Just messing around

Just wasting time, playing around with the Nikon.

To Twerk, or not to Twerk?

I recently saw a Twitter rant about club that banned rap music, even though there are Rap songs specifcally written about strip clubs. Rock, rap, or opera the only thing that matters is is it any good? Honestly, most strip club specific songs are terrible. Once you get past the novelty of the song, they suck. They really suck at the ear splitting strip club volume levels. A song written specifically for a strip club, so what? I’ve riffed a Doctor Seuss poem into strip club specific version. Why not some other things? Maybe I can get these banned from strip clubs. Though I've never seen a stripper do a dramatic reading on stage.

How about Shakespeare for strip clubs:

To twerk, or not to twerk, that is the question—
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous customers and crazy strippers,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of unpaid bills,
And by opposing end them? To spin, to twirl—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we don’t want to be bothered before 1pm
The Heart-ache, and the thousand random fines
That dancers are heir to? 'Tis a consummation and really unfair, and mostly illegal
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep, to eat Taco Bell
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that extra day of sleep, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, and hit the snooze button and hope it rains next time


How about the Bible for strip clubs? I supposed this is blasphemous, but I really don’t care. Blasphemy is the original victim-less crime in my atheist opinion.



Genesis 1

New International Strip club Version (NISCV)

The Beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the strip club. 2 Now the club was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the stage, and the Spirit of God was hovering over in the manager’s office.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and then added a smoke machine. 5 God called the light “day shift,” and the darkness he called “night shift.” And then he created shift fees, and a mid shift for girls who didn’t want to stay too late.

6 And God said, “Let there be a brass pole between the floor and ceiling to separate the strip club stage from all others.” 7 So God made the brass pole and separated the strip club stage from all others. And it was so. 8 God called the seats around the stage “the rack.” And there was evening, and there was morning—and there was late fees.

Maybe Poe’s the Raven, for strip clubs:

Once upon a strip club dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious songs of forgotten labels,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my corner table.
''Tis some dancer,' I muttered, 'tapping at my corner table-
Only this, and nothing stable.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate single dollar wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the server;- vainly I had sought to flag her
From my tips surcease of whiskey- whiskey for the lost last chance-
For the rare and radiant dancer whom the broke me from my trance-
Nameless here “wanna dance?”

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple lycra
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
''Tis some dancer entreating entrance to break my trance-
Some late dancer entreating entrance to break my trance;-
This it is, and wanna dance?.'

It doesn’t matter what it’s written about, it’s good or it ain’t. I work in engineering sales. There is nothing more annoying than a monumentally self-righteous customer. The customer is seldom right, they always want more for less. But the customer is paying the bills, so you have to listen to them.

The Pantheon of Stripper Gods

I often see dancers start there shift by tweeting an appeal for success to the Stripper Gods. There is even a prayer for strippers to recite.

As always, I’ll notice something odd. Strippers are polytheistic. Not one god but multiple gods. Which made me wonder, who are these gods? After a minimal Google search I couldn’t find any information. So I decided to make up my own. For reference I pulled out my old copy of Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia 2^nd edition (+1 to your geek cred with an additional 10% experience points if you know what I’m referring to) and went to work.

I’m not really good at names so just kind of winged these. Fortunately my blog traffic is pretty much zero so I’m not at risk of boring very many people. Since strippers are only strippers if there is somebody to strip for I decided to make an even split between male and females in my stripper deity pantheon. I know woman go to strip clubs to, but that just over thinking things.

The Stripper Gods

Tiptania

Tiptania is the patron Queen of all the stripper gods. She watches over strippers of the world. She rewards strippers who smile on stage and point their toes while doing pole tricks. She punishes strippers who poach other dancer’s customers or uses skin lotion before going on stage and doing pole work. She also works late and doesn’t want to hear any prayers before noon. Text messages are preferred. Her symbols are the brass pole and clear platform heel.

I based the name on Titania, the fairy queen from Shakespeare’s A Misummers Night’s Dream. I figure somebody has to be in charge. I thought of the name Titstania, but that kind of sounds like a low budget burlesque performer from the 50’s.  I’d love any thoughts for better names

Beware the wrath of Tiptania. She'll unleash the frog pestilence on you. May all you tips be folded up like frogs.

