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I got a tweet from a dancer regarding my last post. She pointed out an issue that I had forgotten about: tip outs. Dancers have to pay (tip out) the bouncers, the DJs and sometimes the bar staff depending on the club they work at every night. There is a minimum amount (usually $10 but it varies widely) but there is an expectation that the dance will pay more if she has a good night.

Required tip outs is a method the clubs use to defer the payroll costs from themselves to the dancers. They simply pay the club employee’s minimum wage and tell them to go get the money from the dancers. They’ll make the “real” money from tips. This is all to the clubs advantage. They minimize payroll costs and put the responsibility of getting paid on the employee. If a dancer doesn’t tip out enough she might find herself on her own with a jerk customer or find herself getting skipped for stage sets. Both of these directly affect her personal safety and her money.

If I compare this to the hair stylist model, it doesn’t have a direct comparison. The stylist doesn’t have to tip out the janitor or the cashier. Yet there are expenses a stylist has a dancer doesn’t. Most stylists are required to carry insurance or even a bond to work at a salon. So who should carry the insurance the salon or the stylists? Without the stylist the salon cannot make any money and in theory since they can bring multiple people to the policy they should get a better rate but its still money out of the salon’s pocket, not the stylist.

The major factor here is supply and demand. If there are more stylists than chairs the salons can make the rules. If a particular stylist doesn’t like paying her own insurance the salon can simply lease her chair to somebody else who is willing to carry insurance. At what point do you need to intervene with legislation? Do salons have such a grip on the industry that they can extort the insurance cost out of the stylist? I really don’t know. One thing that prevents any real change to the dancer industry is the seemly inexhaustible supply of girls who will dance.

This is not like a company store at a coal mine where it was they only employer in town. In those days you worked at the mine or you starved. If the cost is too high to be a dancer is it time to get another job? It’s a hard question, is the current tip out business model completely unfair? From a dancers point of view who is watching 30% or more of her nightly income disappear in tips its probably yes. For somebody flipping burgers at McDonalds who’s take after eight hours is still less than a dancer who works six hours it's probably no.

In my opinion instituting a minimum wage for dancers would alter the industry completely and probably not for the better. The cost to a club to pay dancers minimum wage would force a lot of clubs out of business. I was able to figure out the number of employee man hours a club would have to pay in wages. I went to the Sassy’s web site since they both post the number of dancers working a shift for a week and the length of each shift. Dancers work 502 hours a week. At the Oregon minimum wage a club would have to pay an additional $4216.80 every week. There is 52 weeks in a year so that would be a additional cost of $219,273.60 year in payroll expense. I don’t think clubs operate at that level of profit that they could absorb that much expense. If a minimum wage was implemented the major result would be a bunch of unemployed dancers. To control expenses clubs would vastly restrict the number of dancers per shift. They simply couldn’t afford to pay shifts with large number of dancers. They would become much more militant about attendance since the pool of dancers (who would basically have to be employees) would be reduced.

Using the Sassy’s schedule as a typical model there are 12 dancers working daily on weekdays and 15 dancers working on weekends. Assuming the minimum tip out of $20 per dancer that’s $1800 a week in tip outs the DJ and Bouncers get. That’s $93,000 additional payroll cost yearly for a club if they were to wave the tip out fees and pay the DJ and bouncers an equivalent amount.

The biggest difference is that the tip out cost is distributed over many dancers over a single entity (the club). Should the club have to shoulder 100% of all the operating costs if a major percentage of the revenue that walks in the front door goes to the dancers? One thing the club owner has assumed that the dancer has not is risk. If nobody comes in the owner is stuck with a bunch of liquor and furniture he can sell at a loss. While he may have a bunch of booze to drown his sorrows in he is faced with a failed business. Financially the dancer risks a nights work, if the club fails she can move on to another location. While this isn’t a trivial thing it’s not like closing down a business.

The stripping industry is built around the concept that dancers will make enough in tips to support the rest of the workers in tip out. Once the tip money falls away the compensation structure fails. From a libertarian point of view, if a girl doesn’t can't enough money dancing, she shouldn't dance. Its harsh point of view but most industries face these same questions. I used to be a design engineer, but all those jobs were getting sent off shore. About ten years ago I was faced with either becoming unemployed or switching careers. At age 40 I went into sales and marketing. That was a seriously scary point in my life.

I think what needs to be prevented is dancers getting gouged because they don’t know any better. I think a standardized pay scale for fees should be set. Another thing I think would be fair is a tip out vs number of dancers per shift adjustment. If the club allows thirty girls on a shift then the amount they tip out should be less. The club doesn’t bring in more bouncers and DJs if there are more dancers, they just collect more tip fees. This isn’t fair. If their are more girls to defer the cost of the staff, they should have to pay less. The clubs operating cost does not go up with the number of dancers. More dancers means more competition for the dollar that are available. Girls get less time on stage and have to compete with more dancers for specialty dances. I don’t know how to enforce this but this is definitely on area dancers get taken advantage of.

I think the dancers can do is to setup a system where they can compare costs, earnings, and treatment. If the top dancers start switching to clubs where they get treated better it might force a change. Dancers are simply not making as much as what they used to, the smart clubs will acknowlege this and work with the dancer to help them out. After re-reading this post all I can really conclude is this is a complex problem I don't have any good answers to.

So sue me

I just read an interesting article in the Willamette Week about a dancer (http://wweek.com/editorial/3602/13360/) suing a club for lost wages. I tend to be pretty sympathetic to the dancers, but this is one situation I don’t completely agree with. She’s trying to get compensated for minimum wage for days she worked.

Ultimately you get paid for doing a job because if they didn’t pay you, you wouldn’t do it. You trade your skills and labor for either money or item of equal worth. At first glance this would seem to back up the dancer’s law suit, why should she have to show up and work with no compensation. Worse yet, she has to pay to work there. The difference is the potential for making money. Dancer’s have the opportunity to make money from the job of dancing. The potential for money is great enough that it’s worth her while to pay the money. That’s the major difference between myself and a dancer. There is no realistic way I can directly sell my services and make money. I have to be associated with a larger group of people manufacturing a product. Because I can’t make money I magically have to be compensated? No, if they didn’t compensate me I wouldn’t do it. I love my job, but not enough to do it for free. Nobody would.

How is the dancer’s job different that a hair stylist? Depending on the salon the stylist has to rent a chair, provide her own tools and supplies, and does not draw a wage from the salon. She makes her money from her customer base that comes in. The salon provides a set of services and large capital equipment for rent. To some extent she has to reply on the salon to promote itself, but much like a dancer she can use social networking to promote herself as well. If the stylist doesn’t make any money should the salon pay her a minimum wage? What about real estate agent?

In many ways if she wins the case it would be landmark ruling. I don’t think she stands much of chance of getting any money, provided that club didn’t do anything shady. Unfortunately that’s a big if. If there is one area that needs legislation is protection for the dancer against unfair treatment. I never seen the contract a dancer has to sign when she works at a club. My guess is basically contains a list of costs she has to pay to work, a code of conduct, and tax information. I’d be curious if there are any clauses that guarantee a minimum number of stage sets, a dressing room chair, or even indoor plumbing. She probably has probably paid for the opportunity to get naked.

I would estimate most dancers are in their early twenties. That’s not age when most people are willing to negotiate for a job. They’ll pretty much take what ever get offered to them. That’s a recipe for abuse. I think a dancer should be guaranteed a certain amount of time on stage for fees. That would at least prevent owners from overloading the rotation for a given shift. I know some clubs limit the number of girls that can work a shift, but a lot don’t. There should also be basic safety requirements. The dancer should not have to worry about falling through a ancient stage fixed with duck tape.

I doubt they’ll ever be any legislation for this. To sponsor something like this would be to endorse stripping. Most politicians wouldn’t go near this. Never mind that a lot of dancers are single moms. God forbid you do anything to help them. If owner is being a sleazeball I hope she wins the case.

