Why have strip clubs slowed down so much since the 90s?

27 comments

• JamesSD

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  8 years ago

  There have been a lot of articles on the topic. The short answer is a combination of hookup culture, Internet porn and maybe Internet prostitution . Customers demand more mileage for their cash than in the past, and less girls are willing to settle for that.
• jackslash

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  8 years ago

  I agree that late 1990's and early 2000's had more clubs and more strippers, but today we have more extras.
• motorhead

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  8 years ago

  James is right. Not one simple answer. A perfect storm of factors came together in the mid to late 2000's Cam girls, backpage, Craigslist The Great Recession killed expense accounts and the big spenders and it's never came back And personally, I think the girls are a lot less hotter. As one that doesn't care for tattoos and piercings, I sometimes find the pickings a bit tough And to some extent, nickfree may have a point. The link between strip clubs and hip hop culture has strengthened and a lot of the clubs are full of ghetto hoes. For every Floyd Mayweather or Rick Ross that may occasionally drop $40,000 in a club, there's 10,000 guys who used to spend $1000 a night in a club who have given up and have just found an OTC girl
• georgmicrodong

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  8 years ago

  I wasn't aware that strip clubs ever moved all that fast in the first place. All I ever see them do is sit there on their lots like a hunk of wood, steel and concrete.
• Clubber

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  8 years ago

  gmd, That's scary! That was my first thought. :)
• vincemichaels

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  8 years ago

  Dayum, Clubber. If you weren't traveling at over 120 mph as you drove by. :)
• mikeya02

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  8 years ago

  Believe it or not, there were more big spenders back in the 90's
• sharkhunter

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  8 years ago

  The middle class overall wages have not kept up with the real rate of inflation compared to a couple of decades ago. Plus governments passed all kinds of new rules and restrictions on clubs. Entertainment is available online as well now but it wasn't freely available in the 90's like it is now. Dancers can also pick and choose the best clubs by looking online and several years ago, you had trouble finding a dancer who even used a computer or smart phone. Now if the dancer is smart and pretty, she can choose to leave the hell hole city she may have grown up at and move to where she believes she will make a lot more money for a lot less effort.
• TxVegas

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  8 years ago

  Hot girls in Dallas or Vegas (and other places) could make a ton of money without crossing their personal line. No extras were required to bank in the 90s. Once custormers decided they needed more action for their money, the hotter girls that didn't do extras left the scene. Combine that with dance prices not rising at the rate of inflation and the amount the dancer effectively makes goes down. This further pushes the quality down as the girls make less. There are a few pockets where hot girls can make good money without extras, but there are fewer of those. So, there may still be hot girls at SR in Vegas, but they don't seem as insanely hot as they were twenty years ago.
• skibum609

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  8 years ago

  From 1994 - 2006 this country experienced its' best period of economic activity ever. Every liquor store had a humidor, every strip club was full. Then the democrats took control of Congress in January 2007. 90% of cigar manufacturers disappeared along with pretty dancers. The final nail in the strip club coffin was the reaction of some clubs to lesser money coming in: they let the women go wild with extras, which carried the clubs for a couple of years, but drove out the pretty dancers who never came back.
• Papi_Chulo

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  8 years ago

  We also had the mother of all stock-market rises in the mid to late 90s where it seemed to many as a new normal and had many people feeling like millionaires even if just on paper. The market crash of 2001 and the economic crash of 2008 def put a damper on conspicuous spending for many. And as others have said; the Internet has disrupted many an industry; cam-sites; web escort sites; sugar-baby sites; etc; probably take their chunk (custies and talent) from the SC biz.
• SuperDude

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  8 years ago

  Maybe I'm an old school fuddy duddy, but I can remember when dancers had manners back in the 1990s. If you were eating, they waited until you finished before hitting you up for dances. Now, they sit right down next to you and tell you that they're hungry, hinting that you're supposed to buy them a meal. Club charges for a booth and you pay the fee. In the old days when you were in a booth with one dancer, that was it. Now, all of her friends will sit down, uninvited, and expect you to buy them drinks. I believe that dancers used to receive at least some suggestions about keeping conversation light and entertaining. Now, the first thing they do is start whining about how hard life is because of no money, broke boyfriends, DUI fines, late rent and no child support. Who goes out for an evening of entertainment to get put through this? I have cut back a lot in recent years. I go when I am steeled to fend off the nonsense and pick the girls who will give me a good time. The rest, many of whom are fuglies, can go to hell.
• impala

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  8 years ago

  Internet porn dude
• crazyjoe

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  8 years ago

  ^^^^ best answer
• minnow

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  8 years ago

  "GMD" strikes me as the guy who just knows that there are 12 seconds in one year: January 2nd, February 2nd, and so on...................
• rickdugan

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  8 years ago

  I'm not sure that there really are fewer clubs or club customers now than in the 90s. In fact, I believe that club numbers peaked sometime around 2004-2005, so in some respects I think the Internet helped give clubs exposure and most definitely made them easier to find. Now there are certainly far fewer clubs now than there were 10 years ago, but I credit the downturn for that more than anything else.
• topmandd

