Pole Dynamics

I was looking at the some photos from the PDXStrippie awards and the image of (I think) Lark on the pole really struck me. I couldn’t believe how much the pole was deflecting. The pole was really moving. It looked more like a catapult than stage fixture.

Image Copyright AmbeRed (2010)

I went into engineer mode and started to take measurements. I know I’m violating copyright law by modifying the images, but hopefully AmbeRed photography won’t mind too much. It’s a pretty cool image. I took a look at the AmbeRed site, some really talented stuff there.

Anyway, I put in some reference points to make some estimates. I can’t assume the camera was perfectly level when the photo was taken. To compensate for the camera angle I first drew a line perpendicular to the vertical edge of the pole platform. I’m making the assumption that the platform is relatively square. I think counted the number of pixel offset from a second reference line that was straight relative to the edge of the image. Using that pixel offset I drew a reference line from the left edge of the pole in red. This is the perpendicular line to show where the left should be it was no deflected. I then drew a second line in green from the center of pole at the base to the center of the pole at its highest point. I was amazed to see that the pole was both tilting and flexing.

Assuming the pole was 2” in diameter I estimate that the pole was deflecting (both tilt and bending) of seven to eight inches. I think the pole was held in place by weights around the base of the pole. The tilt is probably the result of the edge of the base lifting up against the weights.

The thing to keep in mind is when the pole deflects eight inches, the weight of the dancer suspended shifts eight inches. That is an enormous amount of energy. Have somebody jump off an eight in curb on to your hand for reference. I can only imagine how difficult this pole was to use. Besides the normal stresses the dancer has to deal with, there is the additional force of her weight moving around. That is a lot of force on her hands. Plus if she lets go with one hand the pole will shift. Releasing the top hand will result in the pole returning to a more vertical position. The lower the grip the lower the moment arm applied to the poll. Releasing the lower hand will have the opposite effect. That will increase the moment arm, resulting in the pole deflecting even more. The second she lets go with either hand the pole is going to become a moving target for her to grab.

The flexing is even scarier. If there were any cracks in the pole material the flexing will make them bigger until it breaks. Considering she is roughly three feet in the air, moving, and in a prone position, that would have resulted in a really nasty fall. On top of that the pole will act like a spring trying to catapult the dancer off the stage. I have a lot more respect for the dancers that did pole tricks at the awards.

Supply and Demand

I recently read a dancer post where she blogs about not liking regulars. This got my attention, since I am one of those dreaded regulars. She had some legitimate points. She didn’t like having to rely on regulars and she didn’t like the dealing with regulars who wanted to date them. In a nut shell, regulars are unreliable and are too much drama. It struck me that being unreliable and too much drama is two top complaints regulars have about their favorite dancers. I think it’s more an issue of supply and demand. The real issue is how many customer dollars are chasing the available dancers.

One of the major perks of dancing is it has probably the most flexible job schedule imaginable. Granted dancers don’t get paid when they don’t show up, but it’s difficult to think of another job that allows the same level of freedom. Dancers can take a month off, and be able to go back to work. If most folks don’t show up for work for a month, they might as well not show up at all. Getting back to the not showing up, not getting paid problem this is why dancer don’t like relying on a regular. One of the major reasons the schedule is flexible is because of the money they can make. If you can cover your bills by working two or three days a week you have a lot more freedom. This lets you literally work one week and take the next week off. Not only does this gives you flexibility in the your scheduling, it also gives you flexibility in your customer base. You aren’t dependant on any particular one.

This only exists if there are enough customers to guarantee she can make money. When you run out of customers the flexibility goes away. If you are not making money the job can become incredibly inflexible. You have to work, no matter how bad you feel or what is going on or your out on the street. Landlords don’t care if things are bad at the club. He wants his rent. In these conditions, money from a regular becomes much more important. I’ve noticed this from my own personal experience. The amount of money I tip at club really hasn’t changed much over the years. In theory, what I tip should actually be declining in value as the cost of living goes up. What you can buy with the $20 from a dance is much less now than it was ten years ago. Yet, what I tip has become an increasingly large percentage of what the dancer makes.

This results in the customer having more control over the dancer’s schedule. Missing when a regular comes in can really impact her income. It really sucks when the customer cancels at the last second or doesn’t show up at all. The ability to pay your rent may depend on if a particular customer shows up. A flakey customer can be the worst. Just like a flakey dancer can be the worst. Dancers have a (not underserved) reputation as being massive flakes but they can get away with it if things are busy at the club. If she upsets a customer by not showing up it’s not a big deal, as there will be more guys to take his place. However, if the club is slow the opposite happens. If the dancer doesn’t show up, there are several other girls there to take her place. It’s supply and demand in action.

I don’t think there is anything inherently flakey about regulars or favorite dancers. It’s about control. And the party that is in demand has the control.