Skeptical Stripping

The subject of flu shots and the H1N1 virus came up at both work and the club recently. Most dancers I know are getting the seasonal flu shot. Most the people I work with aren’t and even a few think the H1N1 vaccine is either too new or just a scam to make money. Dancers have a much more practical approach to virus than my co-workers.

Since dancers don’t get paid if the don’t work they have to be more practical. The seasonal flu will knock you out for a week at least, probably more. I suppose your attitude toward the flu shot depends greatly on depends on how much you think you are at risk to get the flu. Most of my co-workers have a relatively limited exposure to people. Except for the ones with kids and those who travel they only see basic set of people.

The dancers work environment seems tailor made for transmitting the flu. A dancer has to meet and greet anybody who walks in of the street. She may have drinks with customer. For both sales and practical reasons she need to get close to the customer, much closer than a normal social situation. If she’s trying to sell a lap dance she’ll probably press up against the customer. Even if she’s isn’t trying to sell a dance, she’ll probably get close just because that’s the only way you can be heard when the music is loud. Dancers get handed dollar bills that have been drooled on, breathed on, and stuck in some unpleasant places. Short of vaccination, the most effective way avoid the flu is to avoid exposure. If you are a dancer you have to put yourself in harms way to make money.

The fact that travelers often visit strip clubs make things worse. Traveling is also a terrific way to catch something. You get to spend time crammed into confined spaces with people who were just recently crammed in to confined space with another set of people. At least when you travel you can take some precautions. I’m hardly a neat freak but I carry hand sanitizer with me now when I travel.

Dancers don’t get sick time or workman’s compensation either. If they don’t show up, they don’t get paid period. Getting put flat on your back with the flu will definitely make a dent in a budget. A flip side to this is getting a dancer’s regulars sick will also cost her money. If a customer gets sick with the flu he’s not going to come in either. While the H1N1 seems to affect younger people worse than older, in general the older you are the less effective your immune system is, and the longer it takes to recover. Vaccination protects her customers.

I’m not sure where all the fear about vaccines comes from. I suppose it ultimately is a result people make of risk versus reward for any medical decision. You are getting a steel tube stuck through skin, and something you may or may not need injected in to you. I don’t like shots, never will. I think the perceived risk from the infectious disease has decreased dramatically. There is a H1N1 pandemic going on as I write this blog post. Except for the media reports I wouldn’t have any idea.

My idea of a pandemic is something out of horror movie. People dying in the streets, cars abandoned on the freeway. As far as I can tell this isn’t happening. Dying of a disease just really isn’t a threat I think about on a daily basis. I remember when I was young I had to go to see the doctor to get my vaccinations updated so I could go to school. We moved around a lot when I was young and I had slipped through the cracks for keeping up with my shots. The last thing I wanted to do on a nice summer day was go get a shot, especially if the only reason I needed it was so I could go to school. That was stupidity squared. On top of that doctors used inoculation guns at the time. These things hurt like hell. The used air pressure to force a stream of fluid through the skin, no needles.

When my mother told me to go get in the car, I objected of course, and kept objecting despite the threats from my mother. My grandmother, who was visiting us at the time, got up, grabbed my ear and physically dragged me to the car and threw me in.

Much to the endless delight of my brothers I had just gotten by ass kicked by my grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1897. She had lived through the Spanish flu, Polio, and other disease outbreaks that resulted in very real suffering. To her vaccines were one of the great things in the world. I was going to get a shot, even if it meant pulling one of my ears off. Death or permanent disfigurement from disease was a very real thing to her. When I was in grade school it was fairly common thing to see somebody who has lost the use of an arm or walked with a limp from Polio. I cannot honestly remember the last time I saw somebody like that since graduating from high school.

I asked a friend of mine, who a vascular surgeon, what the difference is between was the H1N1 and the seasonal flu. He said the only difference is the “deactivated” virus that’s in it. Everything else is the same. Vaccines work by introducing a dead virus into the body. The immune system will create memory cells for the virus. Since its “deactivated” (ie dead) it doesn’t do anything like try to reproduce. Death tends to suppress the sex drive. Next time your immune system sees the virus, like when somebody sneezes on you at the airport, your immune system can react immediately and fight it off. When they created the seasonal vaccine they didn’t think the H1N1 was going to break out. The H1N1 is just another influenza virus.

I’ve gotten the seasonal vaccine, and will get the H1N1 when the lines die down. I’ve gotten the seasonal flu once. It pretty much kicked my ass for one week, and it was another couple weeks before I felt normal. Even though the zombie apocalypse hasn’t occurred from H1N1 there are people dying from it.

Strip club secret weapons

The FTC has posted rules regarding disclosure of any payments or perks to bloggers. (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm) I can safely say I have not received any sort of perk or compensation for this blog. However, if you want to throw a free lap dance or drink my way I can be bought. Cheap. Really Cheap. Just sayin’. There are a lot of web sites that tell you how to get the most for your strip club dollar. What clubs allow more, where the cheapest drink are etcetera. This isn’t one of those, but these are a few simple things I’ve discovered.

The snuggly shirt
The golden rule always applies even in strip clubs. If you want somebody to do something nice to you, do something nice for them. Wear really soft fuzzy shirts to the club. It’s just common sense, if you want somebody to grind against on you, you should be pleasant to grind against. A dancers work clothes tend to very thin to non-existent. What you wear makes a big difference. I discovered this purely by accident. One of my many quirks is I’m really concerned about textures. How a garment feels is as important to me as how it looks. This explains why I sometimes dress like an idiot, texture over image every time.

Have to be honest, it never occurred to me that a dancer would care until one day I wore a microfiber shirt to the club that felt like silk. It got an immediate reaction from the dancers. Soon I had my wardrobe divided up into my A list shirts, B list shirts and all the rest. The A list shirts were really, really soft sort of what you’d expect to find on a plush stuffed animal. B list were not quite so soft but still nice. I think the A list shirts are more popular than me. But I guess that setting the bar pretty low. I have noticed an oddity that I can’t point out that I’m wearing a soft shirt to have an impact. The dancer has to discover it. I suppose I probably come across as a creep, “Hey baby want to feel my shirt”, ugh.

The bar staff is your best friend
Seriously, take care of the bar staff. They can be your best friends in the club. Whether it’s carrying your unconscious ass out the back or vouching for you when a scammer stripper tries to hit you up for more dances than she actually did the bar staff can be your savior. Most clubs have a policy that a dancer can’t turn down a drink if customer offers to buy one (she doesn’t have to drink it) or always try get the customer to buy them a drink. Waitresses are much more likely to either ignore the rule, or ask you specifically if you want to the buy the dancer a drink even if the dancer asks for one. It’s really nice to have the waitress on your side. I’ve had waitresses warn me when a dancer is buying a really expensive drink. Any dollar they save me I always tip them in appreciation.

The bypass
If you are holding your drink in your hand waitresses will usually not ask you if want another. When you’re at a club where they don’t know you this is a fairly effective way to keep waitresses from constantly asking you if you want another drink. This will also slow down a dancer sitting next to you who is currently pounding down drinks like a drunken sailor. It can save you a few bucks and help avoid a confrontation with a drunk dancer.

A brief history of the heel

I recently became curious as to when the current stripper style shoe came into being. The six clear Lucite or white platform stiletto. Not too surprisingly there is zero information on this particular subject. At nothing I could uncover with a solid fifteen minutes of research with Google. I’m going to continue the research but I haven’t quite figure out where to look. In the mean time this is what I did find, a brief history of the heel. Note: most of the information I got from the Shoe Diva web site (http://www.geocities.com/fashionAvenue/1495/contents1.html) Check it out for more information.

