The Hard sell

There’s a dancer that always hits me up with the hard sell every time I go into the club. I’ve never bought dances from her or shown any interest in her. I tip her on stage but that’s the extent of it. She’s always polite and interesting to talk to, except when drinks a little too much. She won’t however leave, until I ask her to or another customer comes in that’s a better sales prospect. The vast majority of time I’m usually waiting for another dancer that invited me in. It’s actually pretty rare that I just show up at the club. Between text message, twitter, and old fashion phone calls somebody is trying to contact me. This girl will rush the table and sit down uninvited.

So why is this a problem? When she is sitting at my table, other dancers won’t approach the table. I’ll tell her when she is sitting down, I’m waiting for another girl but that doesn’t stop her. I either end up chasing her off or the girl who I am waiting will force her way in. A lot a dancers won’t do this. They stick the etiquette that you don’t interrupt another dance at table. Or more likely if the girl is pushy with a customer, she’s probably a psycho dancer in the dressing room and not worth the drama.

At a certain point she goes from a scantily clad beautiful dancer to an annoying salesperson. I understand she is there to make money, but there comes a point it no longer is sale job but a contest of wills. I’m not buying that she is selling and she isn’t going to leave. The undesirable force meets the irritated object.

Where do you draw the line? Usually when you tell a dancer that you are waiting for somebody else, they’ll realize that there is no money to be made and move on. You get different levels of graceful exits. Most will politely leave, some will abruptly leave, and a few make a nasty comment then leave. This girl ignores the fact that I’m waiting for some one else and still sits down. At work there are people on three continents who will ignore my wishes in multiple languages. I really don’t want to pay for the privilege.

It also changes the way I perceive the dancer. They no longer are beautiful, scantily clad women. They are annoying salespeople. The fact that she’s on a stage means she is a dancer but a naked annoying salesperson. Worse yet they are a drunk annoying naked salesperson.

The worse thing to do is to give in to an ultra aggressive dancer. If you buy a dance after the high pressure sell you are really stuck. In her mind if you bought a dance once you are going to buy a dance again. At this point she’s gone from annoying to herpes. You are stuck with her forever. The only question is how bad it is going to be when she shows up and gets underneath your skin. The only cure is death. There are a few dancers that notice I cringe when they approached. I’ve never been a very good at hiding my feelings. They’ll even use that as a sale pitch, “You cringe when you see me. That’s not nice, you should buy some dances too make it up to me”. Barf.

This also affects the other girl’s money. After chasing a hard sell, I’m not always completely rational. I dancer might ask to sit down with, not realizing that the Guido the dancer just tried to break my arm. I end up glaring at like she just asked to have one of my kidneys. No kidneys, no dances damn it. A pushy salesperson is a pushy sales person, naked or not.

Podcasting

I’ve been really interested in podcasting. Without too much equipment or technical skill you can put together a show to be distributed over the internet. There isn’t a major selection of stripper oriented podcasts out there. What is there is pretty lame. They are either dancers griping about customers or the “ask a dancer” thing. I’d like to do a series of podcasts with a more practical approach. More of a how to get started and dancer basics, something that get more into the way things actually work. The podcast would be aimed much more at dancers rather than customers.

Here is my initial Episode list

1) Getting started. - The absolute basics of what it takes to start dancing. Clothes, transportation, clubs, etc. Very general in scope
2) Picking a club. - What to consider location, type of club. Where to research. What to look for.
3) The Audition. - What to expect. What to do, what not to do. What to wear. What to bring. Things to look for.
4) The first day. - What to bring, What to expect. Different shifts.
5) Persona. - What name to pick, what to wear.
6) Strip club operations. Bouncers, Waitresses, Bar Tenders, Managers
7) Difficult customers. What to look for, what to do.
8) Difficult co-workers. What to look for, what to do.
9) Children – Where to find a baby sitters, problems that other parents don’t have.
10) Traveling – Laws, Las Vegas, Guam
11) Switching clubs – Risks, When to change clubs


The basic format would sort of a short conversation style. I think if two dancers on a skype call and limited the time to 15 to 20 minutes it would be both useful and entertaining. If you’re interested in participating let me know at:

pdxstoney(at)gmail.com

It will probably be a couple months before I get the logistics worked out of producing and distributing a podcast. I’ve thought about doing it “live” from a club. The problem is that most clubs play the music load enough to shoot down lo flying aircraft. Not very good setup for recording.