She also complains about most regulars wanting to start up a relationship outside of the club. This is a very legitimate complaint. All the dancers I know have had to deal with unwanted advances from customers. It’s kind of the catch-22 of regulars. To get a regular you have to start a friendship, but not too much of a relationship. The dancer has to balance being flirty and having fun with enough distance to maintain safety. It’s hard to do one without damaging the other.

The customer side is a little different. A lot of dancers try to guilt customers into spending more money. They go on about there bills or about the latest crisis in their life. I don’t mind this with my friends but somebody who is ultimately trying to get money out of me gets irritating. It can be difficult to balance with some favorite dancers. I like having the trust of my favorite dancers but it’s hard not too feel to manipulated.

Dancers aren't always the only ones with customers showing up unannounced at their door. I’ve had dancers show up at my door on multiple occasions. The real scary part is when you’ve never told them your address. Granted this is a more rare situation for customers than it is for dancers.

While this isn’t as economically driven as the scheduling/flakey issue, it’s still the same problem for both. Somebody is taking their problems and forcing you to deal with it outside the club. Trying to be a limited friend is tough for both customer and dancer. There are a precious few dancers I really consider friends and I don’t mind dealing with their issues outside the club. The other vast majority either irritate me or creep me out. There is a very personal side to the strip club industry that is difficult for anybody to navigate. However, it's a lot easier to navigate when you are making money.

The Guarded Conversation

So how hard is it to talk to somebody? In the business environment it’s a lot harder than it appears. Several years ago I had an incident at a trade show. I was on the floor of the booth, not really doing much. The show was very slow, pretty much the only thing going on was assorted customer meetings in the booth’s conference rooms. One meeting ended and the independent sales rep brought the customers over to talk to me. He had to make a call to his boss and asked me to show the customers our new products. I went into Vanna White mode and wandered around the booth showing off our latest and greatest. They were one the largest manufacturers of ATMs and a very large customer of ours. They probably bought close to ninety million dollars worth of product from us every year.

My job was really just to keep them busy while the rep made his call. When we got to the section of the booth that was showing the product they bought we stopped and they started asking a few questions. Nothing important, so I thought. One the senior guys asked “When will there be a new version of this product?” We had just sent out a press release the week before announcing the new version, so I figured it was safe to talk about it. “Right now! We’re getting samples next month. I can arrange to have a sample shipped to you if you want.” I got a completely different reaction than I was expecting. Instead of the usual, “that’d be nice please ship it to…” I was met with dropped jaws and looks of confusion. Huh? The senior vice president curtly said thanks and the group walked out of the booth a short distance away. The rep showed up and headed over to talk the customer. Thinking my job done I wandered off.

About fifteen minutes later the sales rep came stormingback into the booth. He was angry, really angry. I’ve been yelled at shows before. My personal record is to be yelled at simultaneously in four different languages (German, English, Mandarin and Japanese). But this is the first time I ever felt my personal safety was in jeopardy. This guy was bulging vein, wild eyed livid to the point of being incoherent. The only thing I could pick out of his ravings was “Why did you tell them about the new version? Uhm, because they asked.” I may have just cost this guy a quarter of million dollars in commissions with that comment. That will get your ass beat.

Shortly I was in a meeting where I was the only person there without word president in his job title getting grilled. I found out they had just reached an agreement for the ATM company to buy a major upside of the existing version. The customer didn’t know about new version, that is until I told them. Now they were upset about being lied to. The upside sale was tanked, not to mention damaging the customer relationship. The rep raged at me “You fucking idiot you NEVER TELL A CUSTOMER about an unannounced product”. This is where Google is awesome. I pulled out my smart phone, Googled the new versions part number and pulled up a copy of the press release on a new site. “We did a press release last week” shoving my phone into the middle of the table. “it’s on the web. I assumed an important customer had been told about this rather than finding out randomly from a news site”. I looked at the rep. Tag, you’re it, asshole. Quickly the presidential firing squad changed targets from me to the rep.

This is a long story pointing out that a seemly safe comment can still get you killed. Trying to make conversation is really hard for me. It’s even harder when you’re trying to control the conversation. It’s tiring trying to steer the topics around touchy subjects with jerks that just won’t let something go. I’ve often thought that this has to be one of the more taxing parts of a Dancer’s job. The floor of the strip club is a business environment. The girls are there to make money and what they say directly can impact how much they make.

There is a level of stress associated with conversations like this. There are real consequences to everything you say. The worse is when somebody intentionally forces the conversation to things you don’t want to talk about. For me on the show floor its pricing. Every price in my industry is negotiated. There really is no fixed price and yet, people will pound me into the ground trying to get me to give them a price. I hate that. Dancers have to deal with customers who constantly ask for their "real names" along with a number of other annoying personal questions.