It appears that the platform heel got its start in ancient Greece and Rome. Besides democracy, aqueducts, and olive oil we have the heel to thank them for as well. They were called kothorni and were worn by actors. In theater at the time height was equated to status or gravitas of the character. One interesting thing about Roman society is that actors had similar social perceptions strippers have now. People love to watch them, definitely wanted to go party with them, but did not want to be scene with them in polite society. Actor was not a profession any good Roman aspired to. This is part of the reason why the Emperor Nero was so hated by the Roman elite. Nero had to nerve to think himself an actor and would put on performances forcing the Roman upper class to watch. Nero, Emperor of the largest and most powerful empire in the world, absolutely infuriated the Roman elite when one of their own became an actor. In current terms this would be like President Obama addressing congress “Before I begin my state of the union address, I want to show you a couple of my new pole tricks”! While I would find it refreshing to have a president with both humor and chops to do poll tricks, it probably wouldn’t be received well by most.

There are also some sources that claim internet that butchers in the Roman era also used high heels to keep their feet clear of the blood and gore that accumulated while they work. Two thousand years later they are still being worn in meat markets, albeit the markets are now clubs and bars now.




As the Roman Empire declined and fell, so did the height of shoes. The European continent descended into the dark ages and shoes became merely functional again. It would be in the Renaissance, the age of enlightentment, before the high heel shoe would reappear. In Italy, ground zero for all high heel fashions it seems, a shoe style called Chopine or Chapiney. These shoes ranged from 6 to 16 inches in height. I kind of have a hard time believing somebody wearing 16 inch heels in a world with cobble stone streets but who said fashion had to be safe or comfortable. In 1430 they were even outlawed in Venice. I can’t find a reason why, perhaps they were punching holes in the gondolas and sinking them. That’s bad for tourism. The invention of the high heel is sometimes is credited to Catherine of Medici. She was short in stature and betroth to the Duke of Orleans, eventual king of France. Necessity is the mother of invention, while she didn’t really invent them she did make them more acceptable to polite society.

The high heel still wasn’t accepted completely though. In 1670 British parliament forbade the wearing of heels, makeup or false hair. The wearer of high heels could be prosecuted for witchcraft. The dark ages for heels weren’t quite over yet. It would be the 1930’s before the heel would make it return. Again in the epicenter of high heel world Salvatore Farragamo began to design shoes in Italy. To me at least, its striking how modern looking the Farragamo shoes look.



While the high heel remained, the platform didn’t really take off until the 1970’s. This time both men and women were wearing platform shoes now. I was in high school in the late 70’s (I graduated in 1979) and I can remember the heels. Most guys only wore them to clubs at the time, it was pretty rare to see a guy walking in platforms.

Eventually the classic (or cliché’) stripper platform came into being. This transition is not too well documented. I haven’t been able to find any real history as to when they started to be marketed. I’ll keep researching.

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.

G-Strings and Gams

This is a piece of unapologetic silliness. Sort of a what if Dr Suess wrote strip club ads. I’m not sure what inspired me to write this, probably brain damage. I was a little kid in the sixties. Back in the good old days when paint had lead in it, elevators had ash trays in them and seat belts were for wimps. More likely I was dropped as child, I did have three older brothers. I'm reaching a bit with the terms gams. I think the last time I heard this term for legs was in a Humphrey Bogart movie. It the only appropriate rhyming replacement I could think of for ham. I think I’ll keep my day job.


I am Gem

I am Gem
Gem I am

Do you like
G-Strings and gams?

Would you like them
With cold beer?
Would you like them
At the rack?
Yes our dancers have
Class and tact

Would you like them
around a pole?
Would you like them
At a table?
Yes, our servers are fast and able

Would you like them
With a drink?
Bar tenders serve you
With a wink

Would you like them
With a dance?
Would you like them
With smoke?
No you can’t
that rights revoked

Would you like them
At the rail?
Our girls are hot
and shall not fail

Would you like
Ours tops to slip?
Even more if you tip

Would you, Could you,
Like G-Strings and Gams

Yes I would, Gem I am
Yes I’d like G-Strings and Gams

Yes I’d like them with a beer
Yes I’d like them at the rack
Yes I’d like them around a pole
Yes I’d like them at a table
Served by tenders fast and able
Yes I’d like them with a drink
Served with smiles and a wink
Yes I’d like them with a dance
I don’t smoke, not a chance
Yes I’d like them at the rail
Yes I’d like tops that slip
Even better if I tip

Yes I like G-Strings and Gams
That’s a stupid question
Gem I am

A fool and her money are soon parted.

I now have an itinerant roommate for the moment. She is a former dancer that has fallen on difficult times. See the previous blog for more details. This is the second time I have had a dancer stay with me for an extended period of time while she got her life back together. This is also the last time. (Famous last words?)

I noticed the same characteristic in both girls. They are terrible money managers. It isn’t accurate or fair to infer that all dancers are this way, but there are aspects of the job that reinforce bad spending habits.

This first and most profound thing I noticed they operate on the idea there is always another payday tomorrow. All they have to go to work to get more money. They tend to treat the club as their personal ATM machine. Unfortunately to get money they have to work for six hours, get naked and deal with a bunch of drunken customers and the wallet is recharged.

This behavior became apparent in the way they shopped. Not the amount of time they spent shopping (which could be considerable) but they almost always spent every cent they had. They both prided themselves on being “good shoppers”, they would work very hard to get the most for their money, but they always spent every last cent they had on them. If they walked into a store with $60, the walked out with $59.99 worth of merchandise, whether they needed it or not. There was never a thought of saving a penny. If they needed more money, they just picked up another shift.

There many problems with money management scheme. The obvious is that there is no reason to save money. It assumes that she’ll be able to get a shift tomorrow (this is usually not a problem, but sometimes it can be), and that she’ll have a good night. The biggest hazard is it also assumes that nothing will ever happen that can’t be fixed with one or two night’s income. Life isn’t that fair, everybody is going to be hit with big unexpected expenses. This is where I see dancers usually have the biggest meltdowns. They have to make a bill, and they are having a terrible night.

This is when standards start to fall. Girls will do things they normally wouldn’t allow. They let hands go where to places that are usually off limits. They become more aggressive with customers and other dancers. It’s nothing specific to dancers. It just seems like they are in this situation more than most folks I know.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve had to hawk stuff to make my tuition. I’ve watched folks at work lie to make a sale, to get that commission, to pay the mortgage. The difference is that this seems to be a constant problem with some dancers. Except for short term goals (cars, boob jobs, deposit on a place to live) they do not have any sort of plan to save money.

The flip side of this mentality is that when they have a really good night or weekend they will take time off and coast. The will live off the earnings until they run out and only go back to work when they have to. I know one dancer who will tell me with a completely straight face that she has “never had a vacation” that she has always worked since she was twelve years old and this will be her first time in years. That she deserves to take time off. I hear this at least two or three times a year. She takes more time off in a year than I have in the past decade. She just uses this argument as rationalization to take a vacation. If she can work out a way to have a bunch of time off, that is great. More power to her. But don’t tell me that you’ve never had a vacation.

Crazy from the heat

We've had a week of record and near record temperatures in the Northwest. I've managed to add to to the sweltering conditions by having my own personal meltdowns. People are definitely struggling right now. I've been getting lots a request for "help". I try to some compassion but after a while things start to become too much. When you start to cringe everytime the text message chime goes off becuse its going to be another "You're the last person I want to ask but...". Things came to a complete overload when I had a former dancer fall on hard times and end up moving in with me.

I felt like I was getting everybody's problems dumped in my lap. I'm usually a pretty calm and deliberate person, but a broke this time. I went and whacked my MySpace account, twitter account, and deleted a bunch of numbers from phone. I was trying to purge section of my life. Probably not the most healthy approach, but I've got enough of my own stress going on.

I'm transfering all my blogs from my myspace page over to Blogger, grammar errors and all. The dates will be screwed up, but that's not a big deal. I don't write much about current events. I'll try to maintain the same order though.

On a lighter note some local hackers powned a traffic sign with an appropiate message. Its nice the county is warning folks that there are zombie strippers on the loose.

