Hanging Onto the Family Business

The House has been in the Allen family since the '70s. Owner Darrell Allen wants to pass it on to his kids. (Bill O'leary - Twp)

At the House strip club, women in shades of brown wiggled and jiggled their naked bodies in a den of red as the latest hip-hop songs blared from a jukebox.

Red lights. Red walls. Red tattered carpet. The women -- honey, chocolate, French vanilla -- tempted men to place dollars in their garters. The men were of all ages. The older men wore suits. Some younger men wore baggy jeans and cornrows. An employee of Chinese Hunan next door took dinner orders.

"It's a family business," said Darrell Allen, the club's burly owner, wearing a red bomber jacket. "When I grew up, other kids said, 'My parents are secretaries and doctors.' I had to say my parents are in the nightclub business.

"Back then, they wore pasties," he said, twirling his fingers clockwise in front of his chest. "I remember that when I was a kid."

At the House -- the original Penthouse name was abandoned years ago in a copyright infringement dispute -- the women don't wear pasties.

A poster-size photograph of Allen's late mother hangs prominently. His parents opened on Georgia in 1979.

Allen would like to pass the club on to his children. His eldest son is in college, and Allen said he's not sure how interested his son is in the family business. "Education comes first. Business, second," he said. "Times are changing. Generations change. Music changes. You know what I mean."

-- Nikita Stewart