I also hate the idiots that insist on arguing with me. I hate physics majors at trade shows. They ask questions that either I don’t have an answer to or I can’t tell them because it’s proprietary. Or they’ll tell you that your product specifications are wrong. That’s it is impossible for a product to do what it’s claiming to do, even though its doing it right in front of him. The first couple if times it was fun debating with the guy. The 952nd time I have this conversation I’d rather bash his skull in with a brick. I think most dancers would agree with me that bashing the guy with a brick would be very satisfying but not profitable.

Since a business conversation is something you can’t just walk away from or tell the person to fuck off (usually), I'm forced into a contest of wits and will. It may be just talking at a show but the most exhaustive days I’ve had working at a show have been dealing with relentless know-it-alls that just want to argue. I try really hard not to be one of those guys when I talk to dancers. I hope I succeed.

Strippies Post Mortem

I got to go see the inaugural Strippies awards and I have to admit I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I got meet a few folks in real life I’ve only read about on the internet; Notes_of_Art and Katstories to name a couple. I noted in an earlier post that this was the deal of the year. It was.

One of things that surprised me was how well it ran. Putting together a show of any kind is enormously difficult. I frequently set up and run trade shows for the company I work for. I guestimated once that for every five minutes of show there is at least eight hours of setup and planning. For a two hour show there are a ton of hours going into it. It’s really easy for things to get misplaced or screwed up.

I couldn’t decide if this was an award show with strippers or a stripper show with awards. There was kind of an odd quality to the pacing of the show. The performers there were amazing. This is the first time I’ve scene Ty Fyre perform and she is absolutely amazing. The performances in the show are testament to the fact that stripping can be an art form. It is much more than somebody just taking off their clothes. To engage and entertain a large crowd is incredibly difficult. Yet the finalist for stripper of the year: Natalia, Cricket, and Berlin managed to pull off that task. Kat really had some really funny and original material in her routine. If you think public speaking is difficult, try to be a comedian. Dieing is easy, comedy is hard.

I was surprised by how nasty some of the crowd was. I heard one of the go go dancers referred to as a TuanTuan (I can only assume her was talking about the dancer with the white furry leggings). And that was the nicest comment I heard. The others I won’t repeat.

One thing that always drives me nuts about running a show are the people who just show up and complain about little problems. There may have been 15,000 different things that had to happen for the show. 14,999 get done perfectly. Yet nobody notices that, but they will always point out the one that doesn’t. Most shows are utter chaos behind the scenes. That being said, I’ll point out some of the short comings. But I did notice the 14,999 details that did go right.

My biggest complaint about the show was the venue. Unless you were in the front row or standing on the furniture you couldn’t see anything. I was standing on the benches for part of the show. For the other part I was standing on the venue floor. The most I could see on the floor was just people’s heads on stage. I got annoyed when the go go dancers were on stage. All I could see was the tops of their heads bouncing around. Not terribly interesting. If they could have gotten the stage about three feet higher it would have been much better. Many of the performances were really hard to see. This is easy for me to say, I didn’t have to locate a venue.

The vendors that were setup in the hallway were cool, though I don’t think a middle aged electrical engineer was the target customer. The raffle was a test of patience. Listening to people read off numbers of missing tickets is about as exciting as being at the DMV. Maybe they should just show the gifts to promote the local vendors and contact the winners by e-mail.

The judges need to be more impartial. When the winner for best bouncer was announced the judge went into a rather long speech about what a great bouncer the winner was. I’m sure it’s true. But it kind of implies that the others aren’t (since they didn’t win). I voted for Steve from D2, he was the bouncer that guided by semi-coherent butt out of the club when I fainted. He politely ignored me when I said I was fine and needed to drive home when I wasn’t fine and shouldn’t drive home. That’s my personal bias but I’m not a judge.

More importantly, when the judges make statements like that people begin wondering how fair the voting is. One of the reasons for the Strippies was a response to some of the questionable practices of other contests. It doesn’t matter how fair and rigorous the voting practices are if people begin to think the process is rigged. I think the voting at the Strippies were 100% above board. The judges need to maintain that integrity. Decorum matters.

Watching drunk people you know can be really funny. Watching drunk people you don’t know can be really annoying, fast. I can die a happy man if I never hear “YOOOOUUUUNNN-YYYOOOOONNNNNN Jacks” again. They should cut off the MC’s from the bar a little earlier in the evening.

I think there is actually a lot of potential for the Strippies to reach a larger audience. If I could make one recommendation to the producers of the Strippies, it would be to immediately hold a meeting, review what went wrong and what they want to achieve next time. They don’t have to come up with solutions or plans just get things down while they are still fresh in your head. Just get them recorded. A year from now things will appear a lot different. The show post mortem meeting was probably one of the most effective ways I’ve seen to improve a show. Also they should invite outside people to the meeting as well. You view the world through the prism of your personal experiences. Getting a view from outside of your experience can be really valuable.

