The Friendster

I often find myself in position of being a “friendster” to most of the dancers I know. I’m both a friend and a customer at the same time. While this is generally a good thing to me, it does have some odd things about it. For technically curious friendster.com was actually one of the first semi-successful social networking sites, proceeding both myspace and Facebook. It also failed fairly quickly and is currently a kind of weird gaming network site out of Kuala Lumpur.

The best thing about a being a friendster is the fact the dancer trusts you. You don’t have to worry about the dancer ordering dinner and $20 drink every time the waitress walks up. For the most part it’s much less stressful for the dancer. She doesn’t have to worry about being on guard as much. I don’t think any dancer completely relaxes at work. I never completely relax at my job. I definitely have the most fun with dancers I’ve built up credibility with.

There are some down sides to this situation. There are times when I turn down an invitation from a dancer, I feel like I’m blowing off a friend. To some degree I am, but I’m also turning down a business transaction. Some dancers will take advantage of this and play on my emotions. They are having a bad day/week/month and they really need me to come in to make things go better. I used to bite on this and turn into the strip club Sit Galahad and head off to save a dancer from a bad night. I don’t do this any more. I’m paying for the privilege of her company. It can get really expensive and irritating quickly.

Like most long term business relationships, it’s a mixture of both friendship and money. My job is like this as well. I have customers I like and enjoy dealing with regardless of the professional issues. There are also customers I find utterly revolting or inane but I have to paint on smile and pretend to enjoy their conversation when I’d rather drive a spike into skull.

I know it’s in the dancer’s best interest to pretend she likes me. I wonder if she is secretly rolling her eyes at my jokes, or mentally plotting different ways kill me as a way to get through the conversation. Most dancers are much better at feigning interest than I am at figuring it out so I’ll just stay fat, dumb, and happy.

As enlighten as I’d like to think I am being friends with dancers outside the club is still a little awkward at times. One time I fixed a computer monitor for a dancer’s parents. I figured I was just going to drop it off at her place on my way home from work. Instead I ended driving over to her parent’s house and hooked up the monitor for them. It was really odd meeting her parents. Her parents knew she stripped. While they weren’t thrilled with her job they were supportive of her. They also knew I was one her customers from the club.

If they were uncomfortable with me they never showed it. I could never shake the fact that I used to pay their daughter to take her clothes off. The entire time there they warm and gracious to me the entire time I was there. They just treated me like I was one of the family. Some strippers come from screwed up families, but not all of them. I don’t think I’ve met nicer down to earth people than her parents

Most of my friendships with dancers outside the club never last. I suppose this isn’t any different than job. There have been people I’ve worked with over the years that I’ve become good friends with, yet over time we lose track of each other. When you work with somebody the job becomes a common point of interest. When they go somewhere else you lose that. Not immediately at first, but after a while things change some much that they no longer interested.

With the dancer the common point of interest is the club. When she quits working at the club you lose the point of interest. The social awkwardness of strip clubs makes things that much more difficult. A lot of dancers want to break completely from the stripper world. They don’t want to explain they know me from when they worked as a stripper. There is a social bias against the strip club world. Life is hard enough without having to contend with that as well. 

Hitting the Gym

The next time I’m heading to a strip club I’m going to tell them that I’m “Going to the gym”. From a purely pedantic point of view it’s an accurate statement. The etymological source of the word gym is the Greek word “gymnos” (γυμνός). Gymnos means naked in ancient Greek. The Greek term “gymnazo “ (γυμνάζω) which means “to train naked” is derived from gymnos. The Greeks felt that athletics are best done naked. Gymnazo eventually got Latinized into gymnasium by the Romans.

Gymnasium made it into the English language eventually, though the naked part got dropped and gymnasium just meant a place far athletic training. Still the only place I know of where people train naked (or train to be naked) is a strip club. Maybe somebody should name a club the Gymnazo. It can’t be any worse than Pitiful Princess. So, see you at the gym.

Expose yourself

I had forgotten about this advertising campaign. That's former Portland mayor Bud Clark promoting the local art scene. No wonder there are so many strip clubs here.

The Prize Patrol

And here is Naomi with her winnings from the stripper skills contest.

Her keys to success

• Using a computer monitor instead of a smart phone
• Comparing the stack on the screen to her tips at the end of a shift
• Sobering up before guessing.

Stay tuned for more contests

And the winner is..

The winner is Naomi from Stars Bridgeport!

So can dancers judge the value of stack of ones just by looking at it? Sort of. Granted this test didn’t result in a very big data sample. I think the only thing I conclusively proved is that ignoring a blog for a couple months will drop your traffic to zero. I only got three guesses on the blog. It’s a bit of an ego hit when giving away money doesn’t really bump site traffic. At least at the club I was able to get quite a few dancers to give me a verbal estimate.

