It's the thought that counts

There are only a few dancers I really hated. There have been many that have annoyed me and I probably annoyed them. I’m sure hate is the right word, but I did not like her at all. The really surprising part is she was really well liked and respected by other dancers and waitresses. Other dancers would rave a about how cool she was. For the remainder of the post I’ll refer to her as Cherub. Cherub is a very subtle hint to her actual stage name for those who are interested. This girl was really fabulous looking though.

It’s not entirely uncommon for dancers to recommend getting from other girls who are new or having a bad night. Buts it really rare that dancer will promote another girl just because she’s so cool. I decided to bite and get a couple dances from Cherub. I stat at her rack for the set. At the end of the set when she came around to pick up her tip I asked her for a couple dances. Cherub looked me up and down for a second, said no and continued on picking up her tips. I didn’t really take it too personally. Perhaps she had another customer, maybe she didn’t do dances any more, or maybe she just didn’t feel like it. I didn’t think too much. Later I mentioned to another dancer who reacted a little surprised. She was positive she had seen Cherub giving dances to other customers. She must have been drunk was their rationalization. She recommended that I try her again, that she was so much fun to be around.

The second time I watch her for a little bit to make sure she wasn’t tied up with another customer. At the time it didn’t look like it. She had spent the time before her set hanging out at the bar talking to other dancers. Again I sat at her rack. This time I watched her performance very closely. While it has very practiced, she was looked completely disconnected from customers during her set. She would look at the customer and smile, then immediately turn away. At the end of the set I again asked. This time I didn’t even get an intelligible word, just sort of a dismissive snort. Excuse me for tipping you. I definitely got my little ego stepped on. Afterwards she would never acknowledge anybody or say thank you for a tip. She had been dancing for a while and was beginning to burn out on it.

I think what really irritated me was not so much getting snubbed, but was listening to everybody else rave about how great she was. Ultimately it comes down to how the person makes you feel. She treated the other dancers and bar staff well and they loved her, she treated me with disdain.

Ultimately what makes you like or dislike a dancer is how she makes you feel. To me this is probably why attitude is so important. Why attitude is more important than looks. The dancer’s looks are very important. A persons looks affects how you will perceive them in total. If a really attractive person walks up and starts talking to you, you will probably perceive them more favorably than if somebody unattractive walks up to you and says the same thing. In a perfect world this shouldn’t matter, but it does. The really successful dancers are usually the really beautiful ones that are also really sweet as well.

Looks are just part of the package, the dancers that can make me feel like they are happy to see me. That is much more attractive and desirable than looks alone. If the dancer can identify with my interests and make me feel important that is way more attractive than just looks alone. Small things can make huge differences. I was absolutely floored when Natalia new what the Belgariad was. That was absolutely amazing to me. I love to read fantasy literature and being able to talk about that with somebody else is a wonderful thing. The common bond or interest will score more points with me than anything else.

The virtual dressing room

When I first started to use twitter it seemed like an ideal tool for dancers. It effectively let dancers trade directly text messages with customers without having to give out their phone numbers. It also let them broadcast their work schedule. Natalia also pointed out another benefit of twitter, a person can only get so disgusting in 140 characters. While it can't complete defeat a psycho customer, it can at least hobble him. I’ve noticed another use for twitter, the virtual dressing room. Dancers tweet all over the country about how their night is going, problems they are having, things customers have said. Imagine that, twitter being used for social networking.

From my perspective as a customer the tweets are really interesting. There is a side to dancing you don’t get to normally see. One of my favorite tweets was from a dancer who commented “I’m not taking off an $80 bra for a two dollar rack” or something like that. I’d give the proper citation for the tweet if I could find it again. I have to admit how much a particular outfit costs is a question that has never crossed my knuckle dragging mind. Not that this is some sort of great insight into the minds of dancers or customers but it something new. I really believe the more you learn about something the more enjoyable it is. Usually, there are a few foods I could have lived without learning what they are made of.

I have to turn off the little chime on my phone to notify me when a new tweet gets sent. Dancers tend to stay up far later than I do. I got tired of hearing my phone going off at 3am in the morning. Now I get to wake up in the morning and review the tweets from the previous night. I still think twitter is still an excellent way to promote and communicate with customers. Some of the clubs seem to have embraced twitter as well. Stars Bridgeport kind if went in both directions. At first they were advertising different specials, then they went crazy and pretty much turned into spam. I was getting so many tweets I just started to ignore them. Eventually they fell silent. I haven’t seen many tweets recently from Stars Bridgeport.