Another thing would be to turn on the auto reply on the e-mail voting account. It would be nice to know that the vote you sent was received. I’m looking forward to next year’s event. I’ll start creating my new e-mail accounts now. Remember, vote early, vote often.

The Secret Life of Spandex

One of the interesting things about strippers and their gear is that almost all have massive dance bags, yet the actual outfits can fit in the palm of your hand. Seems kind of odd to have a big roller case for items you could stuff in your hip pocket. There is a lot more in a dancer’s bag than just clothes. Make-up, shoes, repair kit, medicine are only some of the gear found in a dance bag. While the platform heels and brass pole may be mostly identified with strippers, the Lycra© outfit is probably a close third.

Lycra© is DuPont’s trade name for Spandex. The first Spandex fibers were created in 1952 by the German chemist Farbenfabriken Bayer. Several companies developed materials from the Spandex fibers in the late 1950’s. DuPont’s Lycra didn’t go mass production until 1962. Spandex is known by other trade names as well; Elaspan, Linel, ROICA, and ESPA.

The name Spandex itself is an anagram of “expands”. This refers to the fact the Spandex molecule can stretch to 500 times its original length. However once it gets turned into a fiber and woven into a fabric it can’t expand quite that much. Spandex is made by combining two polymers. This creates a molecule with two segments, one lone and one short. The short segment is rigid, the long segment is elastic. When the spandex is resting (not being stretched) the short segments will bond (kind of like Velcro) and the material will take shape. When the molecule is stretched the short bonds actually break and material will expand. When you relax the material the molecules return to its normal size and the short bonds will reform, letting the material return to its normal shape.

The short bonds will eventually fail and material will begin to sag. Spandex is made using a wet spinning, dry spinning process, reaction spinning or melt extrusion process. The raw materials for Spandex are combined and forced through a nozzle called a spinneret.

Here are some interesting properties of Spandex. It melts at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, but temperatures above 300 F will begin to damage the material. Spandex fiber thickness is measured in “denier”. A one denier fiber will weight 1 gram at 9000 meters long. The thinnest Spandex fibers are 10 deniers. Thicker fibers can be up to 2500 deniers.

Different Spandex weaves




Supposedly in Sweden it is illegal for somebody weighing over 30 stone (420lbs) to wear Spandex. I found this tidbit on a couple web sites, but I don’t quite believe it. Sweden uses the metric system (kilograms) not stones, which is an older British unit of weight. You can’t trust everything you read on the internet. Except my blog, of course.

The Strippies

I normally avoid strip club events like the plague but this is one event I will attend. This has to be a strip club patron's deal of a century. For only $10 ($13 at the door) you can see all the top dancers in one place. This would cost a fortune in tips if you went to each club to see each girl at her home club. For more details check the PDX Strippies Facebook page.

The event will be at the Mt Tabor Theater (not a club) which means reasonably priced drinks and no peculiarities in the judging. You pick the winners with your vote. So be sure and vote by e-mail (PDXSTRIPPIEAWARDS@YAHOO.COM) or go the the Facebook page.

Code of conduct

(A quick note, I'd really like to thank Georgia and Natalia for taking the time to help me this post. They made this a lot better than what I originally wrote. Also I've made a fair number of changes since their original edits, so all the grammar errors are still mine.)

I’ve tried to write this post on how to act in a strip club multiple times and each time I end up frustrated. There are two things that always stump me. One, I don’t like lecturing to people and this makes me feel like I’m lecturing. The other, is that different guys go to different clubs for different reasons. I suspect a lot of guys will read the following and think "what a dork", but the following are ways I think a person should conduct themselves at a club. Granted, different clubs have different cultures. I tend to hang out in the higher end clubs in Portland.

Tipping
The dancers are there to make money. Most dancers don’t wake up with an over powering desire to get on a stage and take their clothes off. They are there to make money. Period. A dancer only makes money when you tip. In the vast majority of clubs, she is spending between $20 to $100 dollars minimum in tip outs and fees in Portland. In other cities like Vegas it’s a lot more. Keep that in mind if you wonder why dancers get upset when you don't tip.

The dancer has to pay stage fees, tip out security and the DJ. Other clubs have even more fees. There is a minimum value she has to tip out. There is a direct correlation between how much she tips out and what kind of service she gets. Tipping the DJ the minimum may result in her getting skipped on rotation, terrible music. There is an expectation that if she has a good night, so will the tip outs be proportionally better.

"Time is money" is reality in the purest sense for a dancer. What gets misunderstood is that you don't have to pour buckets of singles onto the stage to be appreciated by the dancer. Just consistently tipping is all you have to do. "Yeah, but she has to be there anyway" is a comment I read frequently. If you just sit there not tipping, you're basically furniture to the dancer. Just something she has to walk around to get from here to there. If you act like furniture expect to be

treated like furniture.

