“SAVANNA TO THE
CHAMPAGNE ROOM!”
bellowed the DJ. “Savanna to the Champagne Room!”
It was a night in 1997 at Scores, America’s hottest strip club. As
always the place was packed with VIPs, not the least of whom was
Howard Stern, whose obsession with Scores (and its star performer,
Savanna) was constant fodder for his ratings-busting, nationally
syndicated radio show. Stern frequently requested Savanna, who
possessed—in addition to the usual stripper assets (blonde hair
halfway down her back, curves galore, and a sexual vibe strong
enough to strip paint off a house)—an uncanny ability to hold her
own in conversation with the King of All Media, whether she was
shooting the shit or offering her tasting notes on one of the highpriced
bottles from the Scores wine cellar.
For the discerning celebrity, Scores was like a candy store. Tommy
Lee liked blondes with big boobs. Oliver Stone fancied Asian women.
Oscar de la Hoya took an egalitarian approach—young ladies of all
types enjoyed hours of conversation with him in the Champagne
Room, which rented for $400 an hour, plus $400 an hour for each girl’s
time. Bobby Brown broke the “no touching” rule by biting a dancer’s
nipple. Dennis Rodman begged a Scores dancer to marry him.
Madonna and Pamela Anderson visited, to view their doppelgängers.
Elizabeth Berkley researched Showgirls at Scores in 1995. The
following year Demi Moore shelled out for multiple lap dances prior
to the release of Striptease. Kate Moss pole-danced. Russell Crowe
berated waiters and grabbed at a dancer’s underwear. Lindsay Lohan
passed out. George Clooney celebrated his birthday, and Chuck
Norris had not one but two bachelor parties at the club. After the
second, he failed to show up at the altar.
Now all of that is gone. Last January the original club, Scores
East, on East 60th Street, closed its doors, as did its sister location,
Scores West, on West 28th Street. Thus ended a legendary 17-year
run for the body glitter, breast implant, Brazilian bikini wax center
of the universe.
In the years before Scores, strip clubs were smoky, badly lit hustle
joints where dancers offered additional services in which only the
fully vaccinated felt confident partaking. Smart men, upon entrance,
hid their wallets in their socks. Soon after opening in 1991, Scores
changed all that. Built in the model of an upscale sports bar, stocked
with high-end girls for high-end clientele, it was a place where Wall
Street traders mixed with Mafia button men and rubes from Texas in
10-gallon hats could become, after the right number of drinks, fast
friends with a rapper from Detroit. Scores did not want the horny
loner in his raincoat, even if he was willing to fork over the $10 for a
cocktail. You bragged about going to Scores—if you could afford it.
But eventually Scores lost the identity it worked so hard to
build. In the years before the closings, lawsuits alleged all manner
of bad behavior: customer overcharging, tip gouging, and sexual
harassment. A vice raid on Scores West resulted in prostitution
charges. Regulars among the movie, sports, and rock star clientele
were left to wonder: How had Scores, which rode so high for so
long, fallen so quickly?
“WE SAID: DO A STAGE SHOW. INVITE CELEBRITIES.”
In 1991 Scores opened to low expectations on a desolate stretch of
East 60th Street, in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. It was
about as close to no man’s land as you could find in Manhattan. The
club’s owner, a stocky Brooklyn-born lawyer named Michael
Blutrich, had been a Broadway actor as a child and later dabbled in
boxing promotion and restaurant management. For Scores, Blutrich
copied a strip club concept he’d seen in Florida: Instead of G-strings
and pasties, “entertainers” wore gowns and high-heeled shoes. They
would dance topless at your table for $20 per song.
A warm and charming gay man, Blutrich visited Scores only
about once a year and put ownership documents and the club’s
liquor license in the name of his high school basketball coach
from Brooklyn, a small-time gambler named Irving “Blitz” Bilzinsky.
“Blitz was the kind of guy who was old when he was 20,” recalls
an insider. “He would come in every night, eat an omelet, and barely
say a word to anybody.” In time Blutrich took another partner,
Lyle Pfeffer. Together they would redefine the notion of what a strip
club could be.
