Strip Club Decline
jerikson40
New York
Is it just me, or does it seem like strip clubs have been in a long slow decline over the last 10-20 years? I dunno, it seems like I read more and more reviews of clubs that used to be awesome for high mileage, hot dancers, and low prices, and now the reviews are saying "the place ain't what it used to be". Seems like girls are charging more and more and giving less and less mileage across the board. Look at places like Phoenix, and LA, and Seattle, and NY/New Jersey, and even down south (FL, Atlanta, etc.). And now clubs seem to be mostly dancers buried in their cellphones, ignoring customers, but expecting tips just for being there. And everything is about the VIP upsell.
I mean where can you go now for hot dancers, high mileage, and reasonable prices? Phoenix is drying up, LA's great black clubs are just a memory (one exception I suppose), Seattle died long ago, and the east coast clubs see to be no different. I was totally unimpressed with Dallas and Atlanta, in spite of all the hype, and honestly I don't know what's left.
I mean where can you go now for hot dancers, high mileage, and reasonable prices? Phoenix is drying up, LA's great black clubs are just a memory (one exception I suppose), Seattle died long ago, and the east coast clubs see to be no different. I was totally unimpressed with Dallas and Atlanta, in spite of all the hype, and honestly I don't know what's left.
94 comments
Just one more way the hype of internet technology being perfect and awesome ignores how it makes people totally self-involved. And other things...
Part of it may actually be high-mileage - the introduction of high mileage, let alone private VIP rooms for extras, will drive out certain dancers and drive in certain dancers - one should not expect a chick that fucks and sucks to provide great customer service - many clubs nowadays probably have chicks that may have been street-walkers back in the day when street-walkers were common (or at last there are many dancers that are pretty much the equivalent of escorts and are just about getting paid for sex).
* camming
* free internet porn
* escort sites (no longer do one have to drive to the redlight district, one can pick girls from th comfort of one's computer/phone
* sugar-daddy websites
* etc
I dunno...maybe I'm just letting fond memories cloud the facts.
Personally, even though I'm a huge fan of the internet and technology, I think there are many ways that it has royally fucked society, and people are totally blinded to the adverse affects.
Wanna know what's next? Retail. Nobody is going to go into physical stores anymore.
It's all internet now. People holed up at their computers all day and night.
As newbies it was all new to us and we probably didn't go as often so everything was fresher, and we didn't know any betfer so we did not have high expectations and just seeing some naked good looking chicks was enough to make us feel it was awesome.
As hardcore SCers we have seen/experienced a lot anr it's thus harder to impress us and move the needle.
chess, I feel like you're minimizing that statement a bit, but your "only reason" is HUGE, IMO. The hooker route is both a big psychological step, and also a pretty huge change in the experience overall... lots and lots of people don't love that experience. I feel like, if the strip club industry was more like the FBSM business -- that is, a sex business that's built substantially on a good customer experience instead of "make sure the customer feels exploited and ripped off at every turn" -- it would be plenty healthy. I don't think you can overstate the importance of the COMBINATION of 1. actual touch, 2. being able psychologically to not feel like a john, even if you are one. But the one common story among guys who shift from SCs to AMPs, bodyrubs, and escorts, is the poor customer experience in SCs.
I do think SA presents a very viable alternative to SCs, albeit at a higher investment of your time for research, flakiness, girls who don't look like their pics or whose personalities you dislike ... but, aside from classic SD/SB, experiences that are closer to an escort, and experiences that feel closer to an OTC, are easily available. Still, the investment is high enough that, again, if rip-off-the-customer-and-make-sure-he-knows-it wasn't so ingrained in SC culture, SCs could compete well, IMO. That said, I don't think the SC business will ever change, they'll whither and die first.
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LOL! great post @Chessmaster.
We are seeing significant changes in how people live. Add to the excellent points already made, consider "Uberization" -- within which middle men are eliminated as we become a nation of do-it-yourselfers. I have also heard it described as the "WalMart-ization of America". We want it cheap and quality/service doesn't matter.
Consider:
the financial services business with index funds and self-serve platforms.
the proliferation of home depot, et al and the explosion of HGTV (fucking hate it).
the disposable nature of all electronics today -- remember TV repairmen??
Hell, people are even eschewing doctors and self-diagnosing online or thru doctor-on-demand aps.