If you want to make it rain, go for it. You’ll definitely make the dancers night and get her attention. If you are watching somebody make it rain, remember the money belongs to the dancer. Don’t help yourself to a couple bucks.

You’re tipping the dancer, not donating a kidney. If you want to get a dancers attention, just go up and ask. Don't throw wadded up bills like you're throwing fish to a trained seal. If you're doing something you feel is childish, it probably is. She is there to make a living. You're paying for the privilege of seeing her perform; you're not part of her performance. I actual try to "play down" tipping. The dancer will know who tipped what. It is in their best interest to know who the good tippers are. You don't have to staple it to your forehead.

Once you put the money on the rail, it's no longer yours. Pulling money off the rack after the dance is "bait and switch". This really ticks off the dancer. It's just like Vegas casino, once you lay your money down it's belongs to somebody else. Don't play games with the money. How would you like it if people played games with your paycheck? Lots of customers will put a $20 on the rail and pull it off at the end of the song. You might "just be having fun", but you’re the only one laughing. You might think it's clever but odds are she's seen the trick dozens of times before. It's not funny. Pulling money off the rack can get you kicked out of a club.

Don't try and negotiate the price down by wearing her down. You aren't buying a used car. This is seriously insulting to her. I know some dancers are willing to wheel and deal but most aren't. Let the dancer make the offer. I’ve had a few dancers offer that if I buy five dances, they’ll through a sixth in for free.

Twenty years ago it costs a buck a song to sit at the rail. It's still only a buck a song. Name something else that has stayed the same price for that long. It almost costs more to mail two letters. If you've ever had a problem getting paid for work you've done, you can understand how infuriating it can be. Dancers get infuriated every day. Try to say "thank you" at the end of the song. There's a real person on stage in front of you, not a robotic stripper cliché'. Courtesy doesn't stop at the doorway to a club.

Talking to a Dancer
This may seem like a silly subject but there are some common sense guidelines when talking to a dancer. Stripping is what she does, it's not who she is. The first thing you need to keep in mind is the issue of security. Getting stalked, harassed, and/or robbed is an occupational hazard for dancers. That is why she doesn’t give you her real name, what kind of car she drives, where she went to school or anything else that might reveal personal information. As a customer you are basically guilty until proven innocent. In other words, the dancer has to assume you’re a psychopath until she knows better. Not only is her personal safety at stake but the safety of her family as well. A lot of dancers are also mothers. They have to think of their family’s safety as well.

Probably the fastest way to piss off a dancer is to tell her how to do her job. Unless you walk into the club wearing 7” platform stilettos and mini lycra dress you probably shouldn’t comment on what she should wear. The same goes for make up. Your mascara also better be perfect. If you think she needs to lose weight its best to keep it to yourself. It’s not going to end well if tell her you opinion.

Don’t ask her why she became a dancer. There is no way to frame that question without making it sound like she failed some place. “So where did you go wrong in life to end up here?” is how you’ll sound. If you want the quick answer she’s dancing because she needs the money. I know some dancers don’t mind answering this question. It upsets a lot of other dancers. I’ve found its just best not to ask the question.

Simply treat the dancer like anybody else. Does she have any hobbies? Pets? What does she think about health care reform? Don’t always think you are the smartest person at the table when talking to a stripper. I have gotten into debates and discussions about conspiracy theories, the decline of the Roman Empire, and the Coptic Church with dancers. You can actually learn something at a strip club. Don’t walk in the door assuming the dancer is only there because she isn’t smart enough to get a job elsewhere.

Don’t waste the dancer’s time either. Just politely tell her you aren’t buying dances from her tonight. I used to tell them “I’m playing hard to get tonight”. I’m not sure how well that actually worked. I just tell them I’m not buying dances or waiting for somebody else.

If you think stripping is wrong then why are you in a strip club? These are the guys that just leave me speechless. If you don’t agree with strip clubs then don’t patronize them. It never ceases to amaze me that people go into a clubs to convince the dancers they are all misguided.

If you start talking down to a dancer the second you meet her, she’s probably going to shut up and let you blather on. She’ll think you are just a jerk and put up with you long enough to separate you from your money. If you treat a dancer with respect your experience improves dramatically. It’s a lot more fun to hang out with people who like you than with people who have to tolerate you.

You don’t have to lie or exaggerate when you’re taking to a dancer. You don’t have to tell her you are "Microsoft's Vice President of Nothing in Particular" to impress her. The odds are she’s already heard the lie and heard it told better. And if you really are VP of Nothing in particular at Microsoft you should probably tip like it. You’ll look like a complete ass if you brag about how much money you make then tip like a complete cheapskate.