“People back then were afraid of strip clubs,” says Lonnie Hanover,
Scores’ publicist for 15 years, hired shortly after the club opened. “We
said, ‘Make it like a real club, do a stage show, and invite celebrities.’ ”
A key part of Hanover’s marketing plan was to position Scores not
as a strip club but as a club where sports was paramount, where a
patron could come, ostensibly, to watch the game on one of Scores’
many television screens. “For the first few years, the strategy was
sports,” says Hanover. “Scores was originally a sports cabaret.”
Sports aside, the main draw was always the girls. “We dressed like
movie stars,” says Stacey, a busty brunette from Kentucky who
enlisted her grandmother to sew the gowns she wore night after
night at the club. “We were like beauty pageant girls.” Stacey,
through the connections she made at Scores, landed on Saturday
Night Live, in the Al Pacino, Johnny Depp film Donnie Brasco, and
onstage at Madison Square Garden with Sting.
Alex, a native of Houston, easily earned $1,000 a night. “I made
my own schedule, so I worked when I felt like it. I’d danced in Florida
and Texas and Georgia, where the money was good, but nothing
close to what I made at Scores.”
Even patrons had a dress code: no ripped jeans, shorts, hats,
sneakers, or T-shirts. From the cigar humidor, Scores customers
enjoyed selections by Cohiba, Dunhill, and Partagas. In the
restaurant good bottles of cabernet and pinot noir accompanied
well-cooked prime cuts of steaks and chops.
Word got out among athletes. New York Knicks center Patrick
Ewing was a regular. Dwight Gooden settled in for cocktails at Scores
on the same day in 1995 when his cocaine use earned him a seasonlong
suspension. Rock stars soon followed. It was said that Sting
liked his girls blonde and small-breasted and refused to look at them
as they danced for him. Kid Rock conducted his first MTV interview at
Scores. Marc Anthony cooed “Ladies Night,” the Kool & the Gang hit,
into the ear of a dancer.
One night in February 1998, action movie star Jean-Claude van
Damme sauntered in. “They don’t come much hotter than Jean-
Claude,” says Savanna Samson (the aforementioned doyenne of
Scores’ Champagne Room). “And he never made you feel like a
stripper.” Near van Damme’s table sat Chuck Zito, former Hells
Angel, celebrity bodyguard, and star of HBO’s series Oz.
“Chuck is a punk,” van Damme remarked to a friend of Zito’s.
Minutes later he looked up to find the biker standing over him. “Did
you just tell Frankie that I’m a punk?” Zito asked.
Wordlessly, van Damme removed his glasses and tucked them
into his shirt pocket, signaling his readiness to fight. Zito dropped
the Muscles from Brussels with one punch, breaking his own hand.
The story of Zito versus van Damme made the front page of the
New York Post, with the headline Jean-Claude van Damme SLAMMED.
PORN, GOODFELLAS & FUNNY MONEY
Savanna Samson, a beautiful blonde from Watertown, in upstate
New York, was hired at Scores in August 1996. “I paid the DJ to keep
me offstage, because I was good at talking on a bunch of subjects,”
she recalls. “I ate several dinners a night in the VIP room, and I always
ended up with the biggest wad of cash.”
The first time Savanna met Howard Stern, she was sitting with
Dennis Rodman. “Howard completely ignored me,” she says, but
Savanna knew how to change that. When Stern’s biopic, Private Parts,
premiered in 1997, she showed up for a ride on a Private Parts party
bus wearing only a fur coat and lingerie. Stern’s reaction: “That’s my
girl. That’s my future wife.” Ultimately, Stern called friends at Vivid
Video in Los Angeles and helped make Savanna one of the most
recognizable and bankable porn stars in the world.
With Scores raking in $400,000 a night at its peak, dancers earned
enough cash to buy expensive cars and homes. One Wall Street high
roller ran up a tab of $605,000. “That was my best night,” says Victoria,
a super-buxom Scores dancer for a decade, and one of a dozen girls
working the Champagne Room that night. “I took home $40,000.”
Scores hosted up to 500 guests a night and grossed $25 million a
year. Some dancers married rich customers. Others got their college
tuition covered. “During that run the Scores girls were all tan and
gorgeous,” says a regular. “They went to the gym, worked on their
bodies. For 10 years the place ran great. Everybody had fun.”
