Group Hug

You can have a pod of whales, a pride of Lions, a murder of crows or a conspiracy of lawyers. So what would you call a group of strippers? I’m sure there is a real answer for that but don’t know what it is. So I’ll try to think of a name.

The grouping name (pride, pod, murder, warren, colony, etc) seems to fall into all types of words. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc... They can also be things, descriptions or pretty much anything else. I suppose the thing to explore would be stripper activities. You could have a hustle of strippers or a grind of strippers. A dance of strippers? Nah, none of those sound right. How about a strip of strippers or peel of strippers? A strip of strippers is actually kind of hard to say fast three times.It sounds like “Strip’ah Strippers”. It doesn’t roll off the tongue easy enough. I always associate peel with bells- not belles. Maybe a spin of strippers?

How about things associated with the club. A stage of strippers? No. Stage of strippers sounds like progressions in their career. (Baby stripper, Pro strippers, Burn out Strippers, psycho strippers, etc). How about a rack of strippers? I can hear the comments now “Look at the rack on that rack”. A rail of strippers? Nope. That makes them sound angry. Maybe a buzz of strippers if you take an alcohol or illegal substance tack.

Maybe something about how they affect the customers. A boner of strippers. No, that’s just wrong. A drool of strippers isn’t much better. From a customer’s financial point of view it could be a deficit of strippers. A deficit of strippers is usually what’s going on at the club on Sundays with a two girl rotation.

Perhaps it could be something to do with equipment. A heel of strippers? That has some unflattering connotations. A string of strippers? Nah, a bag of strippers? No, that has the same problem a heel has. I think if I said, “look at the bag of strippers over there”it would result in my untimely death. Maybe make up? It could be a blush of strippers or rouge of strippers.

Perhaps a strip clubs management’s reaction would be a good description: like a migraine of strippers or a pain of strippers. A shriek of strippers? I’ve heard some pretty unpleasant sounds coming out of the dressing room. My personal favorite is what usually happens when a group gets together with some alcohol liberally added: a drama of strippers.

I’m sure there are better ones. Post your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to hear some.

More thoughts on pricing

I was originally going to post this blog in the form of a debate: Customer vs. Dancer "What should the price of lap/couch dance be?" I was going to try debate a dancer via e-mail. I would start with a statement and make a short argument. Then send it to her for her to argue back. Do that a couple times, then blog the result. When I began to outline my arguments one thing became apparent: I had no moral grounds for my arguments. By saying prices shouldn’t go up, I’m basically saying dancers should make less money. As the cost of living goes up dancers have to work more to maintain the same level income. That kind of killed my enthusiasm for the debate. I’ll try to think of something else. Do any Dancers have any topics they’d like to debate with a customer?

I still put some time into the subject and will post my thoughts. In my opinion, one major logistical issue preventing prices from being increased is the current denominations of money. A stage tip is still a buck. It was a buck in the 1980s when I went to my first strip club. This is nearly three decades (at least) of a frozen price. The next denomination up is the two dollar bill. More practically it’s a five dollar bill. Two dollar bills represent less than 1% of the money currently in circulation. Requiring two dollars would work just as well. The problem is that that is a 100% increase in pricing. There is no intermediate step

Couch and lap dances don’t have quite the same pricing shock. A five dollar increase is a substantial increase but not extreme. There are barriers to raising prices but nothing overwhelming. The real barrier (in my opinion) is the club owners. I’m sure all the dancers reading this are rolling their eyes as I state what is hugely obvious to them.

The dancer work situation with the club owners is peculiar. The idea of contracting out space or time from somebody else isn’t unique. Conceptually it isn’t much different from a vendor renting space at a Saturday market or a sports venue. This includes setting prices. What is hugely different for dancers is they actually have to compete with people who they are paying stage fees too. Every dollar that customer spends on drinks, food, or cover charge is a dollar he is not spending on the dancer. Most guys don’t have separate budgets for drinks and dancers. Dancers are all at once: a customer, employee and competitor with the club owner.

