Low contact clubs

The other thing about many neighborhood low-contact clubs is that the house often takes a very small cut of the girls' money, so even though they may not make as much in tips they sometimes take home more.

It's true that a lower contact club can be more of a money-making place and even be more fun. I've had the experience of going to work at a higher mileage place and some of the girls are just "giving it away". Some guys have actually unzipped their pants and pulled it out on the first song, guys I don't even know. So now I have a mental list of guys I will and won't dance for. The low mileage place is looking better all the time. There's a line - you can go further with some people than with others, but not everything with a stranger when the club's getting almost 40% of your money. Exposing yourself in a club with the infrared camera recording everything is risky (I'm talking about you guys). Poor Pee-Wee Herman, I don't even think that he got off.

I've known girls who made a grand or more on a good shift in a non contact club. In the last year I've known at least a dozen dancers who left contact clubs in RI to go back to non (read "low") contact clubs in Mass. As FONDL said, the popularity of the club and the ability of a dancer to do her job are the determining factors in how well a dancer does in any environment.

I don't think contact and income are necessarily related. Three things determine how much a girl makes: how popular her club is, how attractive she is, and how good she is at her job (including how hard she works.) A good dancer in a popular low-contact club will make much more than a so-so girl in a high-contact club that isn't very popular. High contact is only one of many different factors that determine how popular a club is.

Just curious, but how much money are the ladies making at the low contact clubs? Most of the places, i go promise full friction, etc. Some places offer extras, a non-extras girl does dances at 25 dollars a pop and dances on stage a couple of times hopes to go home with about 3-500 a given night, more on Friday or Saturday. And sometimes that's pushing it.

I don't think many of them would come in if they were making less a given night.

Just curious, in how much a girl hopes to make in a low-contact club?

Yoda, if I recall correctly (and I'm too lazy to go back and check) that's the reason I started this thread, because I think there is a big market for low-contact clubs and there are a lot of customers who like them, and that there always will be. While most clubs are moving toward higher contact, there are plenty that aren't and that are quite successful. Pretty girls, a friendly atmosphere and moderate prices will almost always work, regardless of the level of contact.

Re Bunnies vs. Hooters outfits: More important than the coverage or tailoring, the images are like night and day. Bunny outfits, with their tail and ears, cinched up waist and black stockings are loaded with dark, pagan and SM associations. Hooters girls just wear shorts and T-shirts, right? They're like girls' gym class. Not even the owl lends any weight. Not sure where this fits into the thread, but who's keeping score?

King Arthurs Lounge-the no contact club I go to near Boston-has been open since the early sixties. It's survived the combat zone, GCs, Full contact clubs 40 miles away and even a mafia hit that took place in there in the early seventies. The place is packed every weekend night and they have never charged a cover day or night. I have no doubt it will still be there in 10 years and there will still be absolutely no contact.

FONDL: While there may be some parelels I really don't see the progression the way you do. There where strip clubs long before the Playboy Club and obviously they outlasted them. The Playboy clubs ultimately closed because they didn't make any money. As faras the costumes go, you may be talking about the same amount of coverage but Playboy bunny costumeswhere made of much heavier material. You didn't see nipples poking through bunny costumes the way you do through hooter's t-shirts and you couldn't tell if the lady was wearing underwear or not just by looking at a playboy bunny's butt.

Actually, Yoda, as I recall the PB bunnies wore essentialy the same costume (sans tail and ears) that Hooters girls wear now. And now that I think about it, they were an integral step on the way to today's strip clubs, especially the GC's. I think there were generally 3 paths to today's clubs: the neighborhood bar which added go-go girls and ultimately became the neighborhood titty bar, the PB clubs and the like which evolved into today's GC's, and the raunchy downtown clubs that evolved into the LD factories and sleezy high contact clubs that we all know and love. It will be interesting to see if there are any low-contact clubs left 5-10 years from now. Assuming that I'm still alive and care.