Expanding its brand, the club sold “The Girls of Scores” calendars
and DVDs, as well as Scores caps, tube tops, and hot pants. Handled
by a tireless public relations team, Scores girls appeared at charity
events, on MTV’s Total Request Live, and on the MTV Video Music
Awards. But beneath the glossy veneer of sex, celebrity, and success,
the core of the Big Apple’s premier flesh palace was beginning to rot.
Even though they were grossing millions, Blutrich and Pfeffer
wanted more. A few years after Scores opened, the pair were hired to
advise an insurance company in Orlando, Florida. In 1994 Blutrich,
Pfeffer, and others were charged with defrauding the company of a
staggering $400 million, one of the biggest white-collar crime cases
of its time. Facing decades behind bars, the pair played the one card
they had and cut a deal with the Feds: They agreed to wear wires.
As early as 1993, the Gambino crime family—led by John Gotti Jr.,
son of the Teflon Don—had moved in on Scores, demanding a cut of
the profits. Fearful that he might be maimed and his club bombed,
Blutrich allowed Gotti’s crew to skim $200,000 annually from coat
check and valet parking profits. They were also given the right to
choose Scores’ bouncers, s
elect the toilet paper supplier, and take a
cut of each $20 admission. Made guys never paid for anything at
Scores. In total the Gambinos took the club for over $1 million.
Scores paid a high price for the Mafia presence. Late on the evening
of June 21, 1996, two Albanian hoodlums, Victor Dedaj and his
younger brother Simon, were asked to leave Scores after a dispute
with a Gambino enforcer over a woman. As the club closed at 4 Z.[.,
the Dedaj brothers returned with guns and knives, killing Scores
waiter Jonathan Segel and bouncer Michael Greco.
That November the Feds raided Scores, alleging that Gambino
capo Salvatore Locascio was the club’s secret owner. Within a
year Blutrich and Pfeffer came in from the cold, and the evidence
they gathered helped earn John Gotti Jr. a sentence of 77 months.
Given 20 years each for their own crimes, Blutrich and Pfeffer
soon disappeared—to segregated cellblocks and into the witness
protection program.
THE BROOKLYN EXPANSION TEAM
Sustained by a steady stream of tourists and Howard Stern listeners,
Scores limped along. With Blutrich out of the picture, the club fell
fully into the hands of Blitz Bilzinsky, the Brooklyn gambler who’d
been working for Blutrich. For help Blitz turned to the old neighborhood,
to three young men from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn who
knew little about running a strip club.
Harvey Osher, who had done a year in federal lockup for stock
fraud, worked as a gofer in Blutrich’s law office; because of his
record, his older brother Elliot Osher, a chauffeur, took over Blitz’s
role as the legal man in charge. Richard Goldring, an accountant who
did tax work for Blutrich, was named CEO. Although the Oshers and
Goldring had modest résumés, they had outsize dreams. Within
three years Scores franchises were doing brisk business in Miami,
Las Vegas, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale, and four other cities.
Harvey Osher considered himself the best strip club operator in the
business and saw his dancers as potential conquests. “Elliot,
meanwhile, was like Fredo in The Godfather,” an insider says. “He’d sit
at his table in the restaurant every night. He didn’t say much. He
didn’t do much.”
In 2002 the Oshers forced Blitz out of Scores altogether. As
managers and hosts, they brought in more friends from Brooklyn,
many of them ex-cons. Employee rules of conduct loosened. If a
manager wanted to put his hands on a dancer, who was going to stop
him? “Harvey’s friends who worked at Scores got out of control,”
says a former employee. “There was nobody to police them.”
Drugs became more readily available, and in a club where dancers
had been treated as queens, they were now treated like chattel.
“Managers thought they were customers, drinking and smoking on
the job and chatting up the girls,” says Ruth Fowler, a former Scores
dancer known as Mimi. “It was like a cattle market.”
In 2004 the Oshers opened Scores West on West 28th Street. The
new branch was darker than the original and had a whiff of danger to
it. The music was too loud, the customers younger. It was Harvey
Osher’s domain. And it had private rooms that locked.
Both locations became infamous for overcharging their customers.
Orders to do so, former employees allege, came from on high:
Identify a high roller and get him so drunk he could barely sign
his credit card slip. Hosts wrote in gratuities, betting that embarrassed
family men would let things slide.