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  8 years ago

  Going to agree with many - #1 could be internet - can sit on chaturbate and throw away money and in some states - you get just as much contact. Unfortunately didn't get to experience the 'peak' period. But i also put a strong factor on business owners just getting as price greedy as they can - and I'll call out Spearmint Rhino in that aspect - heck even about 7-8 years worth have seen them put so many fee's on and off and take away the 'average' areas in favor of pushing all the high rollers. Don't blame them - but don't want to hear their cries of not making money. You can make $1000 once, or $100 ten times (and probably more.) Clubs need major updating - look alone at probably the impact tuscl has on places. That being said - i blame political impacts as the worst - look how easy the media jumps on when there's an 'issue' around a club. And how cities have gone out of the way to put restrictions in place, let alone major organizations with politicians in their pockets going after zoning and other enforcements (latex covering - come on! ) Enjoy while you can.
• sharkhunter

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  8 years ago

  I used to get free pizza along with everyone else at one club in the 90's and often got free passes just like several others. One stripper liked me and we started leaving together after the club closed. It closed early at 2am. Clubs no longer offer free pizza and free passes are less likely than getting struck by lightning it seems. Leave with a stripper now? no way. Clubs have all kinds of rules against things like that. It was no big deal back in the 90's. I always tried to come back home before sunrise though. I didn't want to get burned by the sun when it came up. :)
• Estafador

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  8 years ago

  You know, as young buck who lived his 90s watching cartoons and playing outdoors, being innocent to everything (except thug life), I thought this was all hogwash. Now after reading through this thread entirely, it's interesting to hear how clubs used to be and how it changed over the years. Any links to the other discussions on this topic anybody?
• Timex345

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  8 years ago

  I have noticed the same thing. I think I really noticed the drop off after the recession of 2008. Also, the internet offers faster and sometimes cheaper entertainment. For example, I can watch some hot girls from the comfort of my home on this site. All you have to do is click on the girls online link. Whammo! No cover, no annoying DJ, no asshole manager, no asshole drunk customers. You get the idea.
• JohnBuford

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  8 years ago

  @Motorhead: right on man.I'm 60 and find tats/ piercings a real turn off. It's not a right/wrong thing,simply what is appealing, but it cuts down on the supply side of things for me.
• AnonymousJim

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  8 years ago

  Impala hit the biggest of many nails on the head. I sometimes wonder why I bother with the club when I can sit at home, find whatever kind of porn I want on the Internet, handle my own business and roll over to go to sleep, with the only cost being whatever I paid for my laptop and ISP. And sometimes, when I'm feeling lazy, that's what I do. Ten years ago was when home broadband started to take hold and online video became easy enough to get. So the already small portion of the population that saw the club as something it wanted to experience more often than the occasional bachelor party shrunk even more. Now yes, that does mean extras culture has improved in some places. But not everywhere. Whether or not it will get better is hard to say. On the one hand, the general trend is towards more permissiveness. On the other hand, there will always be moralists out there and strip clubs are the easiest targets for them, so they might see their regulation as one of the (few) battles they can win. I also think customer culture is changing. Between porn and Tinder, young folks aren't as desperate for it as they used to be, not to mention, most young folks don't have money.
• sharkhunter

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  8 years ago

  I wouldn't be surprised if customers spend less in clubs or cut down on visits. I heard all the stock gains from last year and part of 2013 got wiped out. All the gains I had gotten during the Chrstmas holidays got wiped out and then some. An event that wipes out over a trillion dollars in wealth is probably going to make at least a few customers not spend as much. If this effect applies to enough people, the next recession in the economy and in strip clubs could start.
• JamesSD

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  8 years ago

  I do think more young folks had money than they did two or three years ago. I will add there's evidence people are just leaving the house less in general these days. Why bother? You can text and facebook all your friends without getting showered and dressed. My TV is giant and I'm so far behind on high quality television I'll never get caught up.
• nicespice

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  a year ago

  I’m bumping this thread to reply to somebody in another thread who asked if tusclers were complaining about a decline in clubs back then. This is one of the earlier threads I saw, and most of the threads since have been from 2017-present day. I couldn’t find anything pre-2010 about anything. I’m sure if there was, Davids/RomanticLover would have swooped in to remind the site about it 👍
• rickthelion

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  a year ago

  Decline schmecline. We ricks can make the unfun fun. That’s how we go through life having so much fun. Well…the making the unfun fun and the constant alcoholic fog. Yep, the bourbon really helps. Regardless, the other PLs on this site could learn that from us. ROAR!!!
• ilbbaicnl

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  a year ago

  Maybe part of it is that there's a long-term trend of people becoming more and more solitary. In most areas, one-on-one table or lap dances have only been available for about 30 years. So, when we compare with 15 to 20 years ago, we're comparing with when it was still something of a novelty. It no longer is. The decline of the "good girl / bad girl" mindset makes it harder to be a "heavy user" of lap dances. For most sex workers, sex work is a Faustian bargain at least to some degree. You see that if you spend a lot of time with them, and you're not othering them in some way. Which makes the activity bittersweet at best.