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minnow

Any place that interests me.

My first internet based guide to strip clubs was Z-bone, which I discovered in 2001. This was a timely discovery since I was making a lot of Los Angeles area business trips then. Zbone.com had been in operation since 1995. Original format would continue until 2011 when replaced by new format. I'll get to that later. Meanwhile, to get topical..

ZBONE

I immediately liked z-bone on first glance. There were club reviews by Z-bone himself.(Site owner). Ten Sothern California counties were depicted on clickable map format for reviews. The vast majority of clubs/reviews were concentrated in Los Angeles County, which takes up a lot of real estate, plus a vast population to draw on. The Z-bone reviews gave a good brief rundown, IMHO. My visits proved reviews to be pretty much spot on. One downside was that some of the write ups got to be 3 years or more old - nearly ancient history by strip club standards.

This was rectified by reader reviews. A combination of seeing Spearmint Rhino Industry listed on Z Bone Top 5 club list, coupled with reader reviews helped me discover the wonderful world of COI. Proper name City of Industry. Mileage there was off the charts. One limitation of zbone website was the lack of PM capability. The latest version of zbone has that capability. A few members, notably louis, aka "LouASS" was generous enough to post his email. As you can guess from his moniker, LouASS was an avid fan of big booty dancers. He was very generous in responding to my emails. I reciprocated to the 411 provided by writing some club reviews. I found the reviews generally useful without too much "chaff". Like many websites, zbone had its' share of trolls, spammers, and knuckleheads who spewed useless tripe along the bandwidth spectrum. Z Bone wasn't heavy handed about deleting posts. In one notable case he deleted a whole section of 2 different clubs at the request of club mangement, stemming from allegations posted by a former dancer about drug use and some other things there. That eventually led to "new" present version of zbone.com.
I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Besides club reviews, there were such cool features as a "Bulletin Board", "Pop Poll", "Dancer of the Month", a writeup by a dancer about her experiences dancing at different clubs, and so on. The Bulliten Board was actually discussion board organized into different topical sections. IMHO, this made for easier surfing for interesting topics. I recall one Pop Poll asking how much one routinely spent at strip clubs. I recall the prominent spot being $100 to $300, with maybe ~ 2% routinely spending over $1000. In all my time going there, I never met a "Dancer of the Month". I did manage to meet one who appeared in a Playboy special issue on stripclubs, plus a few pornstars on iafd.com data base, but that's another story.

Google zbone.com archives to view old version of site. For new zbone, everyone had to register anew. Expanded capabilities allowed for PM exchange, and posting of pictures. I haven't visited L.A. area in a while, so I'm not active there. Whenever I do go back, I would not hesitate to make a detailed perusal of zbone.com.

LINKS AND TUSCL DISCOVERY

One useful feature of zbone that I forgot to mention was the links section. IMHO, a well thought out links section on a hobbyist website can be far more useful and productive than wading through umpteen pages on a google search.Z Bone had several links, such as "Bob's Texas Reviews", "Two Sheds", "Strip Club List", and last but not least "Ultimate Strip Club List," aka Tuscl. As I also had trips to Texas, I was interested in those reviews. "BTR" was fine for the 1999 to 2001 time frame, but became stale long before the 2011 switch over to new format. Zbone also had an "Out Of Town" review section, but that was spotty, and became stale and outdated with time. I'm sure many of us are familiar with the other three. Stripclublist.com was neat to have an online directory, but even then the review comment section wasn't useful. Yes, it was cluttered with a bunch of juvenille tripe then. Which brought me to Tuscl. Back then, I could peruse club info and reviews without being a member. At last, a club directory with a bunch of John Stagliano like write ups for many prospective clubs. Several months after one needed to be a registered member to view the member reviews, I registered a handle, asked a few questions on DB, and submitted my first review. I've since followed up with several subsequent reviews, never letting VIP expire. For me to say that Tuscl is the best, most useful strip club online guide would be like preaching to the choir here. Local review boards like zbone may well be good and useful, but they simply don't have they nationwide, yea, worldwide coverage that Tuscl has. Yet as good as Tuscl is and has been for me, I haven't sat pat and branched out to other supplemental, more "envelope expanding" websites.