Some of the images I see on twitter picture web sites range from funny to disgusting. A few images taken at clubs are probably illegal and some of the image comments border on libel. I was kind of shocked that something like this would get posted. A lot of folks don’t really get how quickly a tweet can get forwarded or the fact a tweet is a permanent record. I protect my tweets mostly to avoid the spammers that still try to twitter. Protecting your tweets really doesn’t do much. Once a tweet is sent anybody who receives it can resend it with the originator's handle still intact. Plus any links associated with tweet will get retweeted as well. I don’t think the dancer who sent the original tweet ever thought that her protected tweets would go beyond her followers. I also don’t think it occurred to her that once people were able to view her posted image they would be able to browse all the images she had posted.

There have been a few cases where people have sued for defamation over a tweet. I don’t know if they have been successfully prosecuted. Most have been throw out as frivolous, but it will probably only be a matter of time. Twitter is considered a public forum by the court system.

The Qik

For a new way to get yourself into trouble on the internet I’ve discovered an application that lets you turn your smart phone into a web cam. It’s called Qik. It is absolutely simple to use. You can download the app for free from iTunes or Android Marketplace. You setup an account like twitter. I’ve created an account for me (www.qik.com/pdxstoney). You run the Qik app on you phone which starts the camera and anybody logged into your account page can watch your live feed of your phones camera without any special software. I’ve actually used it at work to help debug problems real time. I can pull out my phone point it at some piece of equipment I’m trying to debug and get advice the support engineer.

75,000 Words

When I complete a blog post, I append it to a Word file I use for archiving. With my last post I’ve actually gone over 75,000 words for this blog. I’ve managed to write 75,000 words in 90 blog posts without repeating myself too much. I’m kind of proud of this. According to the University of Google, the typical paperback has 440 words per page. In an odd sort of way I’ve written a 170 page book about my experiences and observations about the strip club world. To celebrate a little I’m going to write a self indulgent post where I get to blog about my blog. In dancer terms I’m going to ignore the rack for most of this song and check my hair in the mirror next to the stage. (You dancers all know you’ve done that at least once)

With the addition of Sitemeter feature at the bottom of the page I can track which pages get visited the most. By far and away the page that gets most hits is “A brief history of the heel”. I’d say this page gets hit once a week by random people researching shoes. I always wonder what they think when they click on the link and end up on a blog about strip clubs. I really enjoyed writing the post. It’s not often I get to do a little research for this blog and learn something new. Lots of people may be interested in strip clubs but way more folks are interested in shoes.

Blog post with lists tend to be really popular with twitter dancers. My posts “Terms and conditions”, “You know you’ve been a customer too long” and “More ways to know you’ve been a customer too long” all got a lot of traction with the twitter crowd. The content of the post is divided into small sections that lend it self to rapid fire content delivery of twitter. Most folks don’t tweet about the 560 word diatribe I wrote about dancer punctuality. I don’t tweet much, usually just tweets announcing my latest post (you can follow me at www.twitter.com/pdxstone).

I originally started this blog out on MySpace as a venue to bitch about the club. My first couple posts are fairly lengthy tirades about the stupidity of the club that are devoid of humor. These are the only post where I think I come across as angry. I don't like this, if I'm getting angry I'm doing something wrong. I think a lot of strip club bloggers do this as a form a therapy. Granted this is the digital version of putting a note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean, but it is oddly satisfying.

I suppose I should be forth coming and admit that I’ve only written 89 posts about strip clubs and one about my two plants. When I wrote the blog about my two plants, cleverly named “my two plants” I wasn’t even sure I was going to blog about. I was mostly using it as an online journal. The one thing I wanted to do early on was to write about what I observed at the club and how things operated, not a weekly column about that latest happenings. I think I’ve succeeded in staying true to that, thought I do stray on occasion like when “Aliens invade the Lucky Devil”. On a sad note Beanie the peace lily eventually died. Cecil on the other hand is still doing quite well.