No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

The title is a very rough translation of an epitaph of an early dictator from the Roman Empire (Sulla). It seems to be an accurate description of the way dancers treat each other. I get to hear arguments from both sides. Dancers either seem to be the best of friends or mortal enemies. The sales environment dancers have to work in helps create the. I’ve never gotten use to the competitive nature of sales I work in. Where I work there is a limited resource for support sales. We only have so many parts and demonstration units to go around. For the most part everybody tries to cooperate, but if situation arises the sales folks have no problem stabbing each other in the back. The mantra is “its better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission”. Sorry man, I had to a chance to make a commission and had the demo.

The dancer’s environment is even worse than what I work in. While the sales folks have to compete over demo resources, their territories and pay structure is very tightly defined. Dancer’s however, have to compete with each other for pretty much everything. This ranges from seats in the dressing room to customers on the floor to the outfits they where. Who they follow on rotation, who goes on stage next to them also can affect the night’s income. Dancers have the ability to affect each other income on many levels. When it comes to money things get very emotional very quickly. There are so many ways for dancers to conflict with each other.

On the flip side, I don’t think anybody but another dancer can really appreciate what a dancer goes through. This is true of a lot of jobs. When I listen to people talk about their jobs, it doesn’t always sink in the level of which their job touches all aspects of life. I’m probably more informed than most folks about the job of a dancer, but I can’t say I truly understand. I think this is even more true when people think the job is morally wrong. Dancer won’t judge another girl purely because she’s dancer. I think this creates a higher level of camaraderie than most jobs.

Because of the higher level of camaraderie I think dancers feel I much more intense level of betrayal when something goes wrong. Hell hath no fury like a women’s scorn, and things go to 11 when it’s a pissed off dancer. In an odd sort of way, its similar to dating somebody you work with (in some cases with dancers they are dating). An intense personal conflict at work is a miserable thing. You have to go to work. You have to pay the bills. You can’t avoid the conflict.

When you add alcohol and pressure of sales conflict almost becomes inevitable. I’ve seen blow ups occur from simple miscommunication. Two dancers had just done a VIP for a big spender. He had tipped them very well. They were sitting at my table when they talking about the amount of the tip. Each girl was talking about a different number, yet neither girl realized it. They were both really happy about getting a tip above and beyond the normal VIP fee. It was an awkward moment for me, I decided that it would better for me to point this out and risk the getting caught in the middle of fight than play dumb. One (or both) of the girls had to be wrong, maybe if they talked about while it was still fresh in their minds nothing would happen. I told them what I heard, and then watched as they looked at each other; one said $200, the other said $300. Both nodded their heads in agreement and changed the subject. I’m not sure what each other heard. Later on when it came to split up the money things went bad. Really Bad. Neither one ever came back to me to ask what I heard. Perhaps they didn’t want to involve me or maybe they didn’t hear me either.

Sometimes I’ve seen dancer form into cliques that support each other work. An example of this is the Dolphin 5. They formed a consortium of sorts. They always worked together and to some degree managed to take control of the club. A few girls got run out of the Dolphin after getting crossed up with one of the girls. Usually the just protected their own interests, but occasionally we’re bullies that chased off girls they didn’t like. They managed to not turn on each other. That was back when money was really good though, I’m not sure how well they’d hold up now with money so tight.

Bloggers, Bloggers, everywhere and not a thought to think

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

Don't forget to bring your singles to the interview

If you want to see the true character of a person take him to a strip club and get him drunk. One company I worked at the sales group used this as a method to screen people that were being considered. The company had a very proactive method of hiring. Rather than post a want ads and wait, the HR department would maintain a list of folks they would go after and offer jobs to. This would cause problems from time to time, they were raiding their customers and vendors for talent, but the quality of employees they had were pretty high.

Most of the people never knew they were being screened. Either we’d take them out at a trade show or during a business trip. The first thing you’d discovered about them is if they’d even go into the club. The sales group had a relatively wild social life. I’ve never worked at a place where there was so much corporate sponsored debauchery. The desire to go out and party on the corporate dime is hardly an indicator as to good somebody is at their job. The recruit’s job skill usually wasn’t the issue at the time, we already new how got they were from past work experiences.

What we didn’t know is if they played well and got along with others. If they were willing to go hang out at a strip club they odds are they would be comfortable with the job atmosphere at our company. On Monday morning when people returned to work nursing the aftermath what ever excess they indulge in over the weekend, it’s better if to have everybody at least sympathetic. Some people become very uncomfortable around hearing about ‘partying’ or worse yet will become show open contempt for the revelers. Having workers openly judging other workers will rapidly destroy morale. At least if they will walk into a strip club they aren’t openly judgmental.

Seeing how they react to the strip club environment is also telling. A strip club pretty much stomps on the expected “morals’ of polite society. At least for me, it’s hard to not covet thy neighbor’s wife when she is dancing naked in front of me. The normal boundaries of social behavior are not required. Its OK to stare at her boobs, its OK to stare at her boobs while drinking, its OK to stare are boobs while drinking and drooling on yourself. More importantly it’s OK to talk about her boobs. Once the normal behavior boundaries are crossed it’s easier to talk about things that are also outside the lines. You can go into swapping bar stories of assorted strip club adventures. I’ve got a million of those, maybe I should write a blog? (Oops, too late).

You can get the recruit to talk about his experiences. You can learn a lot from those, especially how accountable they are. After they got hammered, fell over and smashed a bunch of the furniture, did they apologize and try to make amends. Or did they start bitching about how stupid to put a table in the middle of the floor and surround it with chairs. What an absolute death trap (True story).

Alcohol is also factor. It lowers inhibitions so people will talk more freely. After a couple drinks no subject is too taboo. What you can’t ask on a job interview is pretty amazing. You can’t ask how old they are (but you can ask when they graduated from High school) you can’t ask if they are married, you can’t ask if they have kids, you can’t ask what religion they are. These laws vary from state to stare and regularly get ignored. I’d really like to see some plaintiff explain to a judge that he was illegally asked about his marriage status while getting a lap dance. I’ve been asked all the questions and happily answered them, lap dance not required. I’m usually more interested in trying to get the job. All these rules go right out the window at a strip club. Catering to the guy by buying him drinks and dances also will begin to tell. We would make him the center of attention and cater to his whims. Is he grateful or dies he turn into a pompous ass? If the recruit drinks himself under the table in first thirty minutes, he has other problems.

Watching how they treat other people after a couple drinks is very telling. If the guy begins to put down all the crack ‘ho bitches working at the club, going off on a misogynist tirade about the evil’s of the women and their wicked ways you probably don’t want on your pay roll. He probably has some issues to sort out. You can also watch how he deals with the dancers. Does this guy have the basic humanity to treat people decently? Dancers will put up with a lot of bullshit if they get paid.

By removing the social norms, liberally adding alcohol you can get to somebody’s true nature at strip club. Curiously they never took me to a strip club when they recruited me (bastards). I suppose they didn’t have to. All they had to do was to go down to the club and check my references. I’m not sure what kind of impression I would have made when we walked into the club and they found out I was on a first name basis with half the dancers.

The other industry icon

Probably the number one icon of the stripper industry is the platform stiletto heel. The number two icon of the industry is probably the iPhone. Compared to the engineers, salesman accounts other folks I work with. A far higher percentage of dancers own iPhone then all those other groups. The company I work for sells components to Apple. In a very small way I get money from dancers every time they buy one. The money flow is still pretty one sided I spend a lot more on dancers than I get, but keep buying those iPhones and iPods anyway.

There are many features that make this a really desirable gadget for dancers. The obvious is that is an excellent music and video player. Music is an integral part of a dancer’s job, having an excellent music player makes some sense. I’m not sure how much some of the DJ’s or clubs have embraced the digital music. Is most of the music now played of a laptop or CD? With the advent of MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking systems the iPhone’s is a great device to maintain contact with their customers and promoting themselves.

