The title to this blog post is misleading and just a little pretentious. I actually spend a lot of time reading other peoples blogs, I've learned a lot about the industry from them. I’ve always wondered what exactly do dancers really think of their customers. Knowing how things work is an absolute compulsion of mine. I’m forever taking things apart to see what makes them tick. By going into engineering I’ve managed to turn a personality defect into a career. Dancer blogs provide a relatively uvarnished look at customers.
I first ran into dancer blogs by accident. I was trying to find the name of club I went to when I lived in Austin Texas. Just googling when I ran across a burlesque show, one of the performers had a web site named “rivercitykitty”. Rivercitykitty is a blog by Susan Wayward about her experiences dancing. From there I realized she worked at D2 from time to time. From her site I was able to find a bunch of different dancer blogs. I’ll always have a fondness for Susan’s blog (and Susan, even if she currently on blogging hiatus), since she the first person to link to mine.
The first thing that stuck me about most dancer blogs is that it provides a forum to bitch about customers that isn’t directly confrontational. One of the reasons I started this blog was to vent my frustrations about the club I hang out at. Dancer blogs tend to be more of an on line diary. This gives them a very personal feel. In an industry that hides much of the humanity in stage names and glam make up, it makes for a striking contrast.
I can completely sympathize with having to deal with a customer that you find completely and utterly revolting. Sitting smiling listening to them talk, all the while I’m thinking about how much I’d like to bash their skull in with a brick. Fortunately for me, most people in my work world have to maintain a level of professional decorum at work, so I’m not subjected to the more primitive aspects of the human condition. I have to deal with egos, giant towering repulsive underserved egos. Unfortunately for me I can’t decide to tell a customer to fuck off when it gets to bad. I have to sit for hours at a never ending business dinner meeting listening to a guy who is either a pathological liar or completely delusional. I’ve had to sit and politely listen to some guy tell me he invented the iPod. Yeah, sure. I get to hear stories about how they used to be Vice President of Nothing in Particular at Microsoft. Ugh.
It’s startling to read about some of the customers that go into clubs. There are some really scary folks with dollar bills. It’s also a little rattling to see some aspects of myself in their behavior. It's pretty eye opening.
It’s also stunning to see some things pulled off by the management at clubs. A of clubs take advantage of the fact most dancers won’t pursue legal action against a club for fear of losing their job. Dancers are customers of the club, they pay to work their. Yet they get treated with contempt by management. This is part of the club world that rarely gets any visibility. I’m not sure how prevalent it is industry. I have no idea how honest most clubs are. I suspect with the bad economy it’s probably getting worse. Dollars at the clubs are getting more scarce, as girls lose their day jobs the number of dancers that are available is rising.
Another of my favorite blogs is ChristianMarie, The laziest Stripper. I hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning her blog. It was the first blog that was linked to mine that I didn’t know anything about. When I saw “The other side of the rail” in the blogs list I thought somebody else had already picked that name for their blog. I clicked on the link to what low life scum had taken the name. I was floored when I realized that I was the low life scum. Wow, I’m famous. Not really. I sure her blogs hits spiked of the charts on the day I discovered her blog. I kept clicking on it like it kid with a new toy. Besides being linked to mine, its a really entertaining blog to read
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