Newbia

Is the guardian god of all baby strippers. She makes sure they make money even though walk like drunken storks in their heels and dance like they are being electrocuted on stage. Her favorite prayer is “O god please don’t let me kick over anybodies drink during my set”. She punishes baby strippers who think they know everything after working for four weeks and rewards those who actually listen to older dancers who give good advice. Her symbols are granny panties and a Victoria’s secret bra with the label still sticking out.

Lunapsycho

Is the berserker god of strippers. She is jealous and vindictive. There are songs only she can dancer too and pole tricks only she can do, because she invented them of course. Rational thought is not necessary for Lunapyscho. She prefers to scream and bully her way situations. She’s pretty much bat shit crazy. Regardless of her behavior, she’ll only get a two week suspension and will be back at work as a god in the same club. Her symbols are the broken mirror and a bottle of Xanax.

There is actually a god named Luna in the Roman pantheon. She was the divine representation of the moon and was associated with crazy behavior. Her name was the source of the words lunatic and lunacy.

Now for the dark side of the pantheon.

Douchethulu

Douchethulu is the patron of terrible customers. He exists to steal dancer’s time while insulting them. He always wants to know what your real name is. He is occasional used by Tiptania to punish evil dancers by wrecking their tips and turning a shift into a soul crushing experience. He has two lackey’s to help him, Sweatpants bonerman and Bad breath BO stick creepy old guy with sticky hands. You can’t appease Douchethulu with lap dances, cause you know, he doesn’t have to pay for things like that. His symbol is the half empty can beer that he never seems to finish until he leaves.

The name Douchethulu sounds better than it looks on page. I tried to concatenate douche and Cthulhu into one name but it ended up looking more like touché’ hulu than anything else.

Beezleboss

Beezleboss inspires owners and managers to come up with new and stupid rules. Impromptu ridiculous and mostly illegal fines are his favorite ways to mess with strippers. Strangely Beezleboss never deals directly with strippers. He prefers to post new rules on 8½ by 11 sheets of paper taped up in the dressing room rather than actually talking to them.  His symbols are the 8½ by 11 paper and the crayon he uses to write with.

Abandon all hope, Beezleboss was here

DJ AsmodeusNickelback

AsmodeusNickelback is the fickle god of strip club DJ’s. He is temperamental and will lash out at the smallest slight. He must always be tithed minimum tipped out, more if you had a really good night. If slighted he will never play any song you like on stage and skip you on rotation. DJ AsmodeusNickelback loves the sound of his own voice and will turn up the microphone to 11 to drown everything else at the club and the monster truck rally two miles away. You can always get back into AsmodeusNickelback’s good graces by tipping and complementing his DJ skills. His symbols are the microphone and the borrowed CD he never got around to ripping.

I think I got my weirdness out of my system for a little bit. I actually have a couple of more posts to put up. I’ll try to up my posts to more than once a year.

So what's your real name, in color

I've been a lot of time playing around with photography recently. I haven't been writing blog posts recently, which also explains my blogs non-existent traffic. To give my self a goal I've decided to try to create some stripper meme images. My first attempt is to capture what a dancer is thinking when you ask "So what's your real name. let me know if you like the images or which one you like best. Please ignore the white balance problems, these are only rough edits.

Trivial Pursuit

Nobody likes to be trivialized. So I wasn’t too surprised at the Strippersphere’s level of irritation at the Miley Cyrus performance at the MVAs. I saw a lot of dancer tweets that ranged from snarky to genuinely angry. Personally I could care less what Miley Cyrus does on stage. I never watched her show, never listened to any of her music. I’m not even sure how relevant MTV is. As the joke goes, the last time I watched MTV they still played videos.

Twerking is heavily associated with stripping. Dancers regularly tweet they are going to “twerk”. They post video clips of themselves Twerking. I’m not exactly sure what constitutes “Twerking”. Is Twerking a subset of booty popping or vise versa? It doesn’t really matter to me. It does to dancers though. People who's ability to pay rent depends on it. 

