I got asked about the recent shooting at the Mystic Strip club in the comment section of a previous post.
After doing a little research it appears that neither the victim nor
suspects were customers. The club is just where the tragic incident occurred. There
is nothing strip club specific about the incident. But it does raise the
question, how safe do I feel at a strip club?
When I first start hanging out the club I was apprehensive.
I had the same faulty thing most people have of strip clubs. That stripping is
immoral, therefore immoral people (criminals) hand out there. Now I’m not even
sure what I was thinking. This is definitely a case of my preconceptions being
completely wrong.
The media will always trumpet report anything that happens
at a strip club. They will always be sure to put “strip club” or “stripper” in
the headline. Not because it’s particularly relevant, but it gets people
attention and it will get better ratings. I’ve noticed that most news media now
is more interested in ratings than reporting the facts. When you have a problem
at strip club you automatically have sex indirectly involved. Sex sells news
reports.
Get rid of the live entertainment and a strip club is just a
bar. The safety of the club comes down to how its run and its location, just
like any other bar. If a club takes security seriously will be very safe. If
they have enough bouncers that are actively watching the crowd, you usually
won’t run into problems. Bouncers are an active deterrent. Strip clubs tend to
have more bouncers on staff than a typical bar.
I’ve noticed that strip club bouncers also tend to be more
aggressive than typical bouncers. They have the added concerns of money and
naked women. Dancers have to collect money from customers. I don’t care what
business you are in, collecting money from customers can always be problematic.
This usually doesn’t affect the honest customers as much since they are neither
naked nor trying to collect money.
The serving practice’s of the bar also makes a big
difference. The only time I’ve had real issues at a club has been with
absolutely wasted people. Really hammered people do stupid things. A club that
is willing to cut people off early won’t have as many problems as a place that
lets patron get smashed. The fact that there are strippers doesn’t make a
difference. It’s just simply they way the club is operated.
In my opinion the biggest factor in safety is what
neighborhood the club is in. There are good neighborhoods and bad
neighborhoods. You are far more likely to be victim of a crime in a neighborhood
with a high crime rate. I’m more concerned with safety in the parking lot of
the club in a bad neighborhood than when I am in the club itself. Again then it
comes down to how the club is operated.
Strip clubs tend to be a bit more concerned about what goes
on in the parking lot than typical bars. Dancers are escorted out to their cars
at the end of their shift. A lot of dancers also smoke, which usually means
there is somebody outside watching the parking lot grabbing a quick smoke
between sets. The dancers have a vested interest in making sure the customers
are safe. When you add the number of dancers in with normal bar staff there are
simply more eyes watching what is going on.
In the 10+ years of hanging out at strip clubs I’ve only
been two incidents that involved a bouncer having to intervene. One was a
result of my own stupidity; the other was an encounter with drunk. Some guy who
should have been cut off much earlier in the evening decided that I had taken
the table he was sitting at. I staggered up to my table and began bitching at
me about taking his table. Before he finished his drunken rant the bouncers had
walked over and escorted him away.
I’ve only seen one actual study that compared crime at strip
clubs to other bars. Of course I can’t find it now that I’m writing about it.
But it compared reported incidents at a strip club with another bar of similar
size in the same neighborhood. The strip club came in with a lower incident
rate. The police spent more time at the other club than the strip club. I don’t
think the lower rate was because strip clubs have fewer problems, I think it
was mostly because the strip club had bouncers on staff every evening, while
the other club only had bouncers on the weekends. Problems that required the
police to be involved at the regular club were taken care of by the bouncers at
the strip club. I think the ultimately
result of the study was there really isn’t any difference between the two
establishments.
The biggest problem with strip club safety is public
perception. People have preconceived notions of strip clubs being dens of
iniquity. The people who work and hang out at strip clubs must be morally
corrupt. The reality is that the people who hang out at the clubs are your
neighbors. The people working there are just trying to make a living and have a
vested interest in keeping you safe. If you don’t feel safe at a club, you are
probably not going to come back. That’s a quick way to go out of business.
