SC Business Models

raya
Florida
Over the years I have become friendly enough with talent that I've talked to them about the workplace and I thought it would be useful to describe the deals that strippers have with management. Girls that work in clubs, please chime in and elaborate on this.

Nice looking girls who are comfortable being naked and can dance can easily gain employment at clubs except that it isn't considered employment by the club. They are termed independent contractors and, in fact, pay to work there. At one local institution, the girls pay the least if they show up at 3 pm. Every hour after that costs them more to clock in. There is no hourly pay. They keep all their stage tips and floor dance money. However, any time they use a room, they are paying out about 40% to management. Management therefore knows the 60% of VIP costs collected and reports those to IRS and state tax office. This is why girls are always asking for tips. Tips, drinks and OTC are not reported.

There are a lot of people the girls are expected to tip including the DJ, the house Mom (and/or Dad), the floor managers who seat customers, the guys who park cars. Some of these people help the girls, especially at closing time. Others can be pricks. Some of the guys have to dress nice but also don't really get paid by the house.

The dressing thing is pretty interesting. Obviously, we like strippers to look hot and they can't make money if they don't look hot. However, there are a number of rules at clubs that are at the whim of management. Management can specify that particular too much (legal issues) or too little. More of a problem are the shoes. Despite the fact that a girl can look sensational in flats or barefoot and may have knee or foot injuries, she's unlikely going to be able to work without really high heels.

Management puts up signs that say no touching this or that. Obviously, this is to leave the girls holding the bag if there is a bust. The management will claim that they thought they were an air dance establishment and the girl must have been a slut or a hooker.

Whether considered employees or contractors, strippers should be able to obtain health insurance through the affordable care act. Their major tax issue as contractors is that they have to pay self employment tax if they don't have sufficient clothing or gas expenses to offset reported income. Again, this reinforces the non reported piece of stripper income, which is not as likely to be in large bills because it is outside of VIP or is tipped on top of VIP. I would be interested to know whether strippers who have unionized as employees have made shoes an issue or have stuck to the typical issues of compensation. Also, what is the correlation between stripper-friendly workplaces and customer satisfaction?

6 comments

Latest

ppwh
8 years ago
I have heard mixed reactions from strippers over 1099 vs. W-2 employment. One told me that she quit a club when the club required the dancers to become W-2 employees. On the other hand, I have heard that dancers like the W-2 model of being paid on days they don't sell any dances rather than ending up owing money to the club for being there on a slow night.

I have seen it written on TUSCL before that the recent declines in strip clubs might be linked in part to risk aversion in possibly ending up owing the club money.

IMO, all of this is mostly details, though. The most important factors are whether there are customers spending money and dancers worth spending money on. At a busy club, a theoretical risk of a slow night probably isn't a big deal. At a slow club, making $80 for a 8 hour shift might not seem worth it compared to a regular job if there are too many nights like that.
flagooner
8 years ago
I was expecting different subject matter. I thought it was going to outline what tactics clubs use to make money based on the segment of the market they elect to target.
Jascoi
8 years ago
good points raya.
JamesSD
7 years ago
Being a W2 employee can be useful when applying for a car loan or apartment lease.

BUT I know my main club doesn't report anything the dancers make. Aside from CR, the club makes it's money on admission, stage fees and drinks. Girls keep what they make, tips or dances.
Subraman
7 years ago
-->"Also, what is the correlation between stripper-friendly workplaces and customer satisfaction?"

Do you have examples of stripper-friendly workplaces? Are there many, or any?

There used to be one in San Francisco, the Lusty Lady. The girls unionized and took over the club completely; if I remember right, every new girl who got hired, basically become a part owner. I can write a lot on that club, but the bottom line is: the girls turned it into their idea of stripper utopia (you might not believe some of the retarded ideas if I told you; worse than the ideas coming out of StripperWeb), as a customer it was a fucking disaster, and they are no longer in business.
san_jose_guy
7 years ago
No doubt about it, strip clubs constitute sub grade employment, no health care, and often completely under the table for the dancers.

But the way you need to look at it is, everyone needs to be paid, and it is all coming from the customer's money. So how do you get more customers, bringing in more money, and spending it?

House and staff money might come from door charges, refreshments, booth and back room charges, or from dancer access fees.

Making dancers pay a percentage only leads to finger pointing. Making them pay a flat rate is the simplest, but it hits some harder than others. And so it leads to some girls being extremely aggressive and not following any rules. After all, if they can't make any money, then it is no great privilege to work their.

So if you want a shit hole, the kind of club I like, make it all dancer flat fees, and keep hiring as many more girls as possible. Some will always be getting squeezed out or taking time off. But there will be others who stay within no limits, and the rest will follow them.

If you want a club that stays within the law and the managements' rules, then you need to limit the number of girls, and make sure that you only hire ones who have what it takes to make money easily.

Booths and back rooms, people think these increase the mileage. This not really so. The laws are the same front room and back room. In some dives they do FS on couches in darkened corners. More plausible deniability for the owners. And some have written about "chair forts", improvised partitions dancers would build, in Texas in the early days of maximum mileage. Idea sounds neat to me because the girl is the one running it.

Probably no owner cut in situations like that, but maybe bouncer tip outs.

Local underground club, they were doing front room FS. But after getting busted, the main group of related Latina's brought their own mini-van into the back parking lot.

So booths and backrooms are just a way for the owners to get a bigger cut. They also ruin the choreography of the interaction, if customers buy dances instead of getting a front room makeout session going.

In the most extreme of dives, as written on tuscl and blackstripclubs.net, the girls give you very little choice to to engage in front room makeout sessions.

SJG

She's A Lady
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReL9dmYD…

first page of sheet music
http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd…

complete guitar tabs
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/t/tom_j…

This song looks to be entirely diatonic, and so much of it is sung over Em.

The bridge is all major triads, and seems to constitute a key change, likely to Bb.

I remember reading a discussion once of the transitions in popular music as being either 1. harmony changes, 2. mode changes, or 3. key changes. But as to what distinguishes one from the others, I am still not clear. And then I don't think that classical music lends itself to such analyses, as it is more varied.
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