I don’t think it’s specifically Twerking that upset people. I think it stems from the larger misconception that it doesn’t require any real skill to be a good stripper. All you have to do take you clothes off, strut around stage then collect your bucket of money. It ignores all difficult parts the preparation it takes. How many other jobs require that you either trim or shave off every piece of hair from your eyebrows to your ankles on weekly or daily basis? Then throw in walking around in seven inch plus heels for hours just so you can make less than minimum wage on a slow night. Not to mention the all too real risk of sexual assault.

To have Miley Cyrus prance around on stage mimicking stripper moves badly is insulting.  It trivializes what they do. Yes, there are dancers that do nothing more than take off they clothes and walk around stage. But they don’t collect buckets of money at the end of their sets. Stripping is like every other job. There is a direct correlation between how much effort and skill a girl has and how much money she makes. Add to that the down turn in the economy and it can be really a tough job.

Personally, I get really frustrated with all the people who think they are experts in computer programming. I don’t even consider myself a programmer. I’ve had a couple of projects where I had to write about 15,000 lines of code. I wasn’t very good at it. When you compare that to code monkeys, who crank out thousands of lines of code on a regular basis, that’s a small amount of work. I get really irritated when some goof who took an introduction to programming class proceeds to tell me how I should have written the code or what development system I should have used. When you write software there are literally thousands of logic and hardware problems you have to solve to make it work correctly. None of which anybody will ever notice unless they have actually done something similar. They just look at hundreds of man hours of effort and nitpick some trivial issue. Then you want to kill them.

Ten years after

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It takes all kinds.

I work with a lot of different professions and, generally speaking, you can make some assumptions about a person by their occupation. Engineers are typically good at math. They like gadgets and are usually socially awkward. Accountants are organized and thorough. However I am always amazed at the wide variety of people who become strippers. In my opinion you cannot make any real generalizations about who becomes a dancer.

The first time I ran into a dancer who said she was working her way through college I didn’t really believe her. I figured it was the typical sale pitch. If she won’t tell me her real name, why should I believe anything else? I had a lot to learn then. While I don’t know if that particular girl was really in college or not, I have met a lot of dancers who really are working their way through college. It’s pretty easy to tell if a dancer is really going to college or not. Just check her schedule. During finals week she’ll be gone. Just before the start of the term when they have to buy books and pay for tuition she’ll be working like crazy.

Most people don’t associate strippers with intelligence. I know I didn’t when I first started hanging out at strip clubs. Diablo Cody won an Oscar, yet she still is referred to as a former stripper.  As if being a stripper is some sort of enormous handicap to be overcome. The media makes it sound like a stripper getting an award for writing is like a paraplegic growing a new pair of legs and learning to walk.  This is just an unfortunately stereotype the general public has about dancers.

If you drop your preconceptions and really talk to a dancer, you discover a lot of them are smarter than you. Not only that, a lot of dancers are very ambitious business people.  The general public’s stereotypical view of a dancer is somebody that doesn’t get out of bed before 2pm, their net worth is whatever they happen to have in their purse, and have no idea what they are going to do once they are done dancing. I’ve met some that have started their own very successful businesses. Dancing gave them the ability to make the money to support themselves while they got started and the scheduling flexibility to work when they needed to. I’ve also met some that doesn’t get out of bed before 2pm, their net worth is whatever they happen to have in their purse, and have no idea what they are going to do once they are done dancing. Most fall somewhere in between.

I’ve also met a lot of dancers who are on the other end of the spectrum from the type A business girls and college graduates. These dancers have nicknames like ‘train wreck’ and ‘psychobitch’. These girls represent the minority of strippers, but they seem to get the majority of the attention of the press. The minimum requirements to be a stripper are pretty low. I’ve met some dancers who are really out there. One dancer absolutely believed she could modify DNA with her mind. She really believed she alter somebody’s genetic structure just concentrating really hard. Except for some rather bizarre beliefs about physics and biology, she was pretty smart. I asked her to fix my DNA so my scalp would grow hair again. She closed her eyes and waved her hands over my heads for a couple seconds then pronounced me fixed. Then she charged me $20. So far it hasn’t worked, but I’m holding out hope (not). I’ve decided her new stage name is now Rogaine. This also may be a case of her being a lot smarter than me.