“They went after a few customers every night,” a former employee
says. “The Osher brothers felt like they were bulletproof.”
Ultimately, three angry customers sued the club. One plaintiff, the
married CEO of a Missouri-based Internet service provider, had
$241,000 charged to his American Express card. The case brought
Scores another wave of bad press. The CEO lost his job. Scores lost
American Express.
BEATDOWNS, BANKRUPTCY, AND BUST-UPS
The Oshers’ problems extended beyond the shabby way they
treated their employees and their customers. In February 2005,
Harvey Osher was jumped by two former Scores employees,
Denis and Gema Kolenovic. The following April both Oshers were
allegedly attacked by 12 men wielding pipes and hammers.
According to a lawsuit, their old pal Blitz Bilzinsky had been working
with the attackers to open up a new club and had paid them $50,000
just days before the attacks. But the violence went both ways: The
following spring Harvey was arrested for stabbing Bekir Balaban, yet
another former Scores employee.
In 2006 the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office brought
indictments against Harvey Osher and Richard Goldring, charging
that they funneled money through shell companies and falsified tax
returns in an attempt to evade taxes on $3.1 million. Both men cut
deals. Scores remained open, but the future looked bleak.
In little more than a year, Scores Miami went broke. Scores Las
Vegas was sold to Rick’s Cabaret. Eventually, seven Scores locations
across the U.S. packed it in. In New York the precious celebrity guest
pool shrank further. Dancers, earning less money, defected to other
strip clubs in Manhattan, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Florida.
Not only did customers go to court against Scores; so did the club’s
own employees. In January 2006, Francis Vargas, a stunning young
waitress, was hired as a cocktail server at Scores West and worked
there for eight months before being fired that August. Vargas sued
for sexual harassment, claiming male managers never left her alone.
She was slapped on the ass. A manager pinned her against a wall and
tried to kiss her. Another told Vargas to “come and suck [his] dick
and [he’ll] give [her] $500.” Two Scores managers urged Vargas to
“sell herself.” When she complained, she says, they cut her shifts and
exiled her to an unprofitable location in the club.
Siri Diaz, a former bartender, filed a class-action suit against the
club, charging that management regularly took 10 percent of
workers’ tips for themselves (the case is ongoing). “House fees
were $180 a night, and you had to tip managers hundreds of
dollars nightly,” says one dancer. “When I worked the VIP room,
management would take 25 percent of my fee right off the top. It
was non-negotiable.” Intoxicated managers were said to demand
kickbacks of up to 50 percent for steering dancers toward high
rollers. Checks bounced.
“Management was abrasive and nasty to the girls,” says Victoria,
the former dancer. “I didn’t enjoy going there like I had in the past.
We didn’t respect the club. We feared it.”
A dancer named Alicia quit even though she was owed $3,000. “The
bar backs were selling coke. Managers were having sex with
waitresses and dancers while on the job. They’d say, ‘Come on, baby,
let’s go have fun.’ I left crying five times.”
In the dressing rooms, fistfights broke out among dancers over
customers and money. “The girls who were in with managers were
pushed on high rollers,” says Fowler. “Those were a select few
girls who’d do prostitution and credit card fraud. It was a drunken,
horrible mess. There were no rules.”
IT ALL FALLS DOWN
The undercover team trickled into Scores West late on the night of
January 24, 2007. Fifty or so patrons were inside, and 20 dancers. As
the strippers plied them with lap dances, some of the plainclothes
cops, from Manhattan South Vice, downed beers and chatted them
up. In conversations with young entertainers, they also wondered
what “extras” were available in the locked rooms near the kitchen.
A dancer offered a blow job for $300. A young Russian woman
chatting with another detective upped the ante: sexual intercourse
for $600. “What happens in the back room,” she purred, “stays in
the back room.”
The undercover squad had heard enough. Uniformed officers wearing
raid jackets and bulletproof vests busted into the club, guns
drawn. The DJ killed the music. Behind the locked door of one private
room, cops discovered a completely naked dancer standing next to a
man pulling up his pants. (Charges were eventually dropped.)
