Clubs Fines

Dancers "get together"? All I can say is be glad they don't/won't ever.

can't believe that these girls don't get together and tell the clubs to "fuck off " with the fees and fines. after all would customers show up if not for the dancers? the idea of paying a tip out to just about everybody who works at the club is ridiculous!!

The dancers at my favorite club do not get fines. They are independent contractors. What they do get is suspensions for forgetting to tip out, doing drugs ITC, doing extras, getting into fights and being overweight. The suspensions can last for a few days to months.Too many suspensions and they get barred from the club.

I didn't think the dancers had too many fines at PP clubs. I saw one dancer come in 2 hours before closing time the other night at 4AM. She was releived to find me and that I bought dances from her the second time she asked so she could make tip out. I'm not sure why a dancer would sleep a few hours and then arrive at a club 2 hours before closing when most people have already left. Maybe she thought she could still make some money. Too many good looking favorites and I spent almost all my cash. I had fun though and will be back, probably not tonight though. I turned down most dancers too.

A PP dancer who also works at The Masters on occasion I believe told me if you arrived at that club after 9 PM (working dancers that is), they had to pay a fine of $100. Another club I know of has been having really slow business, I don't see how the dancers are making much money. That's probably why a few of their former dancers are now working at PP too. I heard PP clubs charge more in tip out if the dancers don't dance on stage. Most of the lap dances I get are from dancers who don't typically dance on stage. I bet that confuses some visiting customers since they never see them on stage.

CG: Only the day shift dancers must dance on stage because of their small number compared to nights. They do not pay a higher tip out if they do not dance on stage. The ones that do not dance on stage just don't need to advertise. Tip out payments are based on the time of day they worked. 5PM for the day shift girls. The price goes up after that. It goes up again after 9PM.Not sure if it goes up again after that because I do not have any favorites working that late.

NO. Ghetto clubs like Angels charge hefty fines to the dancers for *everything*. They can only abuse the dancers like this thanks to the vile government. When there was a free market in stripclubs there was real competition for dancers. The government gave the big stick to clubs and the clubs use it against both dancers and customers.

So to be clear: The vile government is to blame for shutting down the little clubs and for all manner of assorted ills---big and small---in the stripclub business. Who are victims? Mainly the dancers and customers and to a much lesser extent the clubs that were allowed to remain open.

Every club that has ever existed has a fine for everything. I just learned tonight at my favorite club, they have a fine if you go back to the VIP room with a drink in hand. That seems excessive. And I always thought they had very few rules, at least compared to clubs in general.

At my #2 club, I was told they get a fine if their heels are too small. It's insane because footwear doesn't matter that much, at least to me, but the ones they want them to wear are bad for their feet.

That is how management protects their interest. Tip out differentials, and fines allow management to maintain uniformity and help insure dancers are available throughout the day. I am sure you have noticed in the evening, that as the evening goes on, the the hotter girls come on later and work fewer hours as a rule. They are charged a premium for working fewer hours. Managements goal is to try and get girls to work more hours, for the benefit of us the customer.

The fact that dancers are independent contractors doesn't stop management from treating them like employees in all kinds of ways. I've never been aware of a club, upscale or dive, that didn't have fines of some type, whether they were called that or something else. I used to go to a club that would fairly often give dancers a warning for a dance violation before giving a rare $20 fine. It was usually for some silly rule like keeping one foot on the floor. Meanwhile, we'd carry on groping each others privates without notice.

If I owned/managed an SC, I'd pay the dancers a wage*, then enforce some rules for them to follow. (Be on time, don't bring narcotics into the club, etc.) With the dancers paying the club managers et al, it makes very little sense for them to also be accountable for similar rules upon penalty of fines.


* In return, they would help me earn money by getting guys to buy the overpriced drinks, getting guys to pay the ridiculous "VIP" entry fees, etc....

There are those rare dancers that can do most anything they wish, no matter the club "rules". Why, they bring the $$$ in. I've known of only a handful in my 40 years of club visits. One, to me, doesn't count. She was the managers lady.

The status of my home-town preferred club, Visions, in New Orleans, is an excellent example, of a club which knows how to work its tip-out and "fee" requirements.

