Issue 12
Big Stones Candy Shop
By Benjamin BelskyPhotos By Benjamin Belsky & Dylan Maddux
Illustration By Cleon Peterson
You can learn a lot about a country by its strip clubs. Big Stone’s Candy Shop in Kingston, Jamaica, is no exception. In the heart of this crimeinfested island, this establishment has become a respite for locals—a place where they can feel safe and have fun.
From a distance, Big Stone’s Candy Shop, with its colorful stripes and illicit murals, looks like a surreal gingerbread house. Inside, there is an enormous painting of a rooster screwing a hen. Visitors can be greeted with the words, “Welcome to Big Stone’s Candy Shop. When you come to the Candy Shop, the girls will treat you extremely well. You can get your dick sucked, you can get your balls goggled and you can get a cool breeze blown up your ass with three ice cubes.”
One large, battered stage sits in the center of the club. Poles shoot in every direction—a worn out jungle gym of sorts, for dancers to hang and perform their provocative acrobatics. Decrepit pink linoleum covers a smaller stage behind the bar, where a neon sign says, “Welcome to Big Stone’s Candy Shop.” The walls are green, white and pink. In the small bathroom next to the bar there is one stall, and a small sign warning, “PLEASE, DON’T SHIT IN THE CANDY SHOP!”
Big Stone was born Claude Sinclair on July 3, 1957, in the parish of St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. He grew up in extreme poverty. He says he never owned a pair of shoes as a child, but he developed a strong sense of morals and values from a loving family. He says he never stole, and always had a smile on his face.
At 6, Stone became a member of the Boys’ Club—a local community group similar to the Cub Scouts of America. At 11, he became a member of the Boys’ Brigade—a group similar to the Boy Scouts. At 12, he joined the Montego Bay Boys Club Marching Band and fell in love with music. Inspired by Louis Armstrong, Doc Severinsen and Clifford Brown, he began playing the bugle, then the coronet and finally the trumpet. At 17, he completed field training for the Jamaican Defense Force, but he quickly left. “I didn’t particularly like the army,” he says. “Even though I wasn’t born in the city, I never liked the bush. I didn’t like the mosquitoes—you know, bugs and shit. It’s not what I wanted to do. I liked the uniform. I always loved uniforms. I wore a number of uniforms, but I prefer a job that I’m comfortable with.” Stone joined the Jamaican Constabulary Force as a police officer in 1976. He was a model trainee, and soon became the commandant’s bugler, responsible for the daily reveille. He went on to become the solo trumpeter in the Constabulary Force Band and eventually earned a scholarship to the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in New York. He migrated to New York in 1980.
Stone says, “While living in the United States for many years I began to read and learn. I began to study Black history and learn whom I am as an individual—where I came from, what kind of people my ancestors were.
I started to read books by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Thurgood Marshall, Booker T. Washington and Mahatma Gandhi. Some of these people have a nonviolent approach… They don’t believe violence will solve anything. Back in my own country, we didn’t have a racial problem, but we had a community communication problem where Black people fight against Black people—Black people killing Black people for no good reason. Sometimes, just for the fact that you live in a different community, or maybe if you favor a different political party.”
In 1996, Stone moved back to Jamaica, determined to give back to his Kingston community. “Kingston is a place that I love,” he says. “I wanted to bring back a kind of camaraderie for all types of Jamaicans.” To this end, he started out working in music production and promotion, followed by ventures in television and radio. He developed a charismatic and outgoing attitude. He became popular and made a name for himself: Big Stone—a term of endearment and respect.
On August 10, 2005, Big Stone’s Candy Shop was born. “My idea of the name came about from me listening to 50 Cent,” Stone says. “I figured [sic] we use a controversial name, ‘cause you know people see or think of the candy shop as what you call freaky, and, ‘I let you lick my lollipop’… I figured if you had controversy, then you will get more attention. So I changed the colors, you know, to nice, beautiful, uplifting colors. The original color of the building was blue, black and white—the colors of the police station. So I changed the colors to more uplifting colors and I named it the Candy Shop.”
As anticipated, Big Stone found success in controversy. Soon after opening his gogo wonderland, he held live sex shows featuring a wellendowed man named Mandingo. It was an instant sensation. Crowds poured in, and the Candy Shop built a reputation. Complaints from police and church officials eventually forced Big Stone to tone the show down. He did—with the less endowed and more sensual performer Lazarus.
The club’s popularity has allowed Big Stone to “wear many hats,” as he says. With prior experience in television and radio and a growing interest in film production, Big Stone has produced Candy Shop shorts and promotional films, which have featured shop super stars Mandingo and Lazarus alongside Candy Shop dancers and regulars. And Stone is doing his part to encourage locals to pick up instruments instead of weapons—he recently built a recording studio in the Candy Shop. Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and Big Stone has felt personally affected. In May 2005, 6-year-old Shanika Anderson was raped and murdered in Kingston. This heinous crime compelled Stone to write and produce—along with Racquel “Rakki” Sellars, whom he also manages—“Ghetto Lullaby,” a song of protest that appeals to the community to stop the cycle of violence. As Sellars told The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, “Out of all this I hope that all children not only be the responsibility of the biological parents, but the responsibility of the whole nation.” Big Stone established the Shanika Anderson Foundation to aid victimized children—and a benefit concert was held in May of 2006.
Recently, a feature film based on Big Stone’s establishment was made. Written and directed by Joel Burke and produced by Paul Bucknor, the film is called The Candy Shop, and it portrays three young Jamaican boys who celebrate the end of their school year by scouring Kingston in search of lap dances. They get thrown out of an upscale go-go bar—and end up at the Candy Shop. A short preview was released at the Flash Point Film Festival in Jamaica and the full feature is set for release at the end of 2007.
Big Stone says, “As much as I deal with sex, as much as I deal with the music business, the objective of the Candy Shop is to keep the community together.” The Candy Shop will be Big Stone’s legacy. “Make love not war,” he says.
www.flashpointfestival.com