We can get so much more mileage and extras at lower and lower costs than a decade ago. No wonder the millennial sex workers are choosing other methods.
A lot of good points on the general decline. I've seen it in the reviews as well. When I first joined this site (6 years ago), Houston was a haven for extras, as was Providence. Not anymore.
I also agree on free porn and cam sites. There are a lot of dudes who can't talk to women even in the sc environment. It's easier to do it through a computer.
It's also easier to hook up with tinder and websites such as what's my price, SA etc. I guess if you have the money these websites make sense. SC's are still a crapshoot unless you are a regular with a dancer where you know what you will get.
For me all the website stuff is too much work. I can go to an sc, immediately have attractive women in my lap, have my fun and be home in 1-5 hours depending on mood, time, money and dancers. I have different dancers who meet my needs. I have some who provide great gfe and vhm dances. Others who I can come in, go to VIP, get off and get out.
PK, I"d quibble with that a bit. What you described -- cheap and service doesn't matter -- IS the Walmart-ization. But it's absolutely the opposite with Uber -- Uber's success is of course partially built on competitive prices, but very much built on a customer experience that is 10x better than that of taxis... it is ALL ABOUT a fantastic service. At the time Uber rose, most taxis were still not taking credit cards, carried little change so you had to have the right amount of cash, and obviously, could be difficult to catch when you needed them and kept prices artificially high due to effective monopolies (due to licensing scarcity and expense) in many areas. No one ever said, "hey, I'll just take a taxi -- so convenient!". Uber is about better service through technology, IMO.
Yep, agreed ... I'd never discount the fact that maybe SCs ARE doing the most rational thing, for them. If your business isn't substantially based on return customers anyway, you should soak everyone that walks in. I'll defer the question of whether this is a self-fulfilling prophecy :) But, the fact that customer service is so much better in the daytime, where there is a higher % of return customers, does support that.
@papi wrote " one should not expect a chick that fucks and sucks to provide great customer service"
I thought that was the definition of great customer service.
* they don't have the requisite funds to have a good time in a SC
* have a ball-buster for an S.O. and all they could do is "cheat virtually" (or simply can't carve out the requisite time due to work and family obligations)
There are PLs that believe "there are more extras today" but often times it's that they were not aware they were there until they got TUSCLarly schooled - although I do believe that in general extras are more readily available today with some exceptions of some old-school clubs in certain areas that seemed to be like live pornos
·Patrons want more mileage/extras and they want it cheap.
·dancers want to give low mileage for big money.
·patron can watch porn or cam sites or go all the way with an escort for the same price range.
·dancers leave for other sex avenues that are either more profitable and/or less demeaning(in their mind).
Cycle continues.
I can't imagine there's a better job for a hot 9 or 10 chick than airdances for guys willing to give her $40 per dance to wiggle her butt and buy expensive drinks.
My experience with escorts is just as hit and miss as with strippers, AMPs, FBSMs, or SBs. With escorts, getting sex is guaranteed, but getting a _enjoyable_ experience was not guaranteed. Once I did find one I liked, then it became a matter of scheduling - very little opportunity to be spontaneous.
The SB route has turned out to be like that too. Lots of girls seem to complain about guys that constantly text/email and never meet, but when you put THEM on the spot, suddenly they're not available.
Camming certainly provides a solution to spontaneity. If I want to interact with a naked girl, I can find dozens on line at any time I want. There is still _some_ interacting, and I can use my money to control what she does.
SCs provide spontaneity and the possibility of 2way contact, but still not guaranteed. Still, I can stretch $100 into a steak dinner, watching a ball game or two, and 2-3 hours of attention from one or more pretty girls. And lately, when I'm in the mood for a BBBJ I can get that more reliably in a SC than anywhere else.
If all the stories about Tinder hookups are true, younger guys don't need to go to SCs to see naked girls. You just swipe right a few times and invite them over at 3am. So, clubs aren't getting a lot of new customers to replace us old guys that stop going.
Yes, since the ownership change there have been changes to IR that give me concern, but it has not yet impacted the service I have received. I have still experienced the same mileage even though the lighting has been turned up a bit, at least for now.
Some of the regulars I haven't seen in a while, but my 3 fans are still there.
I'm planning to drive out to IR on 7/3 for day shift. If the mileage significantly declines, so will my trips.