And I’ve also met a few dancers that weren’t the brightest bulb in the stage lighting. The topic of world war two came up once with one dancer. It was an odd conversation:

• Her:  “Did we fight the Germans in world war two?”
• Me: “Umm, yeah, did you ever see the movie Saving private Ryan?”
• Her: “Yes! I loved that movie, I saw it three times”
• Me: “All those guys trying to kill private Ryan, they were German.”
• Her: “Really? I thought it was something all made up. I’ll have to watch it again and check”

I wonder if she new Hitler was a German? I don’t know if she went to college or not. If she did, I don’t think she was a history major.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a typical stripper, probably because the girls are stripping for so many different reasons. Some are just trying to survive. Some are just trying to make some extra money. Some are professionals who make a career out of it, other strip because it’s all they can do.  Like everything else, it’s what you make of it.

The weather report

Living in Oregon you learn a lot of different terms for rain. It only rains once a year in Oregon, it just starts in September and ends in June. Since its always raining you need to ways to identify how much rain. It’s pretty much an art form all residents need to master in this state. Using my learned skills in advanced rain identification I decided to apply it to the strip club variety of rain.

Different types of strip club rain:

• Rain - $75 or more distributed on to the stage in a steady stream of dollars
• Showers - $50 or more distributed on to the stage in a steady stream of dollars
• Scattered showers – Less than $50 thrown with breaks when the customer looks around to confirm how cool he is.
• Isolated showers – Customer walks up with a stack of ones, throws $25 and stops. Spends the remainder of the song at the edge of the stage pretending he is strip club god. He fails.
• Scattered showers – Customer takes $25 and spits it up between two or more stages
• Drizzle - $5, customer acts like he just launched $500. Fail
• Sprinkle – less than $5
• Cloudburst - $100 or more, probably mechanically aided with a credit card. Will cause extensive damage to relationships when the credit card bill arrives.
• Deluge - $150 or more. Increasing rare event do to global warming and a crap economy.
• Hail – dollars bills wadded up and thrown on the stage. Not cool.

10 Internet things to let you know you are spending too much time at a strip club

1. You check out your favorite club on Google earth and spot your car in the parking lot (Not sure why I was there in the middle of the day.)
2. Your Facebook "People you may know" list is mostly strippers.
3. Your Instagram feed contains at least one picture of somebody's ass every day. 
4. While at work, you never ever check Snapchat at your desk.
5. You can tell which clubs a dancer has worked at by her Facebook friends.
6. Only your family posts on your Facebook time line before 11:30am
7. You immediately delete any picture meme that begins with "Bitches be like.." without reading further. Seriously, that meme can die now.
8. When you log into your Amazon account at work and a pair of 7" Pleaser clear heels shows up in the recent history section.  (No more Amazon wish lists) 
9. You have four different names and five numbers for one dancer in your phone contacts.
10. At least a quarter of the people you follow on twitter have the word 'glitter' in their handle.

I am not a criminal

I’ve met you. You sneer at from your car as I walk into the club. You roll your eyes when I talk about my friends that strip. You shake your head in disgust when talking about strippers. You decided that I am some sort of deviant because I go to strip club. To all you folks that feel they can judge me because they are morally superior: Fuck You. You are not. You are ignorant.

I am not a criminal

I pay my taxes. I donate $1000 dollars a year to the humane society. I’ve done jury duty twice. I pick up litter. I recycle. I don’t speed. As a matter of fact the last time I was pulled over by the police Ronald Reagan was president.  I also like to look at naked women.  I’m pretty sure 99% of the male population likes to look at naked women (or men, depending on their preference). There is a multi-billion dollar industry built around this aspect of human nature. So why am I ostracized for doing what the rest of the world spends billions of dollars on. I just prefer to see naked women in person.  I am the same person in the club I am at work, at the store, at home. I’m not altered or corrupted by the club.

It amazes me that people will make a value judgment on this and ignore everything else. If I were to tell you I have a friend who is in their early twenties, self employed, and making good money you’d probably be impressed with them. Most people in their early twenties are struggling to get by. Mention she is a stripper and somehow the money becomes tainted. If you don’t think stripping is a something people should do. That’s fine, that’s your opinion.  Not liking something is not a valid reason to label it immoral and condemn it. If it is truly something terrible then let the facts demonstrate that, not an emotional reaction. Out of all the world’s ills is stripping really something that we should be focusing on?