I intentionally tried to make things difficult. There were no objects to reference the height of the stack to (except the bills them selves) and I did not compress the bills. I don’t think most dancers keep there bills like this. They probably have them bundled up and stashed. However, and expert is an expert and they should be able to handle the tough situations with the easy one.

Every initial estimate I got was much higher than the actual value. The average value of the guesses was $202 dollars. The actual value of the stack was $124. The dancers missed the value by an average of $78. The highest guess was $290, the lowest was $161. I don’t think dancers are overly optimistic, I think it was a case of the bills being stacked in an atypical fashion.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that 72% of the dancers said they needed to actually hold the stack to really be accurate. This may be my next test, I’ll bundle a setup of bills to see if how much more accurate the guesses become.

Something interesting I noticed is that when dancers didn’t just guess, but began to evaluate different aspects of the stack they became much more accurate. Typically they started high, but when they began to puzzle it out the estimate would drop. Only two dancers made an attempt to determine the actual height of the stack by comparing it the length of the bill.

The winning guess was very accurate though, within 5%, I’m curious to she how came up with this number. I suspect it wasn’t a quick guess.

So can most dancers just look at a stack of singles and determine the value? Not really. With a little more information they probably can be very accurate. My next test will be a bundle they’ll be able to handle. I’ll also get estimates from non-dancers as well, to see if dancers are more accurate.

Some things never change

There are eternal battles; Cats vs. Dogs, Ninjas vs. Pirates, Coke vs. Pepsi, and Strippers vs. Managers. I had a chance to ease drop on an all dancer meeting at a local club. I wasn't invited of course, but the meeting went much longer planned. The meeting that was supposed to start promptly at 2pm, started more toward 3ish, and was still going long after club's opening time.

When I walked in Sunday all the lights were on and the dancers were gathered around a stage, being lectured to by a manager. It’s always really odd to see the club under normal lighting. The perception of size is completely changed. The normally dark interior walls appear much closer in the light making it almost claustrophobic. The dancers all look really different too, specifically they look much shorter. Normally you only see dancers when they are in six inch or higher heels. Suddenly they’ve all shrunk, like walking into a stripper hobbit hole.

Once I figured out what was going on, I scuttled off to the video poker machines to occupy myself and listen in to the meeting. It reminded me of some of the horrible meetings I’ve been stuck in, where some manager feels the need to lecture you on a bunch of issues you know better than he does. The manager was going on an on about dancer breaking rules to the dancers that don’t beak the rules because the dancers that break the rules tend not to show up on Sundays for meeting about not breaking the rules.

The rules in question were the rules that managers always seems to go on about. The dancers looked simultaneously tired, bored, and annoyed. After listening to the manager for a little bit I was bored, tired and annoyed too. After thinking about the meeting for a couple days I decided I would weigh in on these eternal conflicts, to give an outside point of view.

Bitch #1 Make it to stage on time

When a dancer hears her should drop everything and race for the stage like she’s being paged by St Peter at the pearly gates, at least that’s manager seem to suggest. For the most part, I’ve got agree with the manager on this one. As a customer it sucks sitting staring at an empty stage. It’s surprising how fast it become uncomfortable. I start to think about getting up and going to the bathroom, or getting a new drink, or heading home to catch the Big Bang Theory reruns. If the club is reasonably crowded it’s to the dancer advantage to make it to the stage on time. The rack is going to empty out pretty quickly if people are left waiting too long, Every customer that leaves is money walking away from the stage.

However when the club is empty the manager needs lighten up. If all the customers are sitting at the bar or hiding out at tables it really doesn’t matter if the dancer zooms up to the stage. There’s no point to breaking an ankle for four bucks and frankly, the customers have already left the stage before the last song ended. Yet the manager seem’s to ignore this fact. You should train dogs if you want absolute obedience. 

Bitch #2 Show up with your hair and make up done

Honestly, this should be rephrased be ready to start when your shift begins. I can understand this one. I’ve personally ranted about dancer’s cliché lack of promptness on multiple posts. A lot of dancers roll in a couple minutes before their shift starts, report in, then spend the next two hours getting ready. Whether they arrive two hours early and get ready or get ready at home really doesn’t make a difference. You’re either ready or your not. I’ve noticed that a speed at which a dancer gets ready is directly proportional to the amount of money being tipped on stage. People are much more prompted when there’s money to be made at the time. However it isn’t fair to the dancers that did get ready on time for the others to shift on time when it’s slow.

