The Stripper stomp

I ran into this blog post about the dangers of wearing high heel shoes. There was nothing really new in the article. Just the usual news flash “Heels are bad!” Like this is some sort great revelation. But what really struck me was one sentence in the article describing a woman’s gait after wearing heels for some time:

"the scientists found that heel wearers moved with shorter, more forceful strides than the control group"

They had shorter, more forceful strides. I nick named this gait the stripper stomp. I have had various dancers living in my extra bedroom from time to time. Two girls long term, most others short term, only a couple weeks. Compared to non-dancers they seemed to pound the ground when they walked.

I think I may lived out a couple of Captain Save’ a ho’ fantasy’s, the dream of having your favorite dancer show at your door step for you to rescue them from their terrible situation. The reality is quite different. It actually sucks. People don’t show up with all their worldly possessions crammed into their car because they are in a good place. Things have gone terribly wrong in their life. Nothing romantic is going to come of it. There will just a bunch of money, personal, and probably drug problems for you to help deal with.

The first stranded dancer was very petite. She weighed 115 lbs, soaking wet. I know she weighed that much because she complained about being too fat all the time. A buck fifteen too fat? Maybe if you’re four feet tall. Honestly my hair was fatter than her. Maybe that’s why I’m going bald: gravity. The first time she went rushing by me I thought she was mad about something. Despite her bare feet she shook the furniture. When I asked her what was wrong she looked at me like I was crazy. She was just walking she assured me.

The other dancers had the same walking traits. They all looked elfin petite, they all sounded like sasquatch when they walked. I had originally thought they were so noisy when they walked because they were half deaf. They just didn’t hear how loud their foot steps were. One long time dancer friend of mine has 80% hearing loss in one ear. Dancing definitely takes it toll on the body over time.

It’s always interesting when you see some sort of research confirm or at least correlate with your observations. Maybe I can get a research grant to investigate it further.

DJ Gear

In real life a DJ at a strip club would get bored and start playing Angry Birds.

Déjà vu all over again

Sometime things happen that really remind me that Dancers are also sales folk and they go through the same things I do. When you are dealing with all sorts of people in slightly chaotic environment its easy to lose track of things.

I had spent the afternoon visiting a one of our vendors at work and had gotten stuck in a traffic jam on my way home. Rather than spend quality time with ten thousand of my closest friends on the freeway I bailed off the freeway and took side streets to my favorite club to wait for traffic to die down. I was at the club at an unusual time for me (early afternoon). I grabbed a drink and sat down near the stage. The club was pretty empty, the dancers outnumber the customers.

A couple songs went by when a dancer I've never met before sat down next to me. We quickly went through the standard strip club introduction conversation:

Her: What's your name?

Me: Todd

Her: Hi Todd, I'm Epiphany (not her real name)

Me: Nice to meet you

Her: So do you live around here?

Me: yeah, just a couple mile s down the road.

Her: So what do you do for a living?

Me I'm an Engineer.

Her: Wow, that's really interesting. What brings you here today?

Me: Waiting for traffic to die down.

Her: Yeah, that's what everybody says. Would you like to get some dances?

Me: No, I'm going to play hard to get. I think I'll wait and see if I know anybody.

Her: OK, I'll stop by later in case you change your mind.

She walked back to the bar. A short time later a dancer I did know showed up and spent some time with her. After getting some dances from her I went back to my table to spend the rest of my ones and take off.

Epiphany stopped my table again. I assumed she was going to ask for dances again. Instead the following conversation occurred:

Her: What's your name?

Me: Todd

Her: Hi Todd, I'm Epiphany (not her real name)

Me: Nice to meet you

Her: So do you live around here?

Me: yeah, just a couple mile s down the road.

Her: So what do you do for a living?

Me I'm an Engineer.

Her: Wow, that's really interesting. What brings you here today?

Me: Waiting for traffic to die down.

Her: Yeah, that's what everybody says. Would you like to get some dances?

Me: No, I'm going to play hard to get.

We went through the almost exact same conversation. She gave me funny a look when I told her about playing 'hard to get'. I think it set in she had already sat down with me earlier As near as I can tell she had forgotten she had already talked to me until I said that. I've been on the other side of that conversation. After working a trade show for four days you quit looking at the people. You go through the exact conversation so many time you almost don't realize what you are saying. I imagine after several straight days at work most dancers are suffering from charming fatigue. It's tough to be polite and upbeat for an entire shift. Especially when you get a customer you want to strangle.

Of course this doesn't make me feel very good. I'd like to think I'd make a big enough impression that she'd remember me 40 minutes later.

Birds and Benjamins

While getting ready to head to the club today my cockatiel decide that the tip stack belonged to him. I guess he decided that he was going to be the Strip club Stud Muffin tonight. Fortunately I was able to bribe him with some millet before the authorities had to be called.

