Do guys pay by the way for the month...year or a lifteime membership?

23 comments

• Yoda

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  17 years ago

  Well, it is called "The Ultimate Strip Club List" for a reason. There is a difference between reviewing a club and talking about a night spent with your favorite dancers. I visit enough clubs and spread the visits out enough that I can review each one once or twice a year and note actual changes that have taken place in my reviews. I used to post specifics about my visits in the clubs discussion areas but they have become useless over the last couple of years.
• ArtCollege

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  17 years ago

  I think it's great that we're not (mostly) entering dummy reviews. I have not done that, but it dawned on me it would be a free way to keep access. TUSCL is a great resource, worth the money, but I do the reviews because (1) I'm cheap, and (2) I'm hesitant to give my credit card number to sites like this. Although I trust this site far more than most sex-related sites, I don't really want a paper trail of my relationship.
• DougS

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  17 years ago

  I've debated about this for a while. Prior to the policy change that prevents one from reviewing a particular club more often than every six weeks, it was very easy to keep my membership current, even as infrequently as I visit clubs. I really don't like this policy at all, but I don't blame Founder. Afterall, he has a great site here, and he has put a lot of work into it, so why shouldn't he make it so us "freeloaders" can no longer enjoy the benefits without paying him for it? What I don't like is that I have made several suggestions to him on how his policy and/or web site could be modified to make the policy a little more member-friendly, and haven't received as much as a peep of a response. I have several more suggestions regarding the policy and the way it is handled, but I've got that "why bother" attitude. I'm not sure what has changed with the Founder, because in the past, I've made several suggestions, and he was very responsive, getting back to me almost immediately. He's implemented quite a few of my suggestions, and even awarded me free months memberships as a reward. I've made four visits to clubs that I was unable to post reviews for, beause of "the policy" - very annoying. Last month, I stooped to something that I've never done since I began my membership in '91. For the first time in nearly SIXTEEN years of membership, I entered a "non visit, dummy review" for a club, just to retain my membership. I really didn't like doing it at the time, believe me. Now, this morning, I was looking at my membership expiring in two days, and again, I had no "legitimate" review to enter. I wasn't about to enter another dummy review. Against my brain's many arguments, I opted to take the plunge and am now a "lifetime" member. With all of that said, I still value this web site and would really feel a void if I didn't have this web site to access.
• casualguy

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  17 years ago

  $80 would be a lot more than I would want to spend especially if I hadn't been treated well at the website. Any strip clubs that don't charge cover earlier in the day? You could do a free review. Just walk in and look around and then give a rating.
• casualguy

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  17 years ago

  I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people paying for membership here want more privacy and aren't posting anything to the discussions here.
• DandyDan

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  17 years ago

  I go to enough different clubs and make reviews of them to not have to worry about it too much. Of course, sometimes, I feel like I'm writing the same review over and over again and its hard to write anything new when nothing really changes.
• casualguy

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  17 years ago

  For me, I don't really have a problem getting free membership since I occasionally visit 3 or more clubs. Even more if I have time and money. I don't spend very much at all in some clubs, just cover and a few one dollar tips, maybe a beer or two if I'm staying for awhile.
• AbbieNormal

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  17 years ago

  I'd built up about a years worth of free membership from reviews, but when Founder made some big changes we'd been asking for I felt it worthwhile to buy a year to say thanks. My membership runs out in about a year and a half since I haven't reviewed as much lately. At that point, if I don't extend it a bit by reviews, I'll probably buy another year.
• Book Guy

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  17 years ago

  I've been visiting TUSCL since it started in the early 1990s. I even considered "pirating" the whole database and building my own site (which is, pretty evidently, how places like strip club list dot com got their start). I remember when there was a "book" available for purchase, nothing more than a print-out of the web pages in question. I think my ID rotated somehow -- lost the password or something -- but this email address / person has been accessing TUSCL since, about 1995. Whenever it started. And in all that time, I've been contributing reviews. They are what I consider to be well thought out, and full of detail. I am more of a giver than a taker, to the overall content of TUSCL. I review every club I ever go to, I always post a review about any major change in any club, and I always make sure my reviews are as "accurate" as I can make them, on the basis of non-subjective items (such as drink prices, etc.) as well as on the basis of such subjective things as "my personal preferences" (which is a redundant and tautological concept). All that adds up to, for me, the idea that it's quite fine for me to NOT pay any money to TUSCL. I'm glad the payment option exists, but I'm a member until 2015 right now, and I'm likely to extend that by continuing to contribute for years to come. It's unlikely my membership will expire before I manage to extend it again.
• chandler

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  17 years ago

  I don't see any reason why you can't post reviews of clubs you haven't been to in a while. If you have something informative or interesting to add, it could be as good a review as most you see posted the day after a visit. There's no point in disguising it as a "dummy". Just write, "I was at this joint about a year ago, and here's what I observed:" I usually submit reviews right after a visit, just because it's easier, and specifics make for better reading. However, when my membership has expired, I don't have any qualms about doing the above.
• GooberMan

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  17 years ago

  I paid for a lifetime membership here years ago and it has been worth every penny to me. Just being able to sort good clubs from lame ones has more than saved me the membership cost. Thanks, Founder!
• chandler