Spokesman Lonnie Hanover resigned six months later, after his
paycheck bounced. In August 2007, Howard Stern told listeners, “We
don’t go to Scores anymore.” The club’s biggest champion for 17
years had moved on. It would turn out to be Scores’ death knell.
In March 2008, after a series of hearings at the State Liquor
Authority, Judge Robert Karr ruled that sexual activity at Scores West
was “open and notorious” and revoked the
club’s liquor license. The club itself closed
within weeks.
Toward the end, at Scores East on East 60th
Street, it was a sad scene. A Manhattan sporting
goods executive visited last November with
colleagues from out of town looking for a big
night out. They didn’t find it at Scores. A
handful of dancers moved listlessly around the
showroom floor. An American Express card
proffered to pay for a $500 bottle of Patron was
rejected. Visa only.
“Are we seeing the B team tonight?” the
executive asked an Eastern European dancer.
“Actually, it’s the C team,” the dancer
responded with a shrug.
By the end of the year, after a New Year’s Eve
blowout, the Scores flagship on the East Side
was padlocked. The once glamorous club, which
had survived Mob extortion, fatal gunplay,
relentless hounding by law enforcement, and
inexorable shifts in buzz, was gone.
EVERY THING OLD IS NUDE AGAIN
“With all the potential for expansion, Scores
could have been a $100 million empire,” says a New York City
businessman familiar with the strip club game. “Now it’s just a
building on the West Side of Manhattan. A good operator could
revive it. The name isn’t dead.”
Last March, as the economy tanked, real estate tycoon Robert
Gans, owner of the Penthouse Executive Club in Manhattan,
swooped in and bought the Scores West building for a song: $9.58
million, or $500,000 less than the Oshers paid for the 10,000-squarefoot
space in 2004. And for a measly $400,000, Gans also purchased a
controlling interest in the Scores name.
Gans reopened Scores West, advertising on billboards and cable
television and in the New York City tabloids. Business has been slow
so far, but Gans is optimistic that things will pick up as the economy
improves. That didn’t seem to be the case on a recent Sunday. Inside
at reception, a young woman in a black miniskirt asked for $20 for
admission, then thought better of it, and picked up a phone. “Is there
anyone onstage?” she asked. There wasn’t, so admission was free.
Apparently Scores was now a strip club without dancers.
Inside Scores’ main room, “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” by
Barry White played over the loudspeakers. After Roxanne, the bartender,
finished texting her boyfriend about their new dog, I ordered
a Maker’s Mark. “That’s $17,” Roxanne chirped. “It’s an early-bird
special.” For the next 90 minutes, as the Steelers built up a 35-21 lead
over the Chargers, the stage remained empty. The next Maker’s Mark
tasted as diluted as the first. A skinny brunette in a black push-up
bra calling herself Paris came over for a dance.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Paris,” she reported with no discernible accent. She was certainly
not French.
Eventually, a bald guy in glasses, looking like a middle manager at
a discount shoe store, wandered in, doubling the total customer
count. By 10 m.n., in a 10,000-square-foot club, there were five
entertainers, only one of whom had worked at the old Scores. Ten
years ago there might have been 500 customers and 50 dancers. At
least the ratio had improved.
Julia, a blonde from Moscow, approached. I wondered if the former
celebrity playground still drew a high-profile clientele, like in the
glory days. No, Julia said, no celebrities yet, although she’d seen a
New York Giant or two.
“What about Howard Stern?”
Julia wrinkled her nose as she turned and headed toward the
stage. “Howard who?”
Comments
The new Stadium Club in DC seems to be trying to use the Scores model - upscale, girls in gowns, etc. But with no laps, don't know if it will work.
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The new Scores NY looks really nice and upscale. The Scores in Chicago and Baltimore are still around after 7 years, and are still using the "Scores" name. There's a black club in Houston that uses the name Scores, and a black club in L.A. that uses the name "Score," clearly those two clubs were never part of the Scores chain, so I'm curious if anyone can use that name. I guarantee you that within a year, there will be a club in Vegas that's going to go by the name Scores Las Vegas again. Scores is a much more recognizable brand name in the Gentlemen's club industry than Ricks, Penthouse, Men's Club, Deja Vu, Crazy Horse Too, Hustler, or even Spearmint Rhino. It will be back.
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