Thanks a lot for spoiling my illusion, Yoda. Here I thought Playboy, being part of an empire built around sex, hired bunny-waitresses more for their sex appeal than Bob Evans.

Scratch "Bob Evans". Bad example. Insert "the lounge at Ramada Inn".

I'm sure sex appeal was a critereia. However there shouldn't be any assumption that the clubs and the bunnies serving drinks had any connection to the magazine and it's models or the goings on at the Playboy Mansion. Just an observation on my part. Hooters girls wear far less than the Bunnies at the PBCs used to.

Bunnys where just cocktail waitresses wearing a particular costume. I don't see any reason why an ex bunny would be any more likely to have been or to become a stripper than a cocktail waitress at any other club or bar.

I used to go to the NY Playboy Club fairly regularly. It was a nice place to have a couple of drinks and dinner and also shoot a little pool with a bunny. I also spent some time in the one in Baltimore - some of the famous Baltimore Colts players hung out there regularly. Part of the attraction was that they were very moderately priced.

In Chicago in the early 80s, a few years after the original Playboy club had closed, I was always meeting or hearing about girls all around town who supposedly had been bunnies. One was the older sister and roommate of a girl I dated a couple times. She seemed more like an art school punkette than a bunny, a pretty cool girl, but she had an assortment of memorabilia, including the ears, to prove it.

The last Playboy Club to close in America was in Lansing, Michigan, just a few years before I started going to clubs in the area. Oddly, I've never met a stripper or any other girl who claimed to be an ex-bunny.

There was a Playboy club in Boston. It was just a night club. It closed in the late 70's or early 80's to make way for a redevelopment project I beleive.

Hugh didn't need viagra either when he was living in that room.

...the smoking jacket and pipe, however, he's had since he was a toddler.

At a club I was at last nght, which has a "sports bar" them, they had two TV screens playing hour long informercials for Viagra. The sound was down, but the girls were topless, and so hot that I would think if you watched the infomercial long enough, you wouldn't need the VIagra.

Supposedly about sixty percent of Viagra is taken recreationally by young guys who don't need it.

When did the Playboy clubs bite the dust? Those were all tease, right (unless, of course, one could wrangle an invitation to the Playboy Mansion, but that is still true)?

I still blame H. Marsden Hefner for my alma mater (also his) Major Big Ten State University, losing the Rose Bowl in 1984. He invited the team to the Playboy Mansion while they were out in LA, which was fine, but it didn't occur to anyone that you were supposed to go there _after_ you beat USC, not the night before the game, so you could be worn out for the game, and lose same.

While an undergraduate at Major Big Ten State University, I dated a girl who lived in the same apartment house that HMH had lived in during the 40s (It was a boarding house then). She claimed that she lived in the same room as Hugh had, a claim which I suspect was made by every person who lived there. However, sometimes, mid-boning, it was fun to pretend that it was true.. I lacked only the smoking jacket and pipe...on the other hand, I didn't need Viagra.

Heavens, no, FONDL...I'm only 43. You make it sound like I am an OLD person. Gaslight Square had pretty much gone to seed by 1965, at which time I could probably reaonably control #1, but was still dependent on Pampers for #2. In the late 1980s, and early 1990s, when my wife was finishing her residency, we lived about six blocks from the corner of Sarah and Boyle streets, the heart of Gaslight Square. It was all in ruins by then, with just a few buildings and light poles still standing. About 1995, the City of St. Louis went in and demolished the whole thing. There is now middle- to yuppie-class housing where Woody Allen and Dick Gregory used to crack wise, and Barbra Streisand used to sing (if only she had stuck to singing. Like S. Silverman, she was one fine-looking Jew...)

I envision the old sporting houses as more homey, the "come into my parlor" type of thing. But who knows. The Levee District in St. Louis was where the Arch/Jefferson Memorial National Expansion Park is now located..basically, a lawn on the riverfront surrounding a huge crocket hoop.