I think you’ll have a better time if the dancer knows you are spending a big chunk of your paycheck on her. Don’t ask her out. She’s not at the club looking for a date. She gets asked out every night. It’s a strip club, not a dating service/

Appearance
How you are dressed really isn’t important. You need to at least meet the clubs dress code. The dancer doesn’t want to date you. However you do want the dancer near you. Hygiene is more important than anything else. Nobody wants to be near somebody that stinks. Having breath that can blister paint will guarantee that she will try and spend as much time as possible far away from you. If you are going to dress up wear soft clothes. Dancers typically don’t wear thick clothing. It’s a lot more pleasant to lean against somebody who feels soft. Dancers really do notice it when you make an effort to accommodate them.

Couch Dances
The dancer touches you, you don't touch the dancer. It's up to her to decide how much or how little to do. The amount of contact allowed varies a lot from club to club and where you are in the country. Don’t push the limits of what is acceptable at the club. If you don’t know just ask. She’ll be more than happy to tell you. A lot of what guys try is sexual assault. I know dancers who literally wanted to burn their clothes after giving some guy a dance. If you are looking for an escort, go hire one. The internet is filled with these services. Trying to stick your hand up her skirt is not a victimless crime. I've seen the aftermath. Making somebody fight for their own safety leaves a scar. Don’t try to kiss the dancer. Go read some of the blogs I link to see what they thing about a dancer trying to kiss them. Trying to kiss a dancer is a good way to find your self on fire.

Conclusion
After re-reading this, I realize I say "don't" a lot. Most of my advice can be summed up in "don't be a cheap ass dick head". There really isn't much you have to do. Just go have fun. I have a lot more fun with my friends than I do with strangers. Treat the dancer like they're your friend and they'll respond.

Can you pencil me in?

I don’t think I even own a pencil any more. It used to be you scheduled appointments in pencil so you could erase and changed them. That’s completely pointless now in the computer age. I was recently thinking about what has changed in the strip club experience in the past ten years or so. There is one area that has changed quite a bit. When I first started hanging out I would show up on the same day (Fridays), at the same time. I’d usually see the same girls but not always. I would show up at a specific time, hoping to, but not really expecting to see any specific dancers.

Now I rarely stop by the club at random. I’m almost always invited or am notified in advance that a specific dancer is working. It feels odd to walk into the club at random. I very much prefer to know that a favorite dancer is going to be at the club. It actually makes dealing with aggressive dancers much easier. When a dancer sits down with me I’ll usually tell them immediately that I’m waiting for somebody else. Most dancers will politely excuse themselves. Pushier dancers will come back and say, "I haven’t seen her, do you want to dance since she’s not here". Even the insistent dancer will back off if you tell her you got a text saying the other dancer is coming. Some dancers will back you into a corner to the point you have to literally tell them to fuck off.

One major difference between telling a dancer "I’m not interested" and telling a cars salesman "I’m not interested" is I’m telling the cars salesman I’m not interested in the car. However, I’m telling the dancer I’m not interested in her. It’s impossible to not take this personally. Especially when rejection comes from a pudgy, middle-aged, electrical engineer that hangs out at strip clubs.

While getting invited in makes dealing with Guido the dancer easier, it also tends to really narrow the number of dancers I talk to. I only really talk to dancers and their friends. I can draw direct links with most my current favorite dancers to older dancers that have hung up their heels.

Social networking and technology lends itself to this. With twitter I get regular updates when dancers are going to be working. It used to be getting a cell number from a dancer was a big deal. Not any more. Just to get a dancer to leave me alone, I’ve had her enter her number into my phone then delete it after she left. Talk about living in a fantasy world... This doesn’t happen outside the club when women give me their number.

Another change I’ve seen starting to happen is that dancers are starting to create multiple digital personas. They usually have their dancer digital persona of twitter, blogs, and social networking web sites. They post schedules there and use the media to communicate with customers. Then they have a “real” persona for their friends and family that don’t know they dance.

Some dancers have even started creating a third persona: the dancer commentator persona. A lot of dancers have blogs and twitter accounts where they comment on their fellow dancers and clubs they work with. (They’ve figured out that it's not always the best idea for it to be common knowledge about who is making comments on the internet!) I always find it amazing to read about people who call in sick to work then go out and party, then paste pictures and comments on facebook. Posting things like, “so happy to be getting drunk and not having to deal with my knuckle dragging Luddite boss”. Then they are amazed when the knuckle dragging Luddite boss asks them into the office to explain how sick they really were. I don’t think some dancers would appreciate that the girl next to her thinks her purple outfit makes her look like Barney the dinosaur.

Most of these changes are additions to the strip club current environment. A lot of customers still show up at specific times. I’ve noticed that the smarter dancers have learned how to take advantage of the new media. For the guys who are just stopping by out at random nothing much has changed, but for regulars things have evolved a bit.