My personal favorite is the “G strings and Gams” post. I rarely see the strip club world portrayed whimsically. This is one of the few posts where I’ve felt like I’ve really come up with something creative. I’ve written a few post in a decidedly humorously fashion. “Operators are standing by” and “What’s in a name” are probably the best. They are neither condescending nor biting just a slightly bent view of the world.

There are three posts that I think are my best, and if you only read three other of my posts please read these. First is the “I’m an idiot and I’ve got the paper to prove it”. This is one of the few times where I’ve become the center of attention in a club for all the wrong reasons. “I only go to strip clubs to watch the train wrecks” is a post where I’m condescending, biting, and severely sarcastic. Sometimes you run into people that you just can’t deal with any other way. Lastly “Don’t forget to bring your singles to the interview” is a favorite because I think I hit on how strip clubs affect a guys nature in different sort of way.

Thank you for your patients, now back to our regularly schedule blogging…..

Scientific Stripping

I’ve commented on the past on scientific papers about stripping. Most of the studies I’ve seen are about the idea women become more attractive when they are ovulating. In the real world this might be true, but in the strip club I don’t think it is. The hypothesis is that dancers will make more money when they are ovulating because there are certain biological cues. I don’t buy this, primarily because standard the stripper uniform already exaggerates most of the visual cues; shoes extend the length of the legs, make up, hair coloring, not to mention other factors such as severely artificial lighting and alcohol.

The biggest problem I see with these is they don’t take into consideration how complex the strip club fiscal environment is. The local economy has a great effect on how much money a dancer will take home. If a local major employer like Intel announces a layoff business will drop off in all the clubs that are on the west side of Portland. The time of the month will have a large effect. At the end of the month there will be more dancers working per shift, and they’ll be more aggressive. When the rent is due there will a lot of motivated sellers working. I think the complexity of the strip club business gets under estimated. Trying to apply the scientific method to the stripper world is a bit challenging.

I see all sorts of anecdotes on the web about some dancer who does something different and has a good night. One of the more classic memes is the smelly stripper. I’ve seen this at least half a dozen times. Some dancer will go in on short notice with the usual prep and have a good night. So was the fact that she had a good night was because she wasn’t neatly groomed and smelling sweet? Or were there other factors involved? I’ll see the post on blog, usually followed with some comment about pheromones or another anecdote about another dancer who slaughtered a deer, went to work and made big bucks. I don’t believe smelling bad equals more money. I don’t like being around people show stink, and I sure as hell not going to pay for the privilege.

There have been some studies about humans that seem to suggest a correlation between pheromones and attractiveness. These studies are really small and tend to be really subjective. In all the ones I’ve seen they’ve been where they expose a subject to a set of odors and ask which one they find attractive. The problem with this is that most people will try to please the tester. If asked to find which smell the find attractive they will pick one. Unfortunately they may be picking one they find the least offensive, not something the genuinely like. If there was solid clinical data I’d imagine that the mainstream perfume industry would be putting it in all their products and marketing the hell out of it. If I thought a cologne really did make me more attractive to the opposite sex I’d be showering in it. On top of that, the way subjects sampled the smell was to bury their nose a cloth. To recreate this in the club you'd have to jam assorted body parts in customer noses. Some dancers do this already, but I don't think its the pheromones that gets them the sale.

If a major cosmetic manufacturer made the claim that pheromones made you more attractive the Federal Trade Commission would make them back it up. Do you think Airborne helps prevents cold? It doesn’t. If you bought Airborne and still had receipt you might still be able get your money back.

I may sound like a whiney skeptic, but there is a real world side effect to effectively sorting out what works and what doesn’t: money. It best to figure out what actually works versus what is a waste of time or worse, drives away money. This can add up to real money over time. One dancer I knew used to “upgrading the slutwear” when she was having a bad night. I don’t think the outfit had any real impact, but change in attitude did. If there is one thing that really impacts a dancers money that is under her control is her attitude. I don’t care how hot a dancer is, if she just stands up there and scowls at the crowd she isn’t going to make money.

It tried to do a little testing once in a strip club. I decided to see how long the songs actually went on for. I was going to bring my iPod into the club, set it to lap timer then click the button every song change. Hopefully I should be able to get a decent set of data measurements. If that worked, then maybe get multiple sets comparing early shifts to late shifts and slow to busy shifts. The test failed miserably. Trying to concentrate with naked women walking around is really difficult. Mix in a little alcohol and forget it. I may try again at a later date.