I think different clubs have different systems. In some areas, the demographics of the clientele, and the behavior of cops and judges in the jurisdiction, "give the clubs the big stick," like Jablake pointed out. In other areas, the girls find out where it's good to work and where it's bad to work, generally on the basis of where they can make maximum profit for their time and effort. Word will get out, and the good girls will gravitate to those clubs. But each city is different. In some cities there's so many strip clubs of so many varieties, that different types of girls with different attitudes gravitate toward different neighborhoods, different clubs. In other cities, there are fewer clubs, fewer dancers and fewer clients, so the opportunity for a girl to move around, or for a club to wield a big stick against her, is at a different level.

What happens in New Orleans is, that there are the tourist clubs, and then there is Visions. At Visions, there are certain required tip-outs, and I think there's probably more of them than the girls want to admit. But generally, the girls who stay in the city long-term tend to gravitate toward dancing there, even though it's a long long way from the tourist districts. The best girls don't ever go to the French Quarter once they've found Visions. The next tier down, might work the FQ during major tourist holidays (Superbowl, Mardi Gras) or might actually get the fuck out of Dodge whenever those events are going on.

So, we have a split clientele. Visions rightly advertises itself as "where the locals go," whereas the FQ clubs work on overpricing themselves, and working elaborate scams with surprise pricing after the fact, because they know the tourists will never be back, and few of them will have any cojones or standing to complain. The right types of girls gravitate to these clubs.

For a while, the FQ clubs had SOME good ones and some bad ones, but the city's population simply can't sustain more than one 'good' club in town. The Deja-Vu line in the FQ used to have some good experiences. And the Scores line, too. But the touristy nature of things has slowly eroded those clubs standing, and the girls report that the tip-outs and requirements are growing and getting cumbersome downtown. Visions, therefore, manages to continue to attract the best girls.

But that's never a guarantee. Visions could start taking advantage of its preeminent status, by overcharging the girls, in which case some of the best (most reliable? hottest-looking?) would start looking for other opportunities.

It's a market for labor, just like any other market. As long as Visions remains intelligent in its management, things will continue to be positive for them. If the economy continues to go downwards, to where men don't buy the stripclub-priced drinks at Visions, and then the Visions management starts demanding more pay from the girls to make up the difference, however ... things might turn bad, fast. Or it might work for them to charge the girls a little more. They'll have to feel it out as the situations develop.

"Also, I'm assuming this practice is restricted to the upscale, chain clubs?"

Nope, some of the most abusive fine practices that I've heard of happened at a local club in upstate NY. They would start "fining" girls around the holidays so that the management of the club could have more money to buy presents...real humane of them...not...

The "independent contractors" thing is total BS tax dodge...a lot of clubs have club rules that a dancer can be fined for if they violate them.

Now if they did not have fines around the holidays, they may not have many girls working. As several dancers have told, to work good shifts/hours we have to commit to bad days also.

Several clubs that I go to have always told me that if they work the friday/saturday night shifts than they have to work at least one "off" day as well. That way those stable of girls has to come in at least once to work, otherwise very few girls would be at the club on a Tuesday night.

While every club has to do their own thing, Mons Venus has one of the best in my mind. The club charges 20 dollars upfront (no bathroom trolls, no tips to the door lady, no anything). That usually also includes a token for a free juice drink. From there, the girls dance, you pay. No BS. If the girls want to do 3 for 50, they will. They come and go as they please, no mandatory times on the stage. But not every place gets the girls, money, and reputation that mons has.

Tootsie's in Miami has girls coming in at all times, but generally they work a shift, depending on the hours of the shift they work determines their payout.

Some clubs don't allow the girls to wear jean skirts as part of their costumes, no heels can be worn while doing a private dance (to not mess up the couches), one foot on the ground, etc.

Clubs have fines, but it's the same reason that governments have "sin" taxes to encourage certain types of behavior.

Clubs have "fines" to both encourage behavior but also to capture more money, in addition to tip-out and dues.

"Now if they did not have fines around the holidays, they may not have many girls working."

That may be true, but what I was talking about was fining dancers for every little thing around the holidays (mainly stuff that they would normally let slide...like being literally 1 minute late for a shift) just so that the management could make some extra cash.

Some dancers that I've known did have a "contract", whether it was "valid" or not I don't know. It sure as heck wasn't fair to the dancer though...

"But, if you wanna' work there, you go with the flow. If not, see ya!"

It's funny, that's the same kind of thinking that goes into a "closed shop" that a lot of unions have in place, which isn't fair IMHO either.