Shout out

Check out the folks at DeviantNation and follow them at twitter.com/DeviantNation. Or you can go thier web site out www.deviantnation.com. They have one of my favorite dancers there Rocket! Or you can go to Rocket's site www.rocketisrad.com.

For you folks who aren't to offended I found a picture on the web that just cracked me up.

Career Counseling

When I grow up I want to be a fireman. Personally I wanted to be an airline pilot when I was way small. There are a couple careers dancers tend toward when they decide to hang up the heels. Fireman isn’t one of them, though I think it might be an option for some of them. Most dancers a physically fit, they are familiar with brass poles and they're expert in changing clothes quickly. However, I fear suddenly having to get up early in the morning and rush off to a fire might a deal killer for most. These are all anecdotal observations of mine, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a formal study.

The most common career is hair stylist or cosmetologist, something in the beauty industry. This seems like a pretty natural career for dancers. Dancers have to make themselves up for work everyday. Pretty much all aspects of the beauty industry get used. Hair, cosmetics, pedicure, manicure, and probably a dozen other things I know nothing about. Dancers have to spend far more primping for work than most professions. Not only that, the amount of money they make may depend on how good they look. If that was the situation for me I’d starve to death. I often wonder how much difference in the amount of makeup really effects the customers, but I can believe that a dancers self confidence has a direct impact on her money.

Dancers spend a lot of time evaluating themselves and other dancers as to how well they look. After a while I they probably build up the confidence that they know what looks right. I’ve noticed a lot of my dancer friends all have hair stylist they just love, except they never layer their hair the right way, or get the color right, and charge way too much. Except for that they just love their stylist. Somewhere in their career they probably decided, hey I can do that. There are some other similarities in scheduling. The odds are if they become a stylist they’ll have to rent a chair from a salon, which like stage fees. Except stage fees are a pay as you go kind of deal, the chair will require at least monthly payments if not a lease. Also you’ll need to be insured to be a stylist. Customers would be much more difficult. Women who go to hair salons are much more demanding than guys going to s strip club, but not as creepy.

Another career common pursued by dancers is licensed massage therapist. I don’t think they go into this because of familiarity with couch dances but because of the amount of time they spend talking and counseling customers. Dancers I suspect become much more body conscious than most folks. There is a tremendous amount of physicality with the job. Trying to move and look sexy on a stage, engaging in unarmed combat with a handsy customer requires the dancers to spend a lot more time evaluating what they and other people are doing physically.

Another common career is real estate agents. I’ve had two friends go into this field. The only correlation I can draw between these two careers is the relative independence. Real estate agents have a high degree of mobility in their jobs. They usually don’t spend much time being directly supervised. They are both primarily sales jobs.

Surrealistic Stripper moments
I just recently had one of those “did I just see that?” moments in a club recently. The D2 was being remodeled on a Sunday afternoon when I went in. With the dulcet tones a Makita drills humming in the background a dancer made her way through the drop clothes and got on stage. About half way through her first set a worker trundled out from behind a drop cloth, walk up the stage, pulled out a flashlight and started to work taking the measurements of the stairs. The dancer totally ignored the construction worker. Worse yet she was the “I’m so sexy poser” kind of dancer. To me, most dancers who try to look so serious and sexy just end up looking constipated. To her credit, she continued to dance completely oblivious to the worker. The worker busily took measurements for most of the song, never looking up. Then got up turned around and disappeared into the back.