I do expect during the next economic slowdown there will be a new wave of hot strippers.
Make American Strip Clubs Great Again
Assume 1,000 viable strip clubs across the US. For those clubs that meet strict new federal quality standards (lap dance quality, customer satisfaction, etc.), the government will provide a $500,000 subsidy to each club every year. Total of $500 million, which is peanuts. Subsidy can be used to pay for lap dances (so that customer outlay per dance is no more than $5), stripper clothing allowance, boob jobs, stripper training, and stripper wages.
Strippers would get big bucks (which would pull them away from camming, etc.), and customers would get great service.
Now you're talkin'.....
A lot ot clubs are becoming party-clubs/nightclubs at night and while this gets custies in the door it does not mean the dancers will make $$$ from them and they often don't, lack of spending custies may perhaps be one of the main reason girls leave the biz
https://www.stripperweb.com/forum/showth…
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Excellent plan. In fact, since we don't want to increase the deficit, that subsidy can come from gutting Medicaid, which is already the plan in the Senate. Make America great again!!!!
I can see the point that girls nowadays tend to have higher hopes, thinking everything is easy and will be handed to them, and once they see it's difficult they bail. I can definitely see that.
But the point that stripping is becoming more socially acceptable, and more girls are trying it and there are more girls competing, which results in lower $$ per girl, doesn't seem to make sense. When I go to clubs it seems like the numbers of girls is dropping, especially the hotter ones. And there seems to be an influx of foreign girls (Russian, Cuban, Mexican, Colombian, etc.), and US girls seem to think their shit don't stink and are above it all.
I think they meant relative to the number of (spending?) customers. Of course they would like it to be a mega sausage fest and and we want it to be our own personal adult Disney land with strippers but there's a medium in there somewhere.
If there's a shift in mileage at club I expect it comes from the owners buckling to outside pressure.
I think you've got fewer localities willing to look the other way and it's gotten tougher to bribe people.
However, it's different now. As someone pointed out above, many of the clubs have installed private rooms where dances are sold by time, not by the song. What used to be high mileage dances in individual lap dance booths in a VIP room, are now steered to the private rooms, at high prices--making the other forms of internet adult entertainment all the more affordable and attractive.
I strongly disagree with the comment above about regulars. In the clubs I frequent, the casual customers have dried up and it is ALL about regulars. If you are not one of her regulars, she doesn't even bother talking to you. Lots of dancers are making prearranged appointments with their regulars. One dancer recently told me she has "a couple" of customers who come one a week and one regular who comes twice a week (at $250/room each). Even after splitting that with club, there's not much incentive to troll non-regulars at $20/dance it it jeopardizes a whale.
OT.. I sure as hell don't have $500/week disposable income to compete with that nonsense.
Also, what is the appeal of an air dance? It almost sounds like camming to me, except that the girl is in front of you. But much like camming, you still can't touch and you're spending money for it. I'm sorry but I wish no one supported air dance clubs, or web camming. Free web camming? Fine. Paying for it? Fuck no.
Now that is an idea, for a 100 dollars, 3 strippers come over to my house, set up a dancer pole in the living room, bring a twenty pack of beer for everyone, do laps, pole dancing, for two or 3 hours, that might beat the strip club. It would definitely beat the club if anything more than dances happened. Could be extra tips involved which would be more expensive though.
As for air dance establishments if that's the most a city will allow then I'd rather have nothing. But hey, if they're making enough money to stay in business then I guess it's worth it to someone. Just not my cup of tea.
I guess I have to remember that the same way I feel about web camming and air dances is the same way others feel about strip clubs. Why pay all that money to just be teased, they ask. When my anti strip club friends ask me that I always think 'well I LDK so it's not really a tease'. Of course I don't say that lol. But still, I guess it's just my (our) thing. Last year enroute to a strip club in Vegas a cab driver offered to take me to an AMP instead. He says 'for what you're about to spend at the strip club you can pick out a girl and actually bust a nut'. I declined, probably for the reason someone mentioned above. You're crossing a different line IMO when you hit one of those places. Nothing wrong with it at all, but I feel much less guilt at a strip club vs an AMP.
They are no place for any self respecting PL to be caught patronizing though.
