New York (CNN) — This March, actress Brooke Shields made a reservation at a Mexican restaurant in Denver, Colorado called Casa Bonita under a fake name – but not to avoid paparazzi
It was so the restaurant’s management team and owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are also the creators of South Park, wouldn’t know she was coming.
“The place is so big it took a while for management to realize we were there,” Shields told CNN. “And then word got out because, you know, I didn’t have a hat on and mustache or anything,” she said.
She was there to deliver a letter asking for better wages for Casa Bonita’s performers. The restaurant doesn’t just serve Mexican cuisine; performers provide entertainment from breakfast to dinner. Cliff divers jump and twirl into a blue lagoon, puppeteers put on tableside shows and magicians make the rounds. The live entertainment is why so many people know Casa Bonita.
But in April 2024, for the first time, Casa Bonita’s performers unionized, with about 80 of them represented by Actor’s Equity, led by Shields.
Shields said she’s escalating after prolonged negotiations over not just pay, but fundamental safety issues.
“It was slightly an ambush… you try doing things respectfully, and then you’re not met with equal respect… so you have to resort to other tactics,” said Brooke Shields, of her visit to Casa Bonita.
Since April of last year, Shields and Casa Bonita performers have been locked in negotiations with management. The group is asking for better protections for performers who say they got hypothermia and chlorine toxicity from the diving pool, as well as security for costumed performers who say they’ve been grabbed sexually by patrons. The group is also asking for a raise to bring them more in line with the servers, who they say make more. The union says it’s already made concessions at the bargaining table but with little offered in return to improve current conditions and wages.
Casa Bonita’s management said in a statement to CNN that “we value all of our team members and their well-being. As a policy we do not comment on ongoing labor negotiations.”
Parker and Stone did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Casa Bonita has been a Denver institution for more than 50 years. Set in a strip mall, it has a palatial bubblegum pink exterior with a jungle-esque interior.
Up to 3500 patrons dine on Mexican cuisine daily, but a large part of the appeal is the show. Every twenty minutes cliff divers, costumed characters, and magicians put on performances and interact with diners.
Five years ago, the restaurant was saved from the brink of bankruptcy and closure by Stone and Parker, the team who created South Park and the Broadway show Book of Mormon. Stone and Parker grew up in the Denver area and have been going to the restaurant since they were kids. They loved the restaurant so much that it was featured as the crux of a South Park episode in 2003, and they named their offices “Casa Bonita,” too.
“You could see what this place was in the 70’s when they built it. They were trying to make a little Disneyland here,” Trey Parker told NBC’s “The Today Show,” in 2023.
Parker and Stone have frequented the restaurant recently but have not attended one of the 14 bargaining sessions with Actor’s Equity, according to Shields. She says performers are paid between $21 and $26 an hour, about $10 per hour less than servers who also get tips and who were given a raise shortly after the restaurant reopened.
Shields and union performers tell CNN they lack protections, as there is no active shooter policy, no emergency action plan and no security for performers who interact with patrons.
And while the union has already made concessions on paid time off, holiday pay, extra pay, and wages, management has offered a less than a $1-an-hour wage increase, according to Shields.
“It’s just so disheartening because they’re putting their lives at risk, and they’re not being looked after,” said Shields.
And, Shields says she has not heard from Parker and Stone.
“It’s just silence, radio silence,” she said.
Alleged concussion, hypothermia, and sexual harassment
When Stone and Parker re-opened Casa Bonita in the summer of 2023, diver Bethel Lindsley was brought in to build a squad of professionals. Lindsley, who both performs at Casa Bonita and oversees the dive team, is a former gymnast and circus performer with live water show experience on cruise lines like Royal Caribbean and The Han Show in China.
A native Denverite, Lindsley was drawn to the unique allure of Casa Bonita. But she also had concerns.
“It’s been a very long and challenging fight to get safety procedures at Casa Bonita in any meaningful form. When I first came in, the very first question I asked my management team was, what’s the safety protocols for the dive team? And there were none,” said Lindsley.
She says the divers at Casa Bonita are either division one collegiate divers or have circus and water performance backgrounds.
Casa Bonita’s dive set up is unique. Performers dive from multiple cliffs as high as 16 feet into a small pool, 12.5 feet deep and 22.5 feet square. They dive solo and in tandem and are required to rock climb to exit the pool.
According to Lindsley, one diver suffered a concussion underwater after a dive. At one point the pool temperature wasn’t regulated properly, and she claims a diver got hypothermia. The team got chlorine toxicity because the chlorine pool levels weren’t getting checked regularly, she also said.
Some of her colleagues have quit. She says divers on her team are paid 35% less than industry standards.
Joshua Emerson is a part-time costumed character actor at Casa Bonita making $23 an hour. Three times a week, for four hours at a time he dresses up as Moko the gorilla. He says he “loves the character,” and calls Parker and Stone heroes. Emerson is also a standup comedian who says the South Park duo inspire him to be a better writer.
When diners buy a ticket at Casa Bonita they are notified they can’t touch performers at the venue, but there is no sign saying as much when patrons arrive on site, according to Emerson.
“I’ve been grabbed sexually 20 plus times since working there,” Emerson said. He added that there is no security to protect performers, and perpetrators aren’t held accountable.
“It’s tough cause like all I want do is make people laugh and be entertained, and this process has made it difficult,” he said.
Casa Bonita did not respond to CNN’s questions regarding the specific accusations being made by performers.
In May Parker and Stone appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and talked about Casa Bonita. They said they had hoped to pour $7 million to $8 million dollars into the restaurant venue, but instead it’s been closer to a $50 million renovation and upgrade.
“It is going really well, and we think we might make our money back sometime, like 2040, 2045,” Parker told Kimmel.
“We’re almost breaking even to this point,” said Stone.
The performers say the restaurant is constantly packed and believe Parker and Stone have the money to increase wages.
“The point of unionizing is to permanently fix and correct these problems for every single entertainment individual who is going to walk in and work for this company for however long it continues to stay open, which we hope it’s another 50 years, another 100 years, like, we want the business to succeed,” said Lindsley.
It’s personal
In the last year, Actor’s Equity has filed at least seven labor complaints against Casa Bonita with the National Labor Relations Board for retaliation and refusal to bargain.
For Shields, who oversees much larger negotiations between 51,000 Actor’s Equity members and groups like Broadway League, which represents Broadway shows, the Casa Bonita fight is small but personal.
“It doesn’t take long to feel how disparaging it is when you visit a place and you see young people excited to perform at the top of their game doing these crazy stunts, or entertaining people… (and) you go personally see them not being cared for,” said Shields.
“I’ve been on Broadway enough to know that it’s the ensemble, it’s the people that are there day in and day out… that are really sort of the backbone of what we do.”
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