When a Fox News host bizarrely mentioned historic East Bay bar the Hotsy Totsy Club on air, calling it a "strip joint," the bar penned a satirical all-caps tirade setting the record straight — and while the host got El Cerrito’s zip code right, the bar is located in Albany.
As SFGate reports, Jessica Maria, who owns the 87-year-old Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany, was taken aback when a customer sent her a clip of Fox News host Emily Compagno, who grew up in El Cerrito, dragging the establishment “through the mud” during a segment on the conservative talk show “The Five” Wednesday. In a tongue-in-cheek, all-caps clapback, Maria addressed Compagno’s “MAGA LIES” about the bar on social media.
“FOX NEWS DRAGS HOTSY TOTSY CLUB THROUGH THE MUD WITH MAGA LIES!” reads the bar’s caption.
In the segment, Compagno and the other hosts are in the middle of discussing President Donald Trump’s visit to a pharmaceutical company in Ohio when Compagno suddenly changes course, asking host Jesse Watters if he’d prefer to discuss the Hotsy Totsy Club, per SFGate.
“That’s like the strip joint where I come from,” Compagno says, later adding — incorrectly — that it’s in El Cerrito.
When host Dana Perino asks what that has to do with big pharma, host Greg Gutfeld jabs, “A lot of girls on drugs.”
As SFGate notes, the bar has never been a strip joint. Prior to Maria and co-owner Michael Valladares taking it over in 2009, the club was a dive bar, albeit with a reputation for serving people who were underage.
On social media, Maria satirically set the record straight, adding MAGA-style text overlays to the original video clip:
Fox News Lies!
Lie #1: Not a strip joint you ass hat!
Lie #2: No drugs. Tipsy perhaps
Lie #3: It’s in Albany, 94706
Lie #3: There’s no El Camino in El Cerrito! (in response to Gutfeld proclaiming, incorrectly, “I used to drive down El Camino in El Cerrito”)
Keep our name out of your f—ing mouth
Maria told SFGate she thought it was apropos that Fox News would get the facts wrong — even about a little, old bar.
“I just found the funny in it, of how you can take an 87-year-old Albany landmark and reduce it down to a drug-infested strip joint in El Cerrito,” Maria told Fox News. “All the information is wrong.”
“It’s so on the nose that they took tons of misinformation and just created their own story that had nothing to do with what we really are,” she said.
Image: The Hotsy Totsy Club/Facebook