Secret Society

I’ve always had a need to take things apart and see how they work. Fortunately for me, I got a job taking apart other people's stuff and debugging it. I’ve managed to take a personality defect and turn it into a career. The strip club culture is sort of a secret society. Most people are completely clueless as to how clubs actually operate. This blog is my way of exploring what goes on in the strip club world.

A strip club is one of the few places that people won’t tell you their real names. Outside the club most dancers don’t tell people what they do for a living. Most of the press about strip clubs is exaggerated. The ads for strip clubs don’t help either. It’s hard to tell what they're actually advertising. The obvious reason for the secrecy is security. Every dancer I know has had problems from nosy customers to being outright stalked. When you hear all the stories, you begin to appreciate the nuts that dancers have to deal with. I've heard of customers following dancers to different cities after they get off a shift. You’d think that living several hundred miles away in a different city would be enough to deter most customers from following you home. Unfortunately no. Commuting dancers run into customers where they have no business being. Most customers don’t understand how much is costs to be a dancer either. I bet most would be surprised to learn the dancer will spend more money on stage fees and tip outs than he will at the club.

Besides the physical safety, there's the issue of dancers not wanting their jobs being public knowledge. A lot of times their family and friends outside the club don’t know what they do. Being a dancer is not accepted in a polite society. I’m guessing that I’ve probably met and worked with dancers in my past and never knew it. If I'd found out what they had done in their past, or are still doing, would it have changed my opinion of them? Today, no. Before I started hanging out in strip clubs? Yes, sadly. As much as I’d like to think I’m above stereotypical thinking, I’m not. I used to believe all the strip club clichés; That strippers were one step away from being drug addicted hookers and that people who hang out in strip clubs are future sex offenders. Curiously, I’ve actually become one of those stereotypes.

One of the cruelest pranks I’ve ever heard was committed by a dancer on another dancer. Though calling this a prank is like calling a felonious assault hazing. A dancer secretly took a picture of another in the dressing room with the girl's own phone. Then sent the picture to her mother, who up until that point, didn’t know she danced. Sometimes dancers are the biggest threat to dancers, not customers.

The media doesn’t really do the strip club industry any favors. Most strippers on TV get killed just after opening credits on a crime drama series. I’ve explored this in more detail in my Bad Press blog post. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie or TV show the accurately portrays the life of a dancer. The only place that seems to give some insight into the strip club world is the blogosphere. I have to admit a lot of the blogs and tweets are actually pretty boring. There is usually lots of stuff about stupid customers, broken heels, and makeup. This is probably representative of a greater truth. It’s just another job.

Stripping's Schrodinger's Cat

Schrödinger’s cat is a physics thought experiment that describes some of the major weirdness of quantum mechanics. Basically it points out the result and the measurements are linked paradoxidly. Idealy in science you should be able measure something without altering it. In quantum mechanics the two are linked. It always struck me that dancers are faced with a similar problem with they sit down with a customer to sell them a dance. In the Schrodingers cat experiment the cat is put in a box with a vial of poison that may be released randomly. You don't know if the cat is dead or alive until you open the box (take a measurement). The dancer does not know if she is going to sell a dance until she asks. While most dancer will find the thought of putting a cat in box with a vial of poison repugnant, they would happily put some customers in a box with a vial of poison Then nail it shut, light it on fire, and throw it into a river.

Quantum mechanics is really weird. The physics Nobel laureate Richard Feyman once said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don't understand quantum mechanics". Besides winning the Nobel Prize for physics Richard Feyman was also a regular at strip clubs. Proving the smart people do hang out in strip clubs. While selling a lap dance may not be a theoretically complex as physics, it still can be a difficult process. The point at which you ask for the sale can be really scary. I see all sorts of different approaches.

A dancer tweeted sitting down with somebody you don’t know is cold calling. That’s probably the best description I’ve heard. There are different strategies for cold calling. Some dancers go from table asking every but the furniture if they want a dance. Others sit at the bar and watch, waiting for a customer approach.

Most girls fall somewhere in between. Closing the sale is tough. If you don’t ask, you don’t get rejected. If you don’t ask, you may lose the sale. If a dancer sits down with me I won’t ask her for a dance. If I’m waiting for a specific dancer, I’ll tell other dancers that immediately if they try to sit down with me. I know I come across as a jerk sometimes or maybe paranoid. For it’s the best way to deal with the situation. If I’m waiting for another dancer I’m not going to buy dances from her. I’m just wasting her time. Most dancers appreciate that but some take offense. I suspect they’ve had an off night and hearing one more no is just a little too much to take.

The web site strip and grow rich has a program for helping with stripper cold calls. It breaks customers down into specific types and it has associated methods to sell the customers. Having a strategy is almost always better than just winging it. I’ve noticed that with a lot of sales people, not just dancers, they fall into the exact same approach regardless of the customer.