It's funny how many old movies with "dance hall girls" take on a whole new meaning after you've been exposed to strip clubs. It seems like all Barbara Stanwyck roles before 1935 were "dancers" of low social standing. I watched and enjoyed many of them before SCing, and took her to be nothing more than a poor man's Rockette. Watching them now with open eyes, it's evident that she works in some kind of B-drinking joint, or a pre-stripping dance hall that trades on intimacy.

And or course, there are the ever-present Miss Kitty's type dance halls in every Western ever made. I wonder to what degree the mistique of an upstairs VIP is playing on those associations.

(FONDL, i was ribbing you about taking us to the very OPPOSITE of the topic title, not simply that the Block off-topic.)

Chandler, I thought we Stopped talking about low contact clubs here a long time ago.

Chitown, your description reminds me of the old Gaslight clubs of the 60's - ever been to one of them? They were kinda like the old Playboy clubs but much more elegant. I always suspected but never found out that prostitution was part of the deal.

Actually, Chandler, I would also include in that taxonomy the whorehouses and "sporting houses" of the late 19th and early 20th century. Almost every big city of every size had a red light district that catered to either single working men (with timers set for five or ten minutes), or to upper class and upper middle class professional men/entrepeneurs. It is this second group of establishments that I would connect to today's sc's, obviously without the prostitution, although some might say that the connection is only valid regarding the so-called "gentlemen's clubs." In any event, a hundred years ago, these clubs were elegantly outfitted, with kitchens for fine dining, and women who were skilled in books, politics and the arts, sort of like American geisha. Sex was an integral part of the equation, but by no means the entire equation. These establishments typically had minimum spending requirements; a common level was $50, at a time when the average industrial salary was 2-3 dollars a day. They serviced a socio-economic stratum of men who had considerable disposable income, but not enough to keep a single woman. The best known districts were in Chicago and New Orleans (in each case known as "the Levee"), and St. Louis. The noted composer (and first President of Poland) Jan Padrewski learned how to play "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-yay" from the piano player at Babe Connors' house in St. Louis. When the future King George V of England, as Prince of Wales, visited the United States and was asked about the sites he wanted to see, the first thing he said was The Everleigh Club, run by two Southern madams (sisters) in Chicago.( This is the king, direct ancestor of Prince Charles, who boinked the direct ancestress of Camilla Parker-Bowles.) The N.O. houses were known for their stunning collections of mixed blood women.

These districts were closed down during WWI, because they were considered a source of disease among young men, and therefore detrimental to the war effort. Prohibition prevented them from rising again.

I mention them because they filled the need that sc's fill for a lot of men...a chance to relax in a male-oriented setting, where the focus in on their comfort and entertainment, in the presence of attractive and naked (or substantially so) young women.

We could all wear lab coats and coke bottle glasses, carry pointers and speak in heavy German accents. Or not.

(Leave it to you, FONDL, to bring up the Block in a thread on 'Low Contact Clubs'.)

Chandler, that would be interesting. But it would also be very difficult to do, because as you correctly point out, every area is different. In any event, any such study would probably have to be done by a lawyer, because I think much of what happened was dictated by local laws and the many challenges to them. And much of that in turn was dictated by local politics. Maybe we can hire Chitown.

But if you want a glimpse of the past, visit Baltimore's famous Block. It's the way things used to be in most major cities, and as far as I know it's the only area like it that's still in operation. It's virtually unchanged from 40 years ago. Maybe that's where we should all meet. Bring lots of money.

Re how it all started, I'd be interested to read an accurate account tracing back of all the various antecedents of today's strip clubs: burlesque houses, adult movie theaters, B-drinking establishments, topless bars, go-go bars, nude clubs, etc. Along with being a colorful history, it should largely explain why so many cities' club scenes seem to have evolved differently, with their own sets of rules and customs. Often, you can sense that a city's peculiarities must derive from whichever type of venue predominated before. Nowadays, new clubs start up along well-established formats based around stage dancing and lap dancing, but their ancestors took many different paths to arrive at similar destinations. There's gotta be a research grant in there somewhere.