A surprising number of dancers buy iPhones to entertain their kids. Perhaps that’s not the primary reason, but it’s definitely a factor. That’s their story at least. I suspect they may just want to be able to watch movies and play games while it’s slow. Nah, it’s probably just for the kids. (ahem)

There are a lot of feature that the iPhone has that aren’t utilized by dancers. One is the count down timers. If you hit the clock icon on the iPhone, one of the features that appear at the bottom is the time. This is a minute timer. I often hear about dancers getting forgotten back in the VIP area. The bouncers will forget or be distracted by something and not get a dancer when the time is up. The count down timer provides a large easy to see display showing remaining time. It even has an alarm that goes off at the end. It’s better to have the bouncer show up incase the customer gets cranky, but it does create a break point to stop the VIP dance. Perhaps a VIP app should be written with preset times built in. It could have a special feature to “accelerate” the time to get rid of obnoxious customers. Have two start buttons that look the same. The top button has a normal time, the bottom button has a faster timer. Jerk customer you want to get rid of faster? We got an app for that.

The more industrious dancers could buy a spread sheet application and log her income and expenses in her phone at the end of the night. I suppose that might be another possible app. A program that logged all the stage fees, income, tip outs and other income/expenses then put them into a form that could be easily imported into a TurboTax or Tax cut.

Actually most smart phones have these features. The G1 and Palm Pre have the same features. One feature the new iPhone 3Gs has is the where am I app. If you lose your iPhone you can log into a web sire and query the location of the phone using the built in GPS. Not that dancers ever lose anything after drinking a little too much.

Outside in

I guess I could consider myself an “insider” at the club I hang out. Many times I know more about what’s going on at the staff than the dancers, its fairly common when something major happens I’ll a get calls and texts from dancers wondering what’s going on. Most dancers will trust me with their purses (much to my dismay). This is stark contrast to when I first started hanging out at the club and was a complete stranger to everybody. I know I get treated different because I’m more sympathetic to dancer issues than most customer, provided they don’t do anything stupid like make me wait, watch their purse, or call me a creepy club regular. I’m also short and fat, but please don’t call me that while you are trying to sell me something.

The first thing that stuck me when I first started hanging out was that all the girls had stage names. From a purely practical point of view, stage names make perfect sense. It both provides a degree of security from crazy stalker guys, and also helps create the stage presence. But the first time a dancer sits down with you and say “Hi, I’m Epiphany” your immediately gut reaction is no its not. Nobody is named Epiphany and if it was you would shorten it to “Pif” or “Fanny” or “Lisa”. It’s an odd contradiction. Here is a girl who is (however falsely) is acting as if she likes me and wants to get to know me better, yet won’t tell me her real name. She’s trying to establish a bond of trust yet won’t reveal something that seems fundamental like a first name.

Eventually I got past that. I began to judge how good I thought their name was. Most of the time you can pick out the girls who selected their name for a particular reason and the other girls who looked at a list and pick the name that sucked the least. Even with that it’s still an odd conversation. Dancer will talk about normal everyday things then suddenly veer away from a subject like its matter of national security. “I had to go in and the get the alignment fixed on my Hon…. Er, um, car”. I have to admit that i'd never consider revealing what kind of car you drive could be a dangerous. Getting followed home by psycho customer is always a major risk. Not only does that put the dancer at risk, it also endangers their family. I don’t care what you do for a living; nobody should have to worry about the security or stability of their family life for a job.

It becomes a potentially problematic when a dancer becomes comfortable enough that they let things slip with out meaning to. The first time a dancer accidentally told me her real name. I suddenly turned and looked at her with a big “Ah Hah!” expression. She immediately became massively defensive. It was weird. I have always been very respectful and polite to her. Yet that reaction set off all her danger instincts. Eventually I developed the rule of three when it came to things like this. Until a dancer mentions something personal three times before I’ll acknowledge it. Until then I’ll simply act like I didn’t notice the fact she just told me where she lives, or hands me her driver’s license (provided she has one) while looking for her lip gloss. As long as I act like its not important most dancers will not feel threatened.

I went along at this level for quite some time. I was “club friends” with the dancers. They were completely relaxed with me at the club, yet I couldn’t tell you the most basic thing about them outside the club. This changed when I became a regular for one of the more elite dancer/queen bee girls. It may sound odd but I used to be intimidated by the really hot girls that everybody went to the rack to see. I assumed that they always had some sort of big roller who was going to pay them tons of money just to sit with them. I always talked to the girls who would approach me. I don’t think a lot of dancers realize that a dancer who will walk up and talk to a lone customer will become much more attractive than the six foot bleach blonde pipe cleaner with massive boobs.

The elite girl actually approached me one slow night. We hit it off and began a friendship that we still maintain (to lesser degree) to this day. The first thing that changed is that she started treating me like another dancer when it came to conversations. It would be funny to watch the reaction of other dancers when the elite girl would start talking about a subject that would normally be considered taboo. I suppose this is the point I became “Harmless Todd”. But once that barrier had been broached, I could be trusted with personal information conversations changed permanently. The elite girls endorsement gave me credibility as club insider and not a crazy customer.

I also discovered the ability to keep my mouth shut about things and not pass along gossip (no matter how desperately I wanted to) actually turned me into a counselor for some girls. I think I provided a safe ear to bend. I wasn’t part of the dressing room drama crowd, but knew enough about the job enough to be an understanding ear. Unfortunately I also get drawn into some dancer conflicts. On rare occasion I’ve even be a go between to get things sorted out. I like being an insider ultimately, I’ve made some very good friends at the club because of it.

Drunk XX chromosomes

So which is worse, a drunk and obnoxious male or female customer? They are both probably really difficult to deal with. From purely anecdotal evidence it seems that really drunk women are much more irritating to deal with. A lot of women seem to think the normal rules of touching don’t apply to them. To be fair men are the same way, but however obnoxious it’s sort of expected behavior from men.

A couple months ago I observed a hammered female customer. It struck me that she was obnoxious as any guy, but it was worse because she was allowed to get away with things that would have gotten a guy kicked out immediately. I first noticed her when she bounced off me while I was standing at the bar. When I turned to look at who had bumped in to me I saw her stagger away. She crashed through the tables ricocheting off customers and solid objects like a pin ball, leaving a trail of knocked over chairs. It was pretty obvious to the casual observer she was tanked.

She was sitting with a mixed group of men and women. They were gathered around a table next to the stage. They were sort of tipping, there were seven people in the group but they’d only put up a dollar or two for each set. They were spending a lot more money on drinks than dancers. Interspersed with the tips were the occasional “Woo Hoo”s screams. Normally these don’t bother me, but when it occurs for no particular reason its get annoying. Getting into the performance is pretty cool, screaming when the dancer checks to make sure her shoe is on OK is just stupid.

Eventually they all got up as a group and sat down at the rack. This pleased the dancers who finally thought they might actually make some money off this group. The first dancer got up and started her set. As she moved around the stage and approached the knot of drunken customers, the girl suddenly reached out to grab the dancer. With Kung Fu Panda like skills the dancer knocked her hand away and began back peddling away. The dancer went around to all the other customers then approached the group again. Sure enough drunk girl’s hand shot out trying to grab the dancer. This time the dancer grabbed her hand and asked drunk girl to stop. The song ended. The dancer collected her tips, taking time to stop and talk to the drunk girl again. I assumed she was trying to make sure that her point was clear. I think she would have needed to bash drunk girls head with a brick to make it sink in.

It was for not. The second set began and as soon as the dancer approached the drunk girl again her hand was out trying to grab the dancer. For the remainder of the set the dancer avoided that section of the rack, always keeping at least three feet away. The set ended and as she got off stage she warned the next dancer. Except to collect tips the next dancer barely approached the drunk girl. If a guys was continually trying to grab a dancer on stage he’d been escorted out instantly. Yet this girl continued trying to grope anything dancer who strayed to close. Eventually drunk girl gave up grabbing a dancer and decided that she would get up and dance along the performer. It was moderately amusing watching drunk girl flounder around like a demented walrus for a little bit. Then it became a nuisance. Eventually her companions decided that she had enough and escorted her out.

