemed destined to become the greatest event in Midwestern strip club History

 until a series of ill fated events occurred that tore the combination of partner strip club events apart.

I was the photographer and web site designer for S.P.E.W.  I traveled with the Missouri Stripper-S.P.E.W. wrestlers throughout the Midwest covering each event and marveled at the awesome talent of the two founders of SPEW, Big Daddy and Big Mike--Big Daddy, the man with the golden voice with his insanely contagious sense of humor and Big Mike, the driven general manager of the Lumberyard who had a knack for being able to fix anything.  But then Big Daddy got an offer he couldn't refuse and became general manager of the Iowa Playhouse in Council Bluffs which took the entire crew of Missouri dancers out of the picture.  S.P.E.W.  from that point on became a pageant of two Iowa Clubs--Big Mike's Lumberyard in Des Moines and Big Daddy's Playhouse in Council Bluffs.  In spite of  missing the Missouri girls, S.P.E.W. still was awfully good.  But the final curtain came down when Big Daddy purchased Teaser's Rock Hard Cabaret in Alabama.  Whereas it had been one thing for a team of strippers to travel four hundred miles to an adjoining state, it was another to be traveling from the Midwest to the Deep South and back. 

But those were great times when it lasted.  I doubt if we will ever see the likes of S.P.E.W. ever again.