I am not a misogynist

I don’t hate women. I don’t want to own them. I’m not a puppet master trying to bend people to my will with a twenty dollar bill. I am not part of a grand conspiracy to suppress women. Most dancers I know aren’t victims. They weren’t smuggled into the country on a container ship. They aren’t being held hostage in the back room. Everyday they wake up and make a decision to work at the club. If things had gone perfectly in their lives would they being stripping at the Dolphin? Probably not, but life is seldom perfect.

Is there some corruption bout stripping that is so completely ingrained that anybody associated with the industry will be destroyed for life? In my opinion, no there isn’t. Any job can be exploited. The strip industry hardly has the lock on that. I used to work as a gas station attendant. I spent eight hours a day working with toxic chemicals and moving vehicles for three dollars an hour (OK that was a while ago).  The job sucked. But it was my decision to do the job. At that point of my rather less than perfect life it was the best option for me. If it wasn’t I would left. Maybe a dancer can’t leave because she can’t make that kind of money elsewhere, but would it be any different if she was an accountant?

The only thing that is fundamentally flawed is people’s perception. The dancer does not do anything she does not want to do. She isn’t being picked up by her pimp.  The idea that women are being sold off as chattel is simply wrong. It's simply insulting to assume all these women are helpless victims.

I am not an animal

I am not a slave to my impulses. I would love to run through red lights when there is no traffic. I’d love to eat nothing but beer and pizza every night. I’d love to take a shot of whiskey, scream, and smash things when I get frustrated at work. But I don’t. I’m part of larger society. My actions have consequences to other people. There is nothing that I can see at a strip club that is going to make me not act like I live in a society. Compared to what I can see on the internet with a click of a mouse, strip clubs are tame. In Missouri (ironically nicknamed the show me state) It’s illegal for uncovered areolas, exposed labia and alcohol to be located in the same bar. Do people really have that little impulse control? Does this law really make a difference?

If you are going to judge me, judge me on what I’ve done, not on what your prejudices think I might do. To be willingly ignorant is the greatest failing a person can ever have.

Get off my lawn

You know you’ve been hanging out at strip clubs too long when you recognize songs that nobody else in your demographic can. The TitsandSass.com web site is running a March madness style contest to determine the greatest strip club song of all time.  The first bracket to show up was the Hip Hop/R&B region. I was amazed by the realization that I knew most of these songs. You don’t expect middle aged electrical engineers from Troutdale Oregon to know much about that bracket.

My only exposure to this music is at strip clubs. I still don’t like that style of music. But then again, I don’t like a lot of music from my generation. If a mysterious gamma-ray burst destroyed every copy of the Eagles music on the planet I would be a happy man. Even if it was just the song Hotel California getting nuked, I’d still be happy. Every last piece of vinyl, magnetic media, or flash memory version expunged from existence. That would be an awesome thing. I’d also be in church the following Sunday. The destruction of the Eagles would be proof to me that God exists. Which church would I go to though? Our lady of blessed high energy neutrons? Maybe the church of Elvis.

I’ve already explained why I think dancers are killing their money by playing music the crowd doesn’t like. Seriously, can you name one thing that was made better by somebody playing music you hate, very loudly? A stripper set doesn’t get better. I don’t care how sexy she thinks she is. Music shouldn’t be banned from a club. It’s her show, she can play what she wants. Just don’t get mad at the crowd when they don’t tip.

This still makes me feel like a grumpy old man. The first time I uttered the phrase “You call that music?” I stopped and mentally shut down for a couple seconds. The realization that I sounded just like my parents was sobering.  It’s music, but not music I like. Most of the stars of hip hop and R&B seem to have done pretty well without my patronage.

I’m half tempted to contact a Russian hacker friend to rent his botnet. I could probably get Barbie Girl voted in as the ultimate strip club song. That’s the only way that monumental annoying song would ever win. Barbie Girl winning would be proof that god doesn’t exist. Perhaps my money would be better spent on getting a classic rock song into the winners circle, any of them. Except Nickelback. How did they get in? That seems suspicious to me. Be sure to go the Titsandsass to vote. Even if just to keep Nickelback from winning.