Chitown, what's interesting about the backlash that you described is that both groups are the same people - the liberal baby boomers of the 60's became the conservative baby boomers of the 80's and beyond. They don't want their kids doing any of the stuff that they did. Just about every social trend of the last 50 years can be explained in part by the baby boom following WWII. Why do you think there's suddenly such a push in many states to replace proterty taxes with higher state income taxes? Because the baby boomers are starting to retire. They've always gotten their way.

Shadowcat, that's how it started everywhere. It used to be that just about the only strip clubs were in center city red light districts. That changed in the 70's. Now most of the center city districts no longer exist, and most of the strip clubs are outside of center city.

The sixties and early 70s were a fascinating time. Part of what makes them fascinating is that society moved into some directions that people thought would be permanent...but then society backpedalled. One of those innovations was topless bars. I put them in the same category as mainstream porno movies (Deep Throat, for example), wife swapping, and topless bathing suits. These were all things that, from about 1968 to 1973, seemed a logical extension of where society was going, and perhaps they were. But the great social rubber band snapped back, and the people who had been watching "Laugh In" in 1969 were watching "Liitle House on the Prairie" by 1976. The culmination of the "snap back" was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

I sometimes wonder if society ever overcame the conservative backlash of the mid 70s, or if it ever will.

I also remember being in several bars where the bartenders (female) and waitresses were topless. No dancers or anything, just a couple of topless girls serving drinks. It was very pleasant. I remember one such place being in Kansas City on the Kansas side of the river. It was totally unexpected because it was a bar attached to the motel where I was staying. That sort of thing was a real novelty then. Simpler times.

high contact w/ extras

Best no contact club I have ever visited is Sammy's in Birmingham AL. Lap, table, couch and private dances do not exist. Have only see one in the 10 plus years I have visiting the club. Gorgeous girls, but absolutely no contact

The only other major city that I can think of that still has many old ethnic neigborhoods intact is Cleveland. There's a bar on every corner. But Cleveland has never been known for strip clubs. I wonder why?

There used to be nice restaurants in Florida that sometimes had lingerie shows at lunch time. There used to be a cocktail lounge in DC where the barmainds and waitresses all wore lingerie. I guess those were the ultimate no-contact clubs. Do such places exist anymore? I always thought they were kinda fun.

Boston and Providence have probably seen more change than either Philly or Baltimore. There have been changes downtown but once you get outside the immediate downtown area nothing has changed in 50 years. There's a little bar on every corner, and some of them have strippers. It's kinda neat but I wouldn't want to live there.

FONDL: The kind of areas that you are talking about don't have strip clubs in either Boston or Providence. The closest was Marios in Johnston RI and it got shut down when the owner wouldn't get in bed with the town. Just about every club I go to is in a area zoned for commercial/industrial nowadays.

Yoda, I just think that a lot of old neighborhood places think of themselves more as neighborhood bars with entertainment than as strip clubs. That's especially true if you're in an old stable ethnic neighborhood (both Philly and Baltimore have a lot of those, Boston probably still does too.) People in those neighborhoods are very protective of their turf (which unfortunately to some extent has a racial element.) And there are a whole lot of such places. There are probably close to 50 in Philly vs. maybe 3 downtown GC's, so I'm not stretching things to say that they represent a big chunk of the SC business.

FONDL: Every geographic location is a neighborhood of some sort or another. I'm not sure where you draw the line but I've never met a strip club owner who didn't want to make more money. If they are not allowing contact it's because they don't think they can get away with it. I agree that they don't want a bad element but what does that have to do with nice wholesome guys like us wanting to squeeze a pretty girl's boobs? The bad element are the drug dealers-they don't buy dances and I see more of them sitting in the back of no contact clubs than I can shake a stick at...