Agree that it's mostly a way for cities to take strip clubs. But I do think some strippers would still prefer airdances. Mostly they default to whatever most of the other strippers are doing to compete. That or they resort to rob tactics. Maybe if they are the hottest dancer at the club they can get away with lower mileage/air dances.
But I don't understand ... and Jester214 seems to ask the same question ...
... then why are prices going UPwards?
If demand is dwindling (old single white guys dying off) but supply is perpetually renewable (hot young girls who want a quick buck) then why are prices going up? If social restrictions against this activity are reducing (it's hardly illegal any more; it's all over the internet; it's approvable, just kind of weird) then the RISK to reward ratio improves, thus creating yet another reason for prices to start dropping. Every way I look at it, I think prices ought to be dropping.
Lap dance prices are rising, dammit.
Here's one factor people have hinted at but not yet mentioned explicitly -- cash economy. We don't spend paper-money any more. Maybe if strip-clubs figured out how to enable funny-money better, so that you didn't feel cheated by the transaction, then the millennials might get involved more and start driving the lapper economy in the monger-friendly direction? Sort of like how Uber cut out so much of the taxi-cab market, ultimately to the (aggregate) riders' benefit?
I don't know. I just don't understand why prices keep going UP. It just seems opposite all my Econ 101 training. Supply, demand, risk, reward, risk aversion, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, grey markets, jurisdictional competition, social restrictiveness, put it all in the hopper, prices should be going DOWN. Shouldn't they?
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Well, occasionally @NanoDong has enough brain cells to say something coherent and intelligent. Just IMHO, strip clubs are not the best place to find P4P with beautiful, responsible, reliable, young college girls. Easier and more efficient online. Maybe that's a different topic.
As to why prices are going up, IMO it's not necessarily that the club prices are increasing, but I think that the EXPECTATIONS from the dancers are increasing. What used to be super high mileage $10 or $20 dances are now only obtainable if you go to the VIP and pay $200. It seems like dancers are becoming much more mercenary in recent years, and so many reviews complain about the VIP upsell. IMO, the younger folks seem to have this attitude of entitlement, that they should get $$ rained down on them for sitting on their asses texting their girlfriends.
And what seems missing for the most part is what I think is the #1 most important aspect of a good SC:
INTENT.
Do the girls intend to make customers feel good, or is their only intent to get as much as possible for the least amount of effort? I get so fucking tired of dancers sitting on their asses with their noses buried in their phones.
Since the 90's I've been going to clubs, and I *NEVER* had to go to the VIP to get some great action. But now it seems like in most clubs it's VIP or nothing if you want any sort of action. Of course there are exceptions, but they are dwindling.
Next month will be my 30th anniversary of going to strip clubs, mostly in the Atlanta area. In Atlanta, table dances have been $10 almost that entire time.
In the 90s boom years, a few high end clubs tried going to $20 but that didn't last long because there were so many clubs that still charged $10. In the first dot.bomb bust, some clubs tried dropping to $5 or running lots of 2for1 specials, but it didn't help much.
Can't comment on ITC extras prices, cause the clubs I went to back then didn't have VIP rooms like we know them today (I can't remember when clubs started adding them, and I know my favorite was one of the last to add). I do remember that $80-$150 could get you good 2way action with a HJ (low end) or BJ (high end) finish in the dozen or so lingerie shops. 1hr with an escort was $175. I remember all the angst on BigDoggie and TER when the Mendoza line was permanently crossed (i.e. standard rate for escort went above 200).
My CF FBSM place is 175, but upgrades there are overpriced. A quick look on Eros Atlanta shows $225 to $300 as the current range for an escort. $150 seems to be the low end for BJ (sometimes even FS) at Follies, with several reports of dancers there starting to ask for more, and some PLs being able to negotiate less.
My favorite club only recently replaced their 20yr old menus, but all the prices are still the same, so food prices haven't gone up. Drinks seem like they're a dollar or two more expensive than "years ago", but I don't drink that much so it's not something I track closely.
So, prices seem mostly the same, with ITC extras probably tracking along with the gradual rise in escort prices and appropriate adjustments (poor facilities vs. immediate gratification).
As others have mentioned, I haven’t seen much of it.
I don't expect the 5 for 100 VIP change anytime soon. But for the girls it's more about the total cash than the time dancing.
There seems to finally be upward pressure on wages, and that's often a sign We are late in the cycle.