This is a shout out to the Tits and Sass web site's dogs and dollars/cats and stacks section. I'd send it to them but I don't qualify as a sex worker, though there would be no sex workers without patrons. Anyway, Boris got his treats and I got to see some sexy women so a good time was had by all.

Missing Money

I don’t like to hang out at the rail. I’m not a gynecologist or dermatologist. I don’t need to see that much detail. Also I wear bifocals and find my self tilting my head back like I’m trying to read a menu at Denny’s. It’s kind of embarrassing, I start wondering if I’ve trimmed the hair in my nose.

I always try to tip every song though. So I’ll scurry between the table and rail between every song. I’m not a strip club stud muffin that needs the dancer to acknowledge every penny I put down. Consequently the dancer doesn’t know I’ve put a tip down. Most of the time dancer quickly notices the tip once the song starts. But a surprising amount of time dancer completely misses the tips and leaves the money on the rail when they leave the stage. The middle of last October I decided to keep track of the amount of my tip money dancers have left uncollected on the rail. As of 7pm January 12^th the total was $132 in missed monies. That’s real money being left behind on stage.

Even if the previous dancer didn’t pick up the tip I’ll keep tipping. Sort of a Strip club version of ‘let it ride’. The highest the tip has ever reached before a dancer noticed was $12. I used get a little offended when a dancer ignored my tip. Eventually I realized it simply because the she didn’t see the cash.

It really kind of surprised me how much money dancers missed. These were also very experienced dancers. I’ve seen girls just starting who are so nervous they just want to get off stage as fast as they can. Mostly, I believe its dancers are so used to the only guys tipping are the ones at the rack that they simply aren’t checking other places for money.

I work with the human visual system on regular basis. I’m an engineer specializing in flat panel displays. It’s probably more important to understand how people see things than it is operation of displays when it comes to debugging problems. The human eye misses a lot of information. Try a quick test, look at the edge of screen and try to read the test with your peripheral vision. You either can’t or it’s difficult. The actual area you eye can accurately resolve clearly is very small. The human eye has to bounce around trying to pickup everything important. Its easy to miss things, like your car keys.

Magicians take advantage of this when they do their illusions. Raymond Penn of Penn and Teller never or rarely talks on stage. This forces people to look at his face read his emotions. When they are looking at his face he’s free to perform his slight of hand. Unless the dancer is systematically searching for tip around the rail it would be very easy to miss the tip.

I now some dancer’s miss tips because they aren’t wearing their contacts of glasses on stage. They’d rather see blurry customers on stage. I can’t say I blame them. They come to make money, customers come to see them. I suppose I should probably just not put more money up if the dancer misses my tip. A lot of that $132 would still be in my pocket if I did.

You're probably getting to old for strip club's when

1) You don't want to sit at the rail because you forgot your bifocals.
2) The dancer sitting next to you is speaking English, but you have no idea what she is talking about.
3) The dancer refers to 1970's as ancient history.
4) She thinks Steven Tyler is just Liv Tyler's father.
5) You'd stay longer but the chairs are just too damn uncomfortable.
6) You can remember when dancer's didn't wear clear platform heels.
7) You don't recognize a single song the DJ plays.
8) You think Tom Baker was the best Doctor.

Fun with Strippie numbers

I saw the nominations for the Strippies and being an engineer I had to take a look at some statistics. There are 17 categories, 4 nominations for category for a total of 68 total possible nominations. The strip club Devil's Point had 16 nominations. The is 24% of the nominations or roughly 1 out of every four nominees were from Devil's Point. Siren Wolf was nominated for nine of the ten categories that a female dancer could get. Of the 68 nominations only two came from clubs west of the Willamette river.

I've already seen a little grousing on twitter about the nominations. To be completely candid, if you don't like the way the nominations turned out then vote more. The numbers might seem a little skewed but this is a result of the voting method. You could vote daily for your favorite dancer in this contest. This means that voting everyday becomes really important. It's more important to have people voting constantly than just getting a bunch of votes short term. If the voting is open for thirty days then one person voting every day (30 total votes) can out weigh 29 people voting for one day.

This ultimately turns this into a voting campaign for the contestants. In my opinion this is the only way you can really run a contest like this. I don't think you can really do this with an objective judging process. This would be difficult to do for a lot of the categories. Seriously, what defines "Best floor work"? To establish a set of criteria, select judges then try and get everybody scheduled to see the performers would be an enormous task.

The clubs and entertainers that did well probably made a very active effort to promote themselves. The clubs I hang out at made no attempt to promote their people and the result shows it. The Dolphin and Star's Cabaret clubs represent some of the largest clubs in Portland. Athena Aura (Not Athena Aurora, her name is wrong on the pdxstrippies web site) was the only one from those clubs. All the promotion was done by her and not club as far as I know.

I think the Strippies have done a excellent job with the contest. I wish I could attend this year. I'll have to wish Athena well from cyberspace this year.