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When and Where Did Lap Dancing Begin?

Club_Goer_Seattle

Seattle, Washington

(In strip clubs, that is. Perhaps some well known ancient and amorous civilizations such as Romans or Greeks invented it, but I'm talking about modern day strip clubs:)

WHERE ??? I have heard it said that modern day lap dancing in strip clubs was a Canadian invention. Can any of you Canadian contributors speak to this?

WHEN ??? 1992 for me. I first noticed lap dancing about 1992 in L.A. My local clubs were those in the San Fernando Valley, then. I do remember the exact club where I first noticed it: The (then) Oddball Cabaret (later Valley Ball Cabaret, now Bare Elegance) in Van Nuys, CA. I recall $30. was the standard price at first, and not just in that club. Customers had to keep their hands behind their backs! The term “mileage” or the phrase, “YMMV,” hadn't been created yet.

In those early years modern strip clubs were emerging from the prior generation of “topless bars.” These were really neighborhood beer bars that, over time, added a small stage for bikini or topless dancers. (No stripper pole yet—that seemed to come with full blown strip clubs.) Maybe just three or four dancers would rotate on stage. When they weren't dancing, they were waitresses. There was no cover, a beer was cheap, and all you could really do otherwise, to spend money, was to tip the dancers on stage.

Once lap dancing became the main attraction, most of those old neighborhood topless bars faded away. I know of a few in the San Fernando Valley that converted to strip clubs, but the space they could devote to lap dancing was minimal, mostly.

Is anyone aware of lap dancing prior to 1992, if so, where ??? Perhaps there was a progression of where it started and where it migrated across North America ???