I think the local ordinances are going to be the prime factor in determining what most clubs allow. FONDL is right that some of the out of the way neighborhood places it is going to depend on how much hassle the owner wants. I know that one small club the owner wanted to get a regular bar license to open a little shot&beer place for the locals. The town kept hassling and wouldn't come through with the liquor license even after granting a "nightclub" license so he made the place into a no-alcohol nudie bar because he had to bring in some money to pay the taxes. There was apparently no extra permit needed to have nude dancing and lapdancing after being granted a generic "nightclub" license.

Yoda, I disagree with you a little bit here. I think a lot of low-contact clubs are that way because the owner likes it that way, and it has little to do with what he thinks he might be able to get away with. I think it has more to do with not wanting to attract a "bad" element from outside the neighborhood. A lot of these places are primarily neighborhood bars that have some bare titty here and there for entertainment and atmosphere. And that's all they want to be.

FONDL: I agree about where the customer base is headed as far as preferences. I also feel fairly confident that any club would allow contact if they thought they could get away with it. There will always however be non-contact clubs, girls who prefer to dance in them and customers who will spend money in them.

Over the years I have met a lot of men who claim they hate strip clubs. For whatever reason they come, complain, watch for hours, don't tip,hassle us girls who are doing our jobs, then leave. We don't like that! I love my job, I hate men who come in with the wrong attitude. I want to please men it excites me too. If you come to our territory you should have heart to play by the rules.
P.S. Men love strip clubs!

Tresures in Las Vegas, Nevada has a lot of contact.

Agreed, except I think the guys looking to participate in some private dances tend to seek out the higher contact clubs. And I think such customers are an increasing part of the market. And as a result I think that low-contact clubs are declining at least percentage-wise. As I said before, I know a lot of neighborhood titty bars that have added a private LD room in the last decade, or if they already had one the rules are much more relaxed than they used to be. And the clubs that haven't gone that route aren't as busy as they used to be.

There are guys who get dances, guys who just chat with dancers at the bar or at a table, guys who tip at the stage, guys who just stare from a distance and probably even guys who go in just for lunch. I don't think the contact level at a particular club has much effect on basic customer "types".

It seems to me that there are a lot of customers who never buy private dances, all they do is sit and drink and watch and maybe talk to the girls. That seems to be true even in clubs where there is a lot of contact. Obviously these guys don't care how much contact there might be.

We have to remember that as hobbyists we don't necescarily represent the broader market. I think FONDL is right that high contact LD clubs are not the majority of clubs, and that the neighborhood nudie bar (which we have discussed is maybe very under-represented on this board) could form the majority of the market. I'd guess that even in the big clubs a lot of guys who are casual clubbers don't want to drop $20 for a dance very often. Just a thought when considering our clubbing habbits versus the broader public.

Everything here in Omaha and Council Bluffs is no contact, or at least minimal one way contact. I tend to avoid those places because they are also not topless. Down by Lincoln, they are absolutely no contact, but they probably stay in business because of the college students. It probably all depends on what type of people go to your club, plus the fact few are willing like me to drive for miles to a club with contact.

FONDL: I don't know about contact vs Non contact states. I think cities and towns have more to say about what goes on in the clubs. I'm sure local ordinances and policies are the reason that only certain clubs in certain areas of Mass. are now allowing contact. In Florida the Orlando area is pretty much no contact if I remember while Daytona and Tampa are very liberal about what they allow-at east when the politicians aren't on the war path. I don't visit nearly enough parts of the country to know what it's like everywhere else.

Yoda, are there any no-contact states anymore? I thought Mass. was one of the few left but you've just said that some of the clubs now have a lot of contact. So whaat's left? Around here all the neighborhood titty bars that used to be no contact have cleared a little spot in the basement for a sofa. The girls don't promote private dances but if you ask they are available, and nobody pays any attention to what goes on.