Music Matters

There are things I understand and there are things I get. By ‘get’ I’m mean I really get all the subtleties and implications of a concept. I understand wearing open toed six inch plastic platform heals is difficult. Do I truly really get the amount of difficulty? No, I don’t. The idea that my toe nails need to be presentable is completely alien idea to me. I have ten toes. I see them every morning when I put my socks on. Could I pick them out of police line up? Probably not. I genuinely don’t care what my toe nails look like. Nor do I feel the need to be able to pick them out of a police lineup, since I’m attached to them. If there ever is the case I have been separated from my toes, I probably don’t want to see them again. Do I understand why dancers need to get pedicures yes, do I really get it? No.

I think this is the level of understanding most dancers have toward music. The problem with music is everybody has different taste. What I like, what the person next to me likes, what the people at the bar likes are most likely different. This is really true for customers, since the age range a customers can be extreme. Customers can be anything from twenty one to ninety one. Dancers get that most of the customers probably don’t listen to the music they pick for their set, but they don’t understand the true effect.

I will tip more for a dancer who plays a song I like. I will not tip a dancer who picks a song I hate. I’m generally pretty neutral toward the music being played. It falls into a kind of necessary evil to me. I understand that what I listen too is now classic, or Jurassic rock. I don’t like rap. Rap to me is just beat poetry, without the beat and without the poetry. If I ruled the world Dubstep should be expunged from the human experience. Unfortunately for me (and fortunate for everybody else) I don’t rule the world so Dubstep exists. When I go to strip club I expect to hear music I don’t like. It is a treat to actually hear music I like.

However, I pay for privilege to be at the club and I’m going to control to the best of my ability where my money goes. I listen to dancers talk about how they like to dance to a particular song. The song makes them feel sexy and they feel like they put on a better show and make more money. I personally don’t believe this. I’ve watched dancers perform to songs they like and songs they hate. The actual difference is pretty negligible if they tried to dance. Some dancers just stop and glare at the DJ if they don’t like the song. Stopping in the middle of song is the problem, not the song. Stopping will also affect her money. If I want to watch women standing still and do nothing I’ll buy a magazine.

I recently watched a dancer perform to “Bridge of sighs” by Robin Trower. She made at least eighty dollars for her set. This was during an early evening weekday shift when most girls were making ten dollars total per set. The money can mostly from the three middle aged customers. The mid shift at a club seems to be the Rogaine shift. It seems like that's the time most of the customers are my age. Speaking from experience middle age guys come in earlier because they don’t like to stay up late. The dancer was playing music that customers at the time liked. This is smart. Play to the crowd. They are where you are going to make your money.

I’ve also seen dancers play music to punish a crowd. I’ve heard hard core rap played at ear splitting levels because the dancer was having a bad night. She wasn’t making any money. Apparently it didn’t occur to her that playing music the crowd doesn’t like will affect her money. Again, I’m paying for the privilege to be there. Why do I want to pay to listen to music I hate?

You are not sexier if you are playing music I hate. Would you think a male stripper was sexy if he had Foghat or Rush blasting through the speakers at ear drum rupturing levels? I actually like Rush, even though Geddy Lee is probably one the most annoying singers ever. If you could teach squirrels to sing they would sound like Geddy Lee. I understand this, I get this. Just because you like music doesn’t mean everybody else does. Don’t expect people to pay to listen music they don’t like.

101 uses for old stripper shoes, #21

Hot Wheels launching ramp

That awkward moment

Customers have awkward moments too:

That awkward moment

1.         When you realize you’re drooling in the middle of a lap dance
2.         When you ask a dancer to get off of you
3.         When you realize what that tattoo actually is
4.     .    When you realize you’re covered in glitter
5.      .  Your leg falls asleep during a lap dance
6.         When you see the dancers lips move but you can’t hear a word she’s saying over the music
7.         When you realize the dancer has passed out in the middle of a lap dance
8.         When you realize she is as dumb as the rest of the dancers say she is

My thought process at a strip club.

This Tim Minchin song pretty much vocalizes what is going through my head at strip club. Not safe for work obviously.

What's your real name and why should I care?

One question that consistently irritates dancers is ”what’s your real name?” I constantly see assorted twitter feeds gripes about customers asking what their real name is. One dancer even made 'What's your real name'  her twitter handle (https://twitter.com/nakedinatx). I think that when you are in the industry it becomes so common that it seems perfectly normal.  But if you’re not in the industry it’s really weird. While I can’t speak for the entire customer community, I think I can explain the interest.