THE PINK SITE SW

Stripperweb.com was a Tuscl link for me. While dancers and customers have conflicting interests, at the end of the day it makes sense to me to have all parties in on club related discussion topics. Unlike tuscl, Stripperweb, aka "Pink Site" was formed as a dancer, performer support site. Male customers were tolerated, mainly being relegated to "The Basement", aka Blue Side. You had to click a link near the bottom of first page to get to "Customer Conversation." On the first page, the pink side were where most of the topics were, including club reviews section. Those had an interesting twist to it in that each club had a review section oriented towards dancers, and another set of reviews oriented towards customers. Although SW club reviews weren't as thorough or up to date as tuscl reviews, it was still interesting to read things from dancers viewpoint. For example if a dancer review complained about high house fees or tip outs, I could see why certain clubs might seem too greedy or high hustle to me on visits. Likewise, fellas, if a dancer complained about high contact levels or prevalence of extras, get thy arse over to that club.

Before you aim that flamethrower at me, I'll take a break from routine to mention the discussion boards. Although initial motivation for joining tuscl for many of us was the club reviews, we all enjoy the back and forth feedback of a discussion board. I have more posts on tuscl than other monger boards combined. Even so, I like exposure to different perspectives. There have been some posters over there who I would not care to meet in a non club setting, never mind a VIP room. Stripperweb allows members to post pictures, and exchange PM's. I've met ~ 15 SW "pinkies" in several different clubs, mostly 5 or more years ago. Most were average to above average in looks and mileage for the particular club. One dancer led me to a club that I otherwise might not have discovered. Silver Reign West L.A. was a good alternative for COI clubs at the time. Sometimes when staying near LAX, I just didn't feel like driving all the way to COI. There were some sections on pink side that male members couldn't post in, but still read. "Hustle Hut" makes for some interesting and entertaining reading. While Tuscl is still numero uno for scoping out strip clubs and conversing with fellow mongers, I found stripperweb to be a good supplement. Found may be the operative word soon due to the large infusion of camgirls to the site. At any given moment, there are five times as many people viewing "Camming Connection" as viewing "Stripping General" section.

CLUB WEBSITES

OK, so you've read the reviews, narrowed your choices down, but are still left wondering what the club will really be like. Welcome to one Tuscl feature in that under club listings is a link to the club website. Depending on what you're looking for, you may still be left wondering. Most club links I've tried work, though you will quickly find that not all websites are created equal. Some do expand the envelope a bit. A recall a TX club whereby you could click picture of club interior for a 360 degree view of the club. It can be nice to know the layout of the club in advance.

Do you like feature performers ? Vanity in Columbus OH and Spearmint Rhino chain have upcoming feature performer schedule, along with some basic pictures. Wondering what the club dancers look like? Clubs like Brass Flamingo Indianapolis, Kahoots Columbus OH, and Cheetahs Atlanta have some pictures of their dancers. The downside is that you don't know what nights a particular dancer is working, or if she is still working there. One California club had a picture of a dancer up when I knew for a fact that she hadn't danced there in five years ! At least two Los Angeles clubs, Bare Elegance, and 4 Play have daily dancer lineups on their daily blog. 4 Play even lists what time they show up for their shift that day. This is great if you're a regular who already knows what the dancers look like. There has to be a better way, which leads me to...............