The customer/employee relationship is exactly the same business relationship I have when I do a trade show. They tell me when and where I have to be and when I have to show up. Part of the contract with the exhibit hall is that people will be present to operate the booth. They also have rules of conduct. If you show up late or act like idiots the exhibit hall can kick you out of a show. The only time I’ve seen somebody kicked out was for problems with payment. I’ve walked onto the show floor to start up the exhibits and the booth next to us is gone, now replaced with a 30’ x 30’ piece of blank carpet. Exhibit halls will put up with a lot except not getting paid. However, if the Exhibit hall tried to compete for my customers I’d blow a head gasket.

I don’t see pricing changing soon. There is no real incentive for owners to increase the tip or dance prices. It potentially cuts into the owner’s revenue and gives customers a reason to visit clubs that have lower prices. The owners are actually better off keeping the price low. I’m not sure how you would encourage the owners to raise the prices. It would take some sort of worker's strike. Unfortunately, as long as there is an endless supply of new dancers there won’t be a way to increase the price. The one dollar tip at the rail and the $20 lap dance have become the token amount.

I think most dancers look at their job as only temporary situation. They really don’t consider it a long term possibility. Because of that they are more willing to accept the pricing controls. I’m willing to fight for major changes in my career. I’m not going to take on an employer for a job I don't plan on keeping.

More ways to know your spending too much time at a strip club

This just another post about spending too much time at a strip club. For more check here and here.

• The girl in front of you at the check out line is buying false eye lashes, shoe no skid, baby wipes, breath mints and pays for it from a $90 stack of ones. You know what she does for a living.
• You know how thick a $90 stack of ones looks like.
• While taking your niece shopping for her birthday you stop by American Apparel. You know more people there than she does.
• The people you know have more tattoos than the people your niece knows.
• Your niece is both impressed and creeped out by this.
• You spend more time researching for your strip club blog than you do for your day job.

Making the A list

I have one personality quirk about clothes. Texture is more important to me than the color or fit. I like soft clothes. I’m really not that concerned about color matching. If my socks are the same color when I leave in the morning, I am dressed to kill. It’s not that I don’t understand how colors match. They're just not important to me. I don’t care what color my sheets are but they have to be 400 thread count or better.

I really don’t know why texture is important to me. The only thing I can think of is that I’m really near sighted. I spent most of my early childhood not being able to see much around me. Neither of my parents or any of my siblings needed glasses. I’m the only person with a really heavy prescription. Since nobody in my family needed glasses, nobody expected me to need them. In school I was able to fake my way through the eye tests up until the fifth grade. The result was that I never really saw the chalk board for the first five years of school. I was smart enough to get barely passing grades by doing homework and listening to the teacher. It’s kind of amazing I got as far as I did in school. I’m really amazed that I didn’t get killed riding my bike around. If I new how little I could actually see I never would have ventured out on to the street. It was an absolute revelation when I did get glasses as to how much I was missing. I remember not wanting glasses because I didn’t want to get teased. Once I got them, I didn’t care about getting teased. While I didn’t learn much from school, I did learn to do a lot of things by feel.

Maybe being near sighted has nothing to do with it all but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Wearing soft clothes to strip clubs is one of my secret weapons. I stumbled upon this purely by accident. I bought a microfiber shirt that is almost velvety. I wore it to the club one night (mostly because it was the only clean shirt I had). I was really surprised by the reaction the shirt got from dancers. You sometimes get not quite sincere compliments during the dances. People are more complimentary when you are paying them. I tend to ignore them. However, the reaction I got afterward was amazing. For the remainder of the evening I was constantly getting touched, stroked, or randomly hugged by dancers when they walked by me. Getting fondled (for free) is always a good thing for a strip club patron.

It really became noticeable when a lot of dancers start to take note when I didn’t wear my soft shirts. The first words out of their mouth after hello would be “why are you wearing that shirt?” I actually began to sort my shirts in terms of having an A list set, B list, and everything else. A lot of dancers find this shirt sorting totally amusing. I suppose this is another sign you’ve been a strip club customer too long when you start planning your wardrobe around visiting the club.

I’m pretty sure a couple of my shirts are more popular than I am. If I don’t wear them for a little bit dancers will begin to ask if the shirts are OK. That’s fine with me though. I’d rather be remembered for this than being a creep.