Bitch #3 Let the DJ know when you’re doing dances

This one seems straight forward but tends to be much more difficult in practice. The strip club is probably the worse place for communication short of combat. You have loud music, lights, and alcohol. I’ve watched DJs and dancers talk to each other and carry on completely different conversations. Then walk off not realizing that other had no clue what the other person said. “I’m going to being doing three songs in the VIP” from the dancers turns into “I’m going to be free after this song” for the DJ, which turns into argument when the DJ calls her to stage in the middle of her dances.

Sometimes the situation prevents the dancer from being able to communicate with the DJ. We customers can be a pretty flakey bunch. Once a dancer finally gets a customer to agree to do dances she needs to get him back to the champagne room before he can change his mind. Trying to track down the DJ or get his attention can be impossible. This is one situation where the manager needs to be able to figure what’s going on when conflict occurs..Just blaming the dancers isn't right thing to do.

Bitch #4 Always order the expensive drinks

This is one rule that does more harm than good. Sure, short term it might boost bar sales but it pisses of the customers. In my opinion its too the dancers advantage to order cheap drinks. Every dollar the bar takes is one less dollar she can get. Dances cost $20 bucks. If cost of the drinks is $21 for top shelf, instead of $17 the extra four bucks just cost the dancer $20 bucks. Once I break a twenty that's one less dance I can buy. It also makes guys more difficult to dance for. If the dancers isn't going to respect me, why should I respect her? 

Bitch #5 We’re not the dirtiest club in town, so clean up the dances.

This rule usually lasts for a couple weeks before things go back to where they were. I’m glad I didn’t hear this rant or I probably would have been kicked out of the club. The manager used such a flawed argument to make his point I probably wouldn’t have been keep my mouth shut. The manager claimed that when he started in the industry fifteen years ago girls were making $700 or more a night doing air dances and none of this extra stuff was needed. He also claimed that back then girls were lining up to work at this club and they should feel lucky to be here.

Apparently the manager lives in a time warp and has missed the fact the world has changed in the past fifteen years. Fifteen years ago the economy was starting the dot com boom. The clubs were much more crowded fifteen years ago. People had a lot more money to spend. Back then I used to take off from clubs at 8pm because they got so crowded there was no place to sit. Now I could probably park my car next to the stage at 8pm and there still would be room for everybody. Apparently the manager hasn’t noticed that things have slowed down a little since then. 

He also neglects to mention that all the clubs were doing air dances in Portland at the time. This led to my own misadventure the first time a dancer sat down in my lap in Texas. Now if a club tried to enforce that everybody will just head down the road to next club. All the dancers I know don’t want to get groped of $20 by some random guys off the street. But that’s the current environment right now and a lot of dancers are going to do what they need to pay their bills.

He also mentions that there were dancers waiting to work for the club. This implies that they were limiting the number of dancers that could work there. This is a noticeable change from the current policy of letting any dancer with a pulse and stage fees show up and work, regardless of how many girls are already there. You get 30 dancers chasing 10 customers and the rules are going to become optional pretty fast.

Arguments like this just make everything worse. Dancers will just look at the manager like he’s an idiot and ignore him. You have no credibility when ignore reality. I don’t mind working for jerks if they are will to deal with the facts. Somebody who makes up an imaginary world to work in is impossible to deal with. I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to strip club management lunacy. 

Test your stripper skills and win (kinda) big money

Every dancer friend I have claim they can look at a stack of singles and tell exactly how much it is. I decided to put it to the test and came up with a contest. Who ever guesses the value of this stack of ones (or comes closest) wins the money! The stack of singles below could be yours. Of course there will be a few rules for this contest. Please read closely.

1. The contest is only open to active dancers in the Portland Oregon area. (This includes Salem). I will show up and make it rain or, more likely, neatly place it on the rack so its easier for you to pick up.
2. You must work either weekends or weekday evening shifts. I have a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday job. My bosses tend to frown on me heading to strip clubs during work hours.
3. You can only make one guess. You make the guess by leaving a comment on this post. You must also leave your stage name, what club you work at, and the dollar value of your guess.
4. If two or more guesses are the same, the earliest guess posted on the blog will win. The time and date blogspot tags the comment will be the official entry time
5. The guess closest to the value of stack (either above or below the amount) wins.
6. If two guesses have the same differential, the guess that did not exceed the actual value of the stack will win. Example, if the value of the stack is $20 and there was an $18 and $22 guesses (both $2 off) the $18 dollar guess wins since it did not exceed the value of the stack.
7. The contest will end 6am October 12th. 

The stack is all non-sequential one dollar bills. Any questions e-mail me at pdxstoney@gmail.com. Good luck!