What it's Like to be a Stripper in New Orleans

In this relatively small, club-dense city (population 343,000), it’s almost impossible not to know at least one former or current dancer. Stripping isn’t taboo in New Orleans -- it’s just another service industry gig. Add hurricane season, Mardi Gras, 24/7 bars, and a wildly fluctuating tourism economy to the mix, and you might have an inkling as to why stripping in New Orleans isn’t like stripping anywhere else. I’ve worked at clubs and private parties throughout the greater New Orleans area since 2008. There was Visions, a locals hangout in hurricane-battered New Orleans East, where oil rig workers rubbed shoulders with personal injury attorneys. Scores, a Bourbon St “gentlemen’s club” where I once heard a barback complain about a rat drowning in a champagne bucket. Mickey Martin’s Ship Wheel, a nautical-themed, David Lynchian dive where girls danced to Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode (sadly, it’s now shuttered). I move around constantly seeking the holy grail: a place where cash flows like milk and honey, and the men don’t touch. Booze is sold 24/7 in New Orleans, and you’re allowed to imbibe on the streets as long as the drink in your hand isn’t in a glass container. Because everywhere is a party and many bars never close, the clubs don’t get going until late -- and they stay open well until after sunrise. It blows my mind to think there are people who want a lap dance at 9am on a Wednesday, but they exist. I’ve taken their money before. “In any other city, people are having dinner at 5 or 6pm,” says John Miller, general manager at Penthouse New Orleans. “A lot of people aren't having dinner til 9 or 10 here. We may not get busy until 10 or 11 and roll til 5 or 7 in the morning.” Brittany, a bartender there who says she’s 37 but looks at least a decade younger, concurs. “When we close at 8am, there are still VIP rooms going on upstairs,” she says. “We have to wait and then do checkouts. We don't have set times to end the night. It depends on if people are spending money, how many girls are there, and how busy we are.” I never work in clubs during Carnival season, because crowds are crazy, drunk, and often cheap -- why tip a dancer when there are boobs to be had for beads outside? I did do a lot of private parties with a partner, a fellow stripper who offered full service (aka sex). Our customers were just as wasted as people in the French Quarter, but at least I didn’t have to walk down a beer- and vomit-glazed Bourbon St to get to work. “Mardi Gras is a nightmare,” says Vanessa, a stripper at Rick’s Cabaret. “It’s all young people on a whole new level of intoxication.” “The drunks are fucking aggravating,” Brittany agrees. “The Mardi Gras crowd is younger and drunker, where a normal crowd is older, nicer, and classier, more well put together, more businessmen, and out-of-towners from conventions.” According to my calculations, approximately 60% of participants at private bachelor parties were mind-bendingly coked up (among them, a Hindu priest who paid me to watch him get a handjob). Approximately 0% offered to share their cocaine -- not that I was interested, but still, it seems like the polite thing to do. Or maybe I was just looking for another reason to hate the guys who threw down cash to get their buddy laid by a professional before his wedding, then stood by him on the altar and smiled in the photographs. You would seriously be shocked to find out how many grooms pay for sex at their bachelor parties. I sure was. After each private party, my partner and I stuffed our crumpled tips into Winn Dixie bags, changed into street clothes, and hunkered down in the hotel stairwell. There, I sorted and smoothed out the bills while my partner divvied up the cash. I don’t know how much she earned, but her escort rate was $400 an hour. She walked away with a lot more than that after a private party. Although Jazz Fest draws more than 450,000 attendees to the city, it doesn’t make a blip on the strip club radar. I guess these music fans are probably listening to something other than a DJ playing top 40 remixes and calling out dancer’s names: Jersey, Bubbles, etc. The most significant function of the fest is to bookend the high season. After it ends in May, there’s a steep dropoff in business. “Summertime is very slow because of the heat,” says Brittany. “We still have girls working, but we depend on our locals. There’s tourism, but you aren't getting the convention crowds.” Locals know the city lives and dies by tourists. Approximately 10.5 million of them came last year to empty their wallets, and occasionally their bladders, on Bourbon. Which is all well and good until June, which heralds the start of sweltering subtropical weather. I got by thanks to bachelor parties and vanilla jobs. Other strippers have different strategies. “Generally, in the summer, the big events are Essence and Tales of the Cocktail. I don’t do well with either of those crowds,” says Sparkles, a blonde decked out in leopard print, cat-eye sunglasses and red lipstick who strips at Scores New Orleans. “Essence is a bunch of older women or entitled college kids who have their allowance, and Tales people aren’t going to Bourbon.” Vanessa puts it more simply: “How do I deal with the summer? I work in another city or country.” Some tourists are here to work. You don’t need a special license or background check to strip in New Orleans -- just a driver’s license, social security card, and a pair of platform shoes. And you can always club-hop until you get hired. “I have a roster of girls that travel into town once a month or every other week. A large majority lease apartments here, even if it’s not their permanent residence. New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Miami have higher percentages of traveling entertainers than Cleveland or Philly,” says Miller. Vanessa is one of those frequently itinerant dancers. “I’ve worked in Las Vegas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Manhattan, Chicago, Key West. All vary in levels of contact, Atlanta and Chicago being lowest, Manhattan and New Orleans being the highest,” she says. Before I was a stripper, I thought that whole “you can touch them, but they can’t touch you” line you hear on TV was actually a thing. In my mind, lap dances consisted of gyrating in front of a customer -- maybe stroking his arms if things got really wild! -- while a beefy bodyguard scowled in the corner, ready to break the bones of anyone who laid a finger on me. Of course, that was before I was working at one of the highest contact clubs in one of the highest contact cities in the nation. A stripper’s income varies wildly depending on her location, her club, the foot traffic that night, and even her mood. A stripper working a Midwest dive might be glad to go home with $150 in her garters, while a dancer at a Manhattan gentlemen’s club scoffs at anything under $500. While the income range is vast, most strippers agree that the ones making $300,000 a year are the exception, not the norm. A dancer’s income also depends on how many shifts she works. Most don’t come close to working 40 hours a week -- not because they’re lazy, but because the job is physically and emotionally demanding. I generally aimed to work three eight-hour shifts a week. While breaking a grand in one shift is the goal, it never happened to me. I came close once, making a little over $900 on a night I worked three private bachelor parties. Sparkles has me totally beat in that department. “I do three shifts a week. During Carnival season, I’m happy if I make more than $700 and pissed if I make less than $300. It’s hard to make a grand. I think the most I ever made was $1,700,” she says. “In the summer, if I can count on making $200 a shift, I’m OK. I am very proud of myself if I make $500. There are still good nights where one guy gets room after room. It’s always possible.”