 Satin Dolls, the Lodi go-go bar featured on the “The Sopranos” as the Bada Bing club, is auctioning items on eBay for fans of the popular HBO drama about a suburban New Jersey Mafia family. The sale will make way for the club’s renovation. |
LODI – Bada Bing, the fictional strip club on the HBO television Mafia drama "The Sopranos" that brought fame to Satin Dolls go-go bar, is approaching its own ending. But unlike the TV show's abrupt blackout finale, which left many television viewers cathartically stifled in June, the Bing is fading away piece by piece, courtesy of an upcoming online auction of items from the club. Susie Quigley, Satin Dolls events manager, said on Friday that she expected between 25 and 30 items from the bar to go on eBay's virtual auction block, to make way for the club's renovation. The bar's managers had hoped to start the auction on Aug. 31, but they were still deciding on opening bids for the bar stools, mirror ball and two towering stripper poles on the wide stage, Quigley said.
One item that left with "The Sopranos" cast and crew is the signature Bada Bing! sign that, for nearly 10 years, blended in with the Route 17 South cityscape. "That belonged to HBO," Quigley said. "But the Satin Dolls marquis is for sale." Sue Sadik of Clifton, who dubbed herself "Soprano Sue" and became the show's quintessential fan via her Web site www.sopranosuesightings.com, said she expects brisk bidding for the Bing artifacts. But which items are most valuable? "Possibly the poles," Sadik speculated. "But I do think the stools will get a lot of action. Not everyone can justify bringing home a stripper pole to their mother-in-law."
This isn't the first time Sopranos fans have had a crack at getting a piece of the show's stash. Among the nearly 2,000 items eBay listed on Friday were an Hermes silk blouse worn by Edie Falco, who played Carmella Soprano (bids were more than $200), and a prison-issued toiletries set used as a prop, with an opening bid at $10. Earlier this summer, Silvercup Studios, where many of the show's interior scenes were filmed, held a rummage sale of items from the Sopranos set.
"I was a little disappointed in the stuff," said a Silvercup staffer who asked not to be identified. "Furniture, little knick-knacks and a lot religious stuff." "The Bing was not a set or a prop, it was a place and it's real," Sadik said. Some television memorabilia achieve a revered status: inclusion in The Smithsonian Institution's collection in Washington, D.C. But does Tony Soprano's bar stool carry the same weight as Archie Bunker's chair? "I wouldn't say it's equal to that – but to the right fan, it would be," Quigley said. Valeska Hilbig, a Smithsonian spokeswoman, said there is no indication the museum is interested in setting a stripper pole amid Dorothy's ruby slippers, the Lone Ranger's mask and Kermit the Frog.
"We, in general, are not able to purchase collections being government-funded," said Hilbig, who then borrowed a line from fictional Hollywood icon, Scarlet O'Hara: "We depend on the kindness of strangers." But Hilbig also acknowledged the popularity of the suburban Jersey Mafia family during the past nine years. "Who hasn't been following 'The Sopranos'?" she asked.