During the entire time the bar staff neither intervened or cut her off. I supposed it’s a little different with this girl. From a purely practical point of view most dancers I know could have punched her lights out if she really did go too far. Still most people don’t want to half to resort to fighting just to do their job. If you are looking for a fair and just environment a strip club isn’t the place to go.

Knee problems

A favorite dancer of mine was injured last weekend. Besides being disappointed that I wasn’t able to spend time with her, I was also concerned about her health. Dancers have a job where they can assign a level of pain or injury to a specific dollar value. Granted every girl has good and bad days, but most girls can tell you how much they’ll typically make in a night. More to the point, a dance can tell you how much is probably not going to lose if she doesn’t go in. This problem seems to affect many dancers.

She was suffering from a sore knee. Specifically she would feel a shooting pain in her knee when she put pressure on it while doing floor work. It was enough to make her decide to take the day off and rest her knee. There is an affliction I call engineers disease. Engineers always think they have the right answer to a question. Mostly it’s part of the job. You are constantly solving problems big and small when you are an engineer. After a while you begin to believe you have answers for everything. Regarding technical stuff engineers are right most of the time. Regarding interpersonal, fashion, or subjective things engineers are usually clueless. Engineers have no idea when they right or when they are clueless. They think they are always right.

So naturally I think I can diagnose the injury, which I can because I’m an engineer and we’re always right (ahem). I decided to use the world famous medical diagnoses device Google to make my diagnoses. I started with a fairly general search “dancer knee injuries” and got a lot of result of ballet dancers. Ballet dancer apparently have a lot of problems with stress factures and ACL tears. The symptoms associated with ACL and stress factures really didn’t match the knee injuries. I decided to narrow the search a little to “stripper knee injuries” and didn’t much medical literature. Mostly they were personal accounts of strippers hurting their knee or electricians hurting their knee with wire strippers. I played around with search terms and never really found any thing that seemed authoritative.

There is precious little medical information specific to the strip club industry. By medical information I’m being a little snobby. I narrowed my requirements that they be from a known medical source like the New England Journal of Medicine or a large hospital like Bethesda or OHSU.

I changed my method a little by trying changing the search. It occurred to me that other industries may have similar problems. Carpet layers spend a lot of time working on their knees as well. I typed in carpet layer knee problems and carpet layer knee syndrome popped up. I read a little further and found it is more commonly called Housemaid’s knee. It’s technically pre-patellar bursitis. The bursa behind the knee becomes irritated resulting in shooting pains through the knee. This sounded very similar to knee problem she was having. The only thing that really didn’t match is there is usually (but not always) swelling associated the inflammation. She didn’t mention if there was any swelling.

A little further research into different knee injuries also revealed pinch nerves. This also results in sudden shooting pain. The peroneal nerve runs down the front of the knee. It may get impacted while the dancer smashes her knee into a hardwood floor. The long term treatment for minor versions of each injury is the same, quit doing what makes it hurt. Both used the short term RICE (Rest, ice, compression, elevation) for immediate treatment.

Another thing I discovered is the heels are also terrible on the knees and agrivate the problem. I know this is no surprise to dancers but its still amazing to me how much the effect of heels on the knees is documented. The extended heel forces the dancer to constantly be fallinf forward. Over time this will put excessive pressure on the knee. I always figured that heels would wreck the ankle much before the knee.

Beware of falling turkeys

Exactly what demographic do strip clubs advertise to? People who like to look at naked women? That’s a pretty broad cross section, the vast majority of the male population plus some of the female. The age group ranges from 21 to still breathing. I found an old SFX pdf file from 2002 on my machine, checking the ads out I notice that the basic add format really hasn’t changed. They don’t seem to make much effort to tailor the adds for the audience or the economy.

They ads still follow the boobs and bullet item format. The content hasn’t changed either. Each ad has its name and address, and usually some sort of event. Hot women, cold beer, enough said, seems to be the attitude. Looking at the current issue of Exotic it doesn’t look things have changed much. Strip clubs seem to doggedly stick to the same formula while other industries adapt to what’s going on.

Most other companies have changed their marketing campaign to reflect people’s current concern, getting the most for their money. Most places now have value menus, five dollar foot long sandwiches, buy back policies for new cars and so forth. They are trying very hard to create the perception that you can get more for your money. This concept is fairly alien to strip clubs. A lot of clubs operate on the concept of separating the customer as quickly as possible. In my opinion this isn’t going to work in the current economy. Most people more concerned about where their money is going.

I don’t think a value meal approach will work for a bar. By offering cheaper drinks all you are going to do is cut you profit margins. The only way you can increase your profits by cutting prices is if you sell more stuff. I don’t think the number of drinks would go up. They should offer a drink special though. Just to maintain a presence with the customer. All any club needs to do is get a twitter account. They can send out twitter specials for free. The club really doesn’t need to lower its prices, it just needs to create the illusion that it is.

One of the most difficult things in an economy like this is maintaining market share. People are much more willing to look at new things if they think it will save them money. Twitter adverts will help keep the club in front of them.

It’s hard to argue with success, a lot of clubs have been around for a while and have been very successful. It still strikes me that they don’t very from their current formula. There’s a saying in the high tech industry “If the wind blows hard enough even a turkey can fly”. The wind is awfully calm right now. I suspect most clubs are just going to cut costs to the bone and wait for the economy to turn.

Not in my backyard

They are opening a new Stars Cabaret near where I live. The club finally got the liquor license approved. It was met with the usual complaints for the local residents. The news story on the page had all the usual images, a dancer’s ankles in heels walking around a brightly lit stage, the local politician vowing to fight the club, the religious folks promising to picket this den of evil. What I found really interesting were the comments regarding the club posted below the article. They manage to encapsulate a lot of the myths and misconceptions about strip clubs.

The vile Jezebels will seduce the local husbands
Yeah, right. Of all the places to go where you won’t get laid a strip club to on the top of the list. Most of the girls are already in relationships, they are there to earn money not meet Mr Right or Mr Wrong as the case may be. It’s just the way people will project their preconceived notion a person just because of their profession. If a woman is willing to go up on stage and take her clothes off she must obviously be just one step away from being a hooker. Yet the reality is far different.

The vast majority of dancers I know are single mother are trying to provide for their families. With most other jobs she would be looked on with admiration. Raising kids an s single mother has to be one of these most difficult jobs ever. I was raised by a single mother. I never realized how much energy she had till I was taking care of myself. I come home from work beat. Tired cranky, I barely have enough energy to turn on the TV. I sit flopped on the couch grumbling about the extreme effort its going to take put the one plate and silverware into the dishwasher, or god forbid have to empty it. A single mother will have to come home prepare dinner, perform a mire aid of other tasks to keep the household running and barely running. It one my few real regrets that I was never able to tell my mother how much I know appreciate what she did for me before she passed. Why this same effort should be ignored just because of a profession? It’s almost sacrilege to go into the school for parent teacher conference and then you’re a stripper. Yet it’s the case and the uninformed will bitch about the immoral folks working at the club.

It will attract all the creeps
Yes, it’s well known that all the creeps commute in from some where else to visit strip clubs. They aren’t living down the street or next door to you. Get rid of the strip club and the creeps will go away. Strip clubs primarily have local patronage. Most of people in the club already lived there. Will the sudden presence of club corrupt my values? No, it will just shorten my commute. I didn’t magically see a reader board for a strip club and turn into a dollar bill wielding demon.

I don’t object to what they do, as long as they do it somewhere else.
This is one of those questions that doesn’t have a clear answer. This is the politically correct safe answer. You can object with out objecting, in the 70’s we called this a nimby, short for “Not in my back yard”. The usual concern is that there are children present. Which is in my opinion is a legitimate concern. There are subjects that kids shouldn’t have to deal with until they get older. I don’t think a strip club should be right across the street from a grade school. Most people are afraid that the proximity to s strip club is going to reduce their property value. But this conflicts directly with the legal rights of the club to operate. It’s a legitimate business that pays taxes. They have as much right to exist as the local convenience store, pub, or Starbucks. So where do you draw the line? My best guess is about ½ mile from a school. This is one area where a compromise has to be met.