Outside of the strip club world, where else do you deal with people face to face that won’t tell you their name? Pretty much nowhere else does this occur. Everywhere else people will at least give you their first name. Not only will a dancer not give you her real name, she’ll give you a really odd name.  Where else will somebody sit down next and introduce themselves “Hi, my name is Skittles”, or Calico, or Peanut, or Viagra, or Sinful. Really, I’m supposed to just pass a name like that off as an everyday occurrence? In the stripper world this is no big deal, but outside the club, it’s really odd.

When some dancer sits down and introduces herself with I always want to answer back “wow, your parents sure had a sense of humor”.  I know there are very good reasons for using a stage name, but how would you react if the person fixing your car introduced them as Gizmo, and wouldn’t give you their real name. You are completing a cash transaction with somebody that won’t tell you who they are.  Except for drug dealers (exotic pharmacist?) who else does this? Would you buy something from a person who refused to identify themselves? Strip club customers are asked to.

I’ve made light of the stage name concept in other posts. I used to be really fascinated by dancers versus their real names. I even kept a list of names to see if I could find a pattern between the two (I couldn’t). However, Facebook has kind of removed that mystery. I have a ridiculously small number of friends. Most people’s pets have more Facebook friends than I do. I really don’t care actually. But Facebook seems to care. It helpfully posts ‘people you may know’ every time I log in.  Most of the time it’s a dancer. Once you become friends with one dancer you are one or two steps away from a hundred other dancers. It’s sort of six degrees of Kevin Bacon Facebook stripper style. I’ve learned a ton of dancer’s real names from Facebook. The name novelty has worn off.

Seriously I don’t think most dancers realize how easy it is to locate them on Facebook once you have one dancer friend.  Not only that they don’t setup their privacy features at all. If you’re a dancer setup your Facebook privacy, it will save you a lot of grief in the future.

Is it a big deal that a dancer won’t tell you her real name? No, it isn’t.  But it is really unique to the industry. I know musicians and actors use fake names, but I don’t typically meet them in person when I buy their product.  Other sex workers use fake names too, but I don’t interact with them. It may be annoying as hell, but I think dancers will be asked that question as long as there are strip clubs.

Two Dollar Socialism

The club I go to started giving out two dollar bills for change. So now you have to tip two dollars per song. I can’t really bitch too much. When went to my first strip club in the 80’s it was one per song. Thirty years later it’s still one per song at most clubs. I can’t think of anything else that has stayed the same price for so longs. From an economics point of view dancers made a lot more money back in the 80’s off stage. That 1980 dollar bought a lot more.

I have to admit I was a little irritated the first time the bartender counted back my change in twos. I was being indirectly told to start tipping two dollars per set. Nobody likes being told they have to spend more.  The switch to two dollar bills does change the strip club a little for experience for me.  

The biggest change is that I don’t drink as much. I go through my tip money a lot faster now.  I don’ t spend any more money than before. I suppose this is good for the dancers and bad for the owner. I also don’t spend as much time at the club. At the end of the day it’s probably better for me.

Another change is that the two dollars tip has evened out the amount I tip to each girl. Typically I’ll tip one or two dollars per song depending if I know the dancer or not. Then tip the dancer I went into to see much more. If I have $20 in tip money and there are five girls on rotation I’ll tip the four girls I don’t know three buck total for their set for a total of $12. I’ll then tip my favorite $8 for her set. Now each girl gets exactly four bucks. 

I think there might a bit of a blow back from the customers beyond having to tip more. The only place in Portland you get $2 bills are at strip clubs. If you pay for stuff with a stack of ones you might be a stripper. If you pay for stuff with a stack of two dollar bills you’re are definitely a stripper and, more importantly for customers, you were at a strip club the day before. Two dollar bills will probably replace glitter as the leading cause of guys getting busted for going to a strip club. Just for the record Bank of America ATMs and 

Albertson’s self serve machines will take two dollar bills.

If the customers organized the two dollar bill tip thing is something they could get rid of. Simply at the end of the night get change for a twenty then walk out. There are only so many two dollar bills in circulation. If you get enough customers a walking out the door with change they’ll deplete the supply of two dollar bills in the club.