FONDL: I don't know why your surprised. Strip clubs will always be around and most no contact states will always be no contact. Guys who live in no contact states and don't travel don't know any better. They just enjoy looking at naked women.

I think contact varies greatly by city, not just region. If you travel throughout the south, it can be a huge difference 50-100 miles apart. My home city is almost exclusively no contact, but I can get to cities with very high contact in under 2 hours in several directions. That is why I try to spend my money on the road, not at home.

Funny, almost everyone here says that their local clubs are low contact. I'm surprised there are still that many around, I was under the impression that contact was pretty common these days. That's certainly the case in the 2 areas that I'm most familiar with - Philly and Baltimore.

My nearest clubs and my regular clubs are no-contact. I just like naked women and beer in one convenient place. It's also cheaper that LD clubs. Also while they are "no contact" both clubs do have a certain ammount of incidental, or "accidental" contact on the stage if you tip well and know the dancer. There is also a certain ammount of contact when sitting with a girl, nothing like a LD of course, but still fun.

The city I live in has only two clubs, both low contact. Once every few years I go to one of them along with friends, always at their suggestion. We just go to be loud, crude and obnoxious. Just like the groups I hate to see come into my out-of-town solo haunts.

They are fronts for other business operations.

FONDL - I go to low contact clubs to pick up strippers for a one night stand or an occasional date. I go to high contact clubs with the hopes of landing a free happy ending inside the club. For me it's all about the challenge...not so much the mileage. Mileage with no challenge is boring to me, (that's why i'm not into escorts.)

FONDL: I think you have a point. Strip clubs are not a special trip for me, they are where I choose to hang out. I still spend a fair amount of time working in regular nightclubs and they don't hold much interest for me. I don't play golf and I don't gamble. I spend a lot of time on the road and SC's are a common denominator all around the country-provided you can just go with the flow. I don't need the contact but I do need the club to at least have a few interesting women to keep me entertained for a while. Sometimes this could even be the bartmaid. I've met some real wild ones in my day.

I only go to high contact clubs, or at least clubs that I hope have high contact. Low contact has no attraction for me.

Yoda, if I went to clubs frequently and had a place like that nearby I'd probably go there quite often too. I guess I was thinking about those of us who make special trips to clubs and that's about the only time we visit.

Chandler, I've hear that some bars can be very high contact, in fact some of the girls will go home with a guy they meet. And that can get very expensive. I know that for a fact, I'm still supporting a girl I took home from a bar many years ago.

So is the answer that some of you guys hang out in your local no-contact titty bar but every once in awhile you make a special trip to a high contact favorite club? And if so do you find that there's much difference between the girls who work in the two places, other than the obvious?

My favorite places for just hanging out with beautiful women are very low contact and also quite cheap. They're called bars.

I was in one last night. In fact, it's the closest club to where I live and I visit it often. I like contact as much as the next guy but I just plain love women. I don't have to have one grinding on my lap to have a good time in a room full of beautiful women...

When I was a young lawyer in the late 80s, I went to such a place on the NW side of Chicago, for a business lunch. The man I was with ( a consulting engineer on some technical issues involved in a lawsuit) hinted that some other services were available, but I think he was just pulling my leg. I was obviously quite naive, and he was probably having some fun with that.

The presence of the "lingerie models" came as a complete surprise when one approached our table, as it was not advertised by the restaurant (which had been selected by the engineer, not me). I have never heard of any such place since. I suppose that the restaurant simply paid the girls, who were low-end professional models, some fairly modest amount of money to do the modelling, in the interest of getting more traffic in the restaurant. Unless there was more going on, I can't see any other way that they got paid. I don't recall any tips from the diners to the girls, or any suggestion that such should be made.

More of my professional education came at the end of the month, when I got the expert's bill to pass on to the insurance company..and it included the charge for the lunch that he had "taken me out for"!