CLUB STAGE AND DRESSING ROOM CAMS

I first got introduced to this back in 2009 as a result of a thread started by tuscler "flguytampa21". He told of 2001live.com with live cam feeds for stage and dressing room. Additionally, there was the option to chat live with chosen dancers. Turns out that the Tampa club across the street, Mons Venus, had a similar arrangement. Today this has evolved into "LV Network", which includes ~ 6 other clubs in FL and NV. Finally, a live club cam option, which breaks the condondrum of having a current dancer lineup (but no pictures to go with name), or pictures of several dancers (but no idea when they work, or if they're still working.)

Back in 2010, I wrote <a href='postread.php?id=1019'>my first tuscl article</a> about the 2001.com website. I marveled at the dimension expanding experience of viewing, or even chatting with a dancer online, and then seeing her a few weeks later at the club. Sound good so far ? The rub was that to get full capability of viewing club cams, paid chat with dancers, and full video viewing/purchases (in the last 2, one just needed sufficient token credits), one had to be a paid VIP member. Back then, it was either $9.95/month, or $99/year. That was then.

Now, the main options are $23.87/30 days with recurring charges (unless you otherwise cancel in advance), or $93.87/180 days, recurring charges. If you don't want to spring for VIP, you can still view the line up of dancers under "View All Models". You get a very limited view of dressing room or stage for a limited ammount of time. If you register a handle, you can get a small screen view of cams, plus view the free video preview. Some downsides of viewing the models are 1)There are ~1000 to 1100 different models to sort through. 2) Not all models have pictures, nor are the ones that do always useful depictions of actual person 3) Models include non-dancer staff such as door person, DJ, mangers, bouncers, etc. 4) Some double posts occur, plus some dancers listed under multiple names (one changed her name 2 times) 5) Several dancers who haven't danced in over 5 years, plus many "one week and outs" are posted in the jumble.

You'd be better off just clicking the "In The Club" link on upper portion of chat screen to view the dancer lineup. The 2001 staff does a good job of keeping club and dancer on stage roster up to date. In my 2010 article, I mentioned live chat capability. Live in that you could see and hear her talk, but she could only see what you typed.It was up to the dancer whether to do free chat initially. Invariably, some guy would take a dancer private, and lock her down for like $3-$4/minute, I think. Sometimes, spies would be allowed for like 96c/minute if enough guys were in on it. This is how it was for about the first 3 years. Over time, some dancers wouldn't let anyone into chat, unless they left a tip first. Interest then waned. Where before one could always find a dancer or 2 in chat at any given moment, and hundreds of videos to choose from dozens of different dancers (videos were taken from paid chat sessions), now it's mainly chat with door girl, and a few videos from maybe 6 different dancers. A few years ago, a new server and more high definition video system was installed. Unfortunately, the old videos, and dancer profiles were purged, with the new profiles more cursory.

I'm getting a bit off topic here, but the changes I've seen on 2001live and monslive websites in last 6 years may be indicative of a slight paradigm shift in the adult entertainment/strip club industry. Compared to 2010 time frame, the price of 1 year membership has almost doubled, but the monthly VIP membership price has more than doubled, but almost tripled.The price for individual token purchase has also increased considerably. One new development that I forgot to mention was the rainmaking machine. Early on, a trapdoor above stage would open, and rain fake bills down on dancer, accompanied by booming thunder over the sound system. I think a minimum of $50 was required to make it rain, but $100 seems to be the more common figure. Club eventually did away with the fake bils, and just create an image of dollar bills raining down on the dancer for the online customers. The extra time spent cleaning up fake bills was time taken away from stage shows, gotta keep the real money rolling in. What this is leading up to is an increase in demand for virtual strip club shows. For little more than the night cover charge, one can watch live stage, or dressing room action for 30 days. Socking the short termers with higher fee increases is catering more to the virtual crowd to watch stage shows with minimal human interaction. I suspect that many online customers never or rarely go to clubs. Live cams serve as an effective advertising medium (and an effective resource for the mongers), but also another revenue stream from people who may never set foot in the club.

For now, I enjoy live human interaction, and fervently hope that virtual lapdances/VIPS don't become the norm.