There is one aspect about selling a dance that is extremely difficult is that not all customers in a strip club are looking for the same thing. This is even more true with regulars. I first started out hanging out at strip clubs because it was the ultimate distraction. I’m not a social person be nature. I don’t want to talk to the person driving my cab or sitting next to me on an airplane. I’m perfectly comfortable with silence. However my job requires me to be social. I have to talk to people I’ve have no real interest in. This can be really taxing on me. Most dancers go through the same thing. They spend the a day at work forcing conversations with people they'd rather not talk to. Just going home and trying to read or listen to music usually doesn’t work to relax me. I end up thinking about work, about the long winded egomaniac I have to call the following day and listen to how stupid my company is. Sitting at the rack with loud music and naked woman in front of me much drowns out any sort of work related thoughts.

After a while things changed. I got to know dancers and discovered that they most were just normal people. A few are crazed drug addicts. But some of the highly educated professionals I work with are crazed drug addicts too. They just can’t be as obvious. Over time I started hanging out because I really liked to talk to a few. The sales pitch that would have worked on me when I first started hanging out won’t work that well now because what I want is different.

Despite the reputation that strip clubs turn women into objects or that dancers treat guys like walking wallets its actually a really human experience. It’s not just sex, but attention, friendship basic human interaction. The experience is what you make of it. Unfortunately the dancers are stuck trying to figure out what you want want to make of it. If I had one piece of advice to give new dancers is always ask for the dance. The cat may live or the cat may die, but you'll never know till you ask.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCOE__N6v4o&feature=related

I'm in Maxim

I’m in Maxim! Thank you for taking the time to track down my blog for a read. Of course, I haven’t written anything for the past month so I figured I’d better get off my lazy butt and do something. I suppose I should write something observant about the strip club world but that’s too much work. This will be just a quick blog post as to what my blog is about. It’s on page 22 of the October issue, right next to the “How to beat up Bigfoot” feature.

The posts are my observations of the strip club from a regular’s point of view. I normally don’t do any sort reviews or talk about specific dancers. Sometimes, really odd things happen (like when I got carried out in a stretcher) or when I run into really odd dancers. I also try to look sideways at the strip club world. A lot of customers and dancers take the business way too seriously.

As for myself, I was born naked, crying, and unable to form complete sentences. After nearly five decades I really haven’t changed much. I work in the high tech industry as an engineer. All in all, a pretty boring guy. The characters I talk about are usually composites of several people. I will wait six months before referring to specific events that happen in the club. Thanks again for reading my blog. Here are a few more ways to know if you are spending too much time in a strip club:

1) You take the freeway off ramp to the strip club out of habit, instead of going to Home Depot which is on the next exit.

2) You go into the club anyway, just to see who is working.

3) The bouncer salutes you when you walk in.

4) You are asked to tutor brand new dancers on how to be a stripper.

5) You get described in Maxim magazine as “obsessive”

Strip club food safety

Kat recently tweeted about the Acropolis not quite making the grade during a health department inspection. I’ve always wondered how well kept some of the kitchens are in some of the clubs. I’m scared to use the bathroom in some places. I found the web sites for the health department and looked up the most recent inspection report for a lot of the Portland clubs. Here are the results. Keep in mind that anything less than a score of 70 will get shut down.

Acropolis	75
Blush	96
Boom Boom Room	86
Bottom's Up	96
Cabaret	100
Casa Diablo	100
Dancin' Bare	97
Devil's Point	94
Dolphin 1	86
Dolphin 2	89
Double Dribble	92
Dream on	99
Hawthorne Strip	85
Jody’s	99
Lucky Devil Lounge	90
Lure	77
Mary’s	88
Montegos	99
Nicolai st	98
Pirate’s Cove	97
Riverside Corral	100
Safari	94
Sassy’s	84
Soobie’s	97
Star’s Cabaret Beaverton	85
Star’s Cabaret Bridgeport	83
Sunset Strip	89
Tommy’s Too	98
Viewpoint	100
Union Jack’s	92

For a quick comparison I looked a couple restaurants that I’ve recently eaten at that don’t feature live entertainment.

Momo’s Sushi	95
Giant Burger	100
Hall Street bar and grll	87
Stanford’s	100
Ruth’s Chris	100

It seems that most of the clubs do a pretty good job of keeping the place clean. Some seem to be a bit lower than others. There were a couple of interesting notes. Lure got busted for making food at the manager’s house and bringing it into the club. I wonder how the inspector discovered that. Either it was sitting in the manager’s car or somebody tattled on them. I was really surprise to see Star’s Cabaret got a 75 in a previous inspection. That’s down at the bottom with the Acropolis.

Here are the links to the county inspection sites in case you want to look something up

Washington County

Multnomah County

Clackamas County