This can be a very dangerous law. It can be easily abused to make it impossible to operate a business. You can use it to impose your moral values on other people. You can say anything you want as long as there is nobody around to here it. That’s censorship. It’s easy to twist laws to enforce a moral code that’s specific to a religion or belief system. It provides a mechanism for a small minority will be able to impose their will on everybody else. In Egypt they are going to slaughter all the pigs to prevent the spread of swine flu. The vast majority of Muslim’s I know are completely indifferent to pigs. Pigs are not the primary vector for the disease. Most pigs don’t get out and spend much time at the local mall. They aren’t a health threat. But a minority in the Islamic Egyptian government that do find pigs offensive can use the laws to enforce their beliefs.

The location argument is not very applicable to the new Stars location. The club is next to a motel and industrial park, backed up against the freeway. It’s hardly near any schools. Yet the local politicians are vowing to fight it. It’s an easy position for them. They can go on record having fought to save the “moral” purity of the neighborhood, knowing full well that the right to free speech will over ride it. That pesky constitution thing is so annoying.

Operators are standing by

There are more and more articles about how more out of work women are turning to dancing to make ends meet. I wonder if you could put together a stripper starter kit and sell them via infomercial.

Announcing the new Stripper Starter Kit…
Thinking of starting a new profession with flexible hours, good money usually, and huge wardrobe you’ll probably never wear in public then we have just the thing for you, the stripper starter kit. In one package we have all the gear you need to start you on the road to brass poles and financial freedom.

One time offer only…
The package contains the state of the art individualized personal cleaning system. (Baby wipes). Yes, these miracle devices will allow you to clean up at a moments notice. The space age dispenser will travel with you every where. The baby fresh smell will leave you refreshed and only slightly scar the psyche of any customer who is suddenly reminded of Doctor Suess and Baby’s R Us in the middle of a lap dance. Baby wipes are probably the one of the least known secrets of strip clubs. I never knew about the alternate use until a dancer friend was staying with me for a couple days (Room mate issues). She had them out on counter one day when she was packing her stuff up for work. She was single and didn’t have any kids.

But now how much would you pay…
If you order now you will get the latest in dance gear organizer (Large plastic sandwich bags). The organizer quickly sorts your clothes into small bags for easy compact storage. The see thru design makes for quick identification. No more tearing through your bag looking for those fish net stockings. (I just hate it when that happens) The NASA derived sealing system keeps your garments safe and free noxious fumes commonly found in clubs. This was another item that never occurred to me would be useful to a dancer. Again I would have never known except for when my dancer friend raided my kitchen for plastic baggies. “Are you taking a sandwich to work?” I have to admit I thought she was taking other control substances commonly found in plastic bags. “No sandwiches”, she replied, “Panties”. It took me a little bit to wrap my brain around that.

But wait, there's more…
The tip transport and storage safe (tip purse).There are as many of styles of tip purses as there are dancers. Actually, most dancers have multiple purses and tastes that change. Some purses look like bejeweled miniature strong boxes, sort of a tackle box with glitter. I imagine there’ a practical aspect to that. A rigid purse will keep thing from getting crunched. One thing I learned selling cigarettes at a gas station, men generally buy soft packs, women buy hard packs. Women tend to keep the cigarettes in their purse with cell phones, keys, wallets, etc where their very expensive smokes can be easily be smashed. Guys keep cigarettes in coat pockets where the hard pack will poke holes in clothes or gouge any time they put on the garment. Some dancers go for smaller purses, other have big honken’ bags. I’m not sure why they want such a thing. They must be really optomistic about how much money they are going to make. It seems to me it would be a pain to drag the big beast around. It would be a lot harder to lose.

Here’s a gadget, a purse proximity detector. If the purse gets move more than 30 feet from than dancer an alarm goes off. If it goes more than 50 feet a smoke bombs goes off. This way if a purse gets left behind or pick up by an unauthorized individual the dancer will be notified by an ear piercing shriek. If the unauthorized thief continues on the smoke bomb goes off obviously marking the individual. On top of that most people will drop something if it appears to be on fire. The smoke might make the cash smell a little funny but it should still be legal tender.

If you order now, we'll add for free…
All the infomercials will have the free add on item if you order now. For this we’ll add the breath management dispensers. (mints, gum, etc). I always self conscious if a dancer offers me a breath mint. I try pretty hard to maintain personal hygiene. I’ve noticed that breath mints and gum tend to sell out really fast in the vending machine. I also noticed that Rice Crispy treats sell out really fast too. Those things are always gone. I’m not sure what the correlation between Rice Crispy treats and dancers but there is something going on. I’ll have to investigate this in a later blog.

Operators are standing by…

Sight and Sound

These are subjects where the opinions of the dancers will probably be a lot different than mine. I was considering how much of an impact music makes on the stage performance. After the last time I was in the club, I stopped and tried to remember what songs were playing when my favorite dancers were on stage. I couldn’t. A few I could remember what type of music they like to dance to. I could remember some songs but not the dancer.

So how important is the song to the set? In my opinion it’s critical. Can you image how a strip club would do if there were no music? Just an hour glass timer a girl turn over, she’d perform until the sand ran out. The whole concept of a girl wandering around the stage naked with no music seems perverted. Despite what the more conservative objectors might want to acknowledge, there is a great degree of art and performance in stripping. I was able to remember other details. I could remember what the girls were wearing and what the conversations we had. I imagine part of my lack of memory is because that most of the music I hear in a club is not what I normally listen to. I actually prefer this. If given a choice I’d rather hear something completely new. I’ve got iPod stuff full of classic rock. I don’t want to hear the same music I was listening to on the drive over. Plus everybody knows rock music attained perfection in 1974 (*Homer Simpson, from Homerpalooza episode)

When I can associate a song with a particular girl’s performance it’s most likely because of choreography. I first heard the expression “poser’s, prancers, and dancers” from Sasha. Poser’s just go up and stage and walk around strike a pose for each customer. The music really has no relation with her set. Prancers will try to dance a little, but they really don’t move with the song, it’s more like background music. Prancers play music they like to listen too while they dance, rather than dance to the music. Dancers indeed dance to the music. They match their pacing and actions to rhythm of the song. I’m always impressed with this. They could just as easily just prance around the stage and make about the same money. I notice that dancers will always put on the same performance regardless if the rail is packed or just the bar staff is there.

Stages are another area I probably spend too much time thinking about. Probably the biggest debate I see when it comes to stages is whether there should be modesty panels of not. Basically should the stage wall be solid or see through. I think they should be open. The modesty panel train of though is that if guys can’s see the girl’s floor work they be more inclined to go to the rail. My guess is the opposite occurs. If the guy’s in cheapskate mode, sitting just off the stage nursing a beer not being able to see everything isn’t going to bring him to the rail. He’s just going to wait for the girl to stand back up. Hiding the girl doesn’t do her any good. As a customer you never know what will catch your eye. Just being only able to see the top of her head and an ankle will pretty much lose my interest in a hurry.

D2 has had some weird stages. The oddest was nicknamed the “pussy platter” by the dancers. It resembled a poker table more than a stage. Absolutely flat, with a lowered shelf complete with recessed pockets to hold drinks. It was really uncomfortable to sit at. You basically eye level with the dancer’s shins when she was standing in front of you. You had to crank your head back to look at anything else, which isn’t the most flattering angle to look up at girl.

Material Science and Pole dancing

You know you've been a customer too long when you start to think of physics and mechanics when watching a dancer. I've always been this way though, not just at strip clubs. It’s been a compulsion of mine to always need to know how things work. The Dilbert clip on my MySpace profile page is so accurate it’s painful. Fortunately I've been able to take a personality disorder and turn it into a career in engineering. This time I happen to notice that a pole trick was a really nice demonstration of the conservation of angular momentum. She could control the speed at which she spun by changing how much of her body was extended away the pole. She could speed up and slow down at will, much like an ice skater. This was on the really “spinny” pole on the back stage at D2. I bet physics classes would be a lot better attended if they had video clips of strippers for demonstrations.

Another thing that struck me was the amount of force being allied to the skin during some pole tricks. The move consists of the girl wrapping one leg around the pole and hanging upside down with the other leg and both arms extended. I made a quick estimation that she had approximately 18 inches of the pole had contact with the leg. I estimate that 50% of the pole was exposed. Assuming a 2" pole, that would mean she had 28 square inches of skin in contact with the pole. I'd guess she weighed about 125lbs. That means each square inch of skin would have to support 4.5lbs. Ouch, that's a lot of weight to hang off a section of skin that normally doesn't support any weight.

When I mention this to a dancer she pointed out to me that when a girl first starts dancing or returns from taking time off they tend to get bruises on the inside of the leg then after a while they build up some resistance to bruising. I did some investigations on this. Not surprisingly, there isn't a lot of ongoing research on dancer physiology. I really could find much information in general about resistance to bruising. Lots of remedies for helping bruises heal, but nothing with any solid medical data. Just researching the only theory I could come up with is the skin becomes thicker. Skins response to constant pressure or friction is to grow faster. This is how calluses form. Bruises occur when the capillaries directly below the skin are damaged and start to leak; my guess is that the skin becomes thicker over time, providing more padding and protection the capillaries underneath the epidermal layers. The more pole tricks you do the thicker your skin becomes.

Another thing I wanted to research is the cold brass poles are slick, warm brass poles the sticky effect. I've heard this from multiple dancers over the years. I did a fair amount of research into this. I consulted a couple of material properties hand books and spent a lot of time reading about brass on the internet. The property of brass doesn’t change at all over temperature you would encounter inside a building. Brass does have some interesting properties, one of which is it is antimicrobial. It will kill off bacteria, fungus, and other nasty creatures that touch its surface. It takes about seven hours though. The pole will have to still be cleaned between sets. But after the next day the brass pole will have killed off all the microbes after the club closes. Steel poles definitely need to be cleaned. The copper in the brass (brass is an alloy of zinc and copper) will naturally disinfect itself. On thing I discovered is that clubs shouldn’t use Windex to clean the poles. Windex is probably the worse thing you want to clean a brass pole with. Even diluted ammonia will eventually make brass brittle. Having the base of the pole break is probably not a desirable thing while you’re spinning upside down.

Getting back the cold/slick hot/sticky properties, I could not find anything about brass that changes its surface at temperatures you’d find inside climate controlled building. I don’t think the brass its self actually changes. What is probably going on is the skins reaction to temperature. Brass conducts heat very well (I bet you didn’t think you’d be reading a material science report when you log into my blog). When skin feels cold the sweat glands shut down, your hands will dry out. A small amount of moisture on the skin will create a slight suction when it fills in the irregularities of the surface. When the pole warms up, the physical exertion of doing pole work will keep a layer of sweat on the skin. Which help maintain a reliable grip. A quick test would be to breath on your hands next time you are faced with a cold pole. Your breath is really humid and will coat your skin with moisture. This should make your initial grip good, but you’ll probably crash when you change grips. So maybe you should wait unit the pole warms up.

I only go to strip clubs to watch the train wrecks

This post is mostly for the folks who were following my twitter feed (www.twitter.com/pdxstoney) a couple days ago. This is the story behind the series of recent tweets from me. Sometimes you run into dancers who are just completely clueless. The turn over rate for dancers is fairly high, but a couple weeks ago the St Valentines day massacre went down at D2. A bunch of girls were let go. There are a bunch of new dancers now working at the club. I got a call from a long time dancer wondering if I would come in. I got the usual 8ish reply when asked when she was planning to come in. 8ish for her is usually 9, 9:30, or sometimes next Friday.

I wander in around 8:30, the noticed a bunch of girls wandering around in zombie fashion. A couple of minors are trapped on the kiddy pool stages, unable to work the floor. I headed to the back of the club, where it’s a bit quieter. The way the ceiling is built the back side is sheltered from being in the speaker’s direct line of fire. After ordering a drink I spend a little time watching dancers navigate around the room. It strikes me that it must be impossible to quickly move laterally in seven in stilettos. Important safety tip, when pursued by zombies dancer move the tables in a zig zag manner.

A really loud dancer I’ve never seen before is sitting at the table next to me. She’s going on about her finances, and how bad things are. The customer gets up and leaves in mid sentence. She glances over my direction for a second and we make eye contact. Ack. I quickly avert my eyes pull out my cell phone and start to compose a tweet. She plops down next to me without a saying a word. I become very intent on my message. I press send and introduce myself. She smiles and shakes my hand and immediately begins bitching about how nobody is tipping. Glad to meet you too. I quickly realize that my participation in this conversation is not required. She will happily continue her verbal stream of consciousness until I’m rendered unconscious. As long as I twitch, breathe, or show signs of life, she’ll rattle on.

She drones on about all the troubles in her life, late payments, slow nights, and how her car was towed because her driver’s license has been suspended. I’m pretty sure this is point where my last two brain cells died. I think it was a suicide pact. I start to filter her out, “yes dear, yes dear, you don’t say, oh really, that’s interesting”. Then her conversation takes an odd tact. She start going off on how weird it is guys can keep showing at a club and looking at the same women. It’s just completely creepy to her.

Whoa back up there Shamu, I resemble that remark. I suddenly get interested in the conversation. I ask if she had any regulars. She replies no. Imagine that. I point out to her that I’m one of those weird guys that hang out and look at the same women. She appears completely oblivious that she just called me a creep. With a drop dead gorgeous naked girl dancing suggestively three feet away she asks why I show up on a regular basis. “It’s for the scintillating conversation of course” I reply. The verbal onslaught she’s been subjecting me to suddenly abates as she considers this. She cocks her head slightly as if thinking. I realize now the head tilt was to help my comment pass from one ear and out the other. “It’s just creepy” is her reply.

She goes even further and wonders what guys find to interesting about strip clubs in general, she thinks it’s stupid. It’s kind of like gravity. If you jump off a cliff you will fall. If you put naked women on a stage and men will accumulate. Its just way things work. Taking the gravity analogy further you it’s not the fall that kills you it’s the sudden stop at the bottom. This girl shouldn’t be worrying about why guys are coming in any more than she should worry about why gravity works while she hurtles off a cliff. But she should worry about what to do when they inevitably arrive. She doesn’t seem to like me giving her advice. “You don’t know what its like to dance”, she right. But I’ve got a pretty good idea. I’m also a human. Dancer or not, if you bore and insult your customers you’ll probably find yourself not making much money. Guys are stupid, get over it. She seems to agree with this. I ask her wait while I send a tweet to notify the universe that she’s an idiot.

“So do you want a dance?” Splat. The conversation comes to a sudden stop. The dead brain cells collecting at the base of my skull spontaneously burst into flames. No, I don’t want dances. She leaves me. My head hurts. I start to imagine a level of hell from Dante’s Devine comedy, where the stages are burning pits of brimstone, none of the dancers have valid drivers license’s, and the DJ only plays the Bay City Rollers. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” I try to tweet. Is there one or two “e”s in ye? Apparently the brain cell that had this information is now a smoldering wreck. I go with the wrong number of e’s in ye.

The dancer who originally asks me to come in suddenly appears, some what later than “8ish”. She regales me with all the difficulties of getting ready on time. It’s not that difficult. You figure out when you have to be someplace, then subtract the amount time you need to get ready. If you want me to pay you money to spend time with you, you need to actually arrive when I have time to spend. It’s not that difficult. She does a stage set and then takes off with another customer to do dances. It’s time to leave.