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  17 years ago

  BTW, TUSCL was launced in 1995, so you guys who say you've been members since the early 90s must be getting your money's worth (so to speak).
• Book Guy

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  17 years ago

  Chandler: yeah, the mast-head says, "Online since 1995." Which I suppose isn't technically the "early" 90s, it's the MID 90s. But I swear, I recall a proto-TUSCL as early as 1992. I know my internet access levels by heart, because during that decade I was shuffling among institutions of higher learning and school-provided or privately-purchased computers, so I'm pretty well aware of exactly when and where I did engage in certain surfing behaviors. I wonder what it is that I'm (falsely?) remembering, from the 1991-1992 school year, and then from the fall of 1992, that was on my dial-up from the U of X. Hmm?
• chandler

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  17 years ago

  Book Guy: I wasn't even thinking of the masthead. I said it was 1995, because I clearly remember when this site was started. I had just become active on ASSC in late 1994, after AOL added Usenet and limited web access. TUSCL copied posts from the newsgroup, including many of mine, for some of the initial reviews. There was also discussion on ASSC about this site as it was getting going. You might be remembering some of Founder's early stabs at a strip club list on [view link] web space or possibly the Grimace Nudie List(?). As I recall, however, even after 1995, TUSCL may have had registration and login, but not any kind of membership. It was a few years before all of the content wasn't immediately accessible to anyone. There was an good thread on ASSC from late 1999 (which you can still read on Google Groups), when the [view link] guy was starting his site, using club info lifted off of TUSCL. Founder was pretty cool about it, and went on to defend some of his policies that had drawn protest and gave a brief history of TUSCL. It's here: [view link]
• AbbieNormal

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  17 years ago

  I remember Grimace. For quite some time that was the best strip club list (IMHO). When I first started clubbing I posted my entire Texas trip there, so it was probably 1995 when I first started reading the boards. I think Grimace disappeared around 1997 or 1998. I liked Z-Bone too, but it is too narowly focused on So Cal for my purposes. This site has maintained the best review quality versus accessability combo by basically going to a contributor/subscriber model so the reviews at least are not the least bit hard to get to but are moderated to some extent. Stripclublist is almost useless as a site for actual reviews anymore.
• Book Guy

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  17 years ago

  Indeed, it was ASS-C I was remembering. Now I got it straight in my head. I was on Usenet as early as 1989 (or whatever it was called, back then) when I returned to graduate school and was the nominal "department computer expert" for the Humanities field at that school. I therefore had pretty much unlimited bandwidth -- essentially, more than I could ever use, what with connections being in the 5 to 20K range. It was all text-based, and I got to know Unix and news-reader commands pretty good, started a few online conferences, then decided computers weren't for me because of the necessity of constantly re-tooling. Silly me ... :( ... but that's a different story. So, I'm recalling the 1989-1995 phase of developments in Usenet. I remember the growth of TUSCL, and of providing many an anonymous review about Fantasia in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. I was essentially TUSCL's "resident expert" on the goings on there and at other clubs in my district, which was poorly represented because Canadian vice-trade information was getting concentrated on CanBest at the time. Ah yes, the heady days of pioneering the information super-highway ... and telling everyone where to get a blowjob on the cheap ... har ... :P
• DougS

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  17 years ago

  A couple of things to point out... I don't remember specifically what form of TUSCL I was using back in the early '90s... but I DO remember accessing some form of it back then, but it was pre-internet and was probably a dial-in "message board"... or maybe I'm just totally confused. I was going to respond back to Chandler with a "check my user review list" which shows the "member since mm/dd/yyyy" to prove that I wasn't just picking the '91 date out of my nose, but it actually shows 6/5/2001. Also, when I previously stated that I had resorted to a "dummy review", I didn't mean that I portrayed my review as if I'd actually recently visited the club - nor would I ever post that sort of falsehood. My "dummy review" was just a quick mention of the best parts about the club, and a statement about how few times I've left the club disappointed, etc.
• chandler

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  17 years ago

  Doug: Do you remember it being called TUSCL or was it just a similar list? It's possible there was an unrelated list with the same name. There's nothing exceptional about titling things "The Ultimate [fill in the blank] List". If it was pre-internet or even pre-web it couldn't have been any form of this site, since Founder has said that he began working on the first version as a web design project, presumably no earlier than 1993, which is when the web got going. I don't think you'll see anyone's info whose membership dates from before 2000, because TUSCL didn't have subscriptions until about then.
• DougS

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  17 years ago

  Has the 6-week review interval policy been changed? I saw in the recent reviews that Vitrea reviewed Honeys in Seattle twice on the same day (3/5/07). What's up with that?! Now that I am a lifetime member, do I have any addiitonal privileges, like maybe no limit on reviews for a specific club, for instance?
• chandler

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  17 years ago

  Doug: I've seen that before where two reviews get posted back-to-back. I bet what happens is that the automatic dialog that prevents you from submitting a second review within six weeks doesn't kick in until your first review actually gets published. Whether an editor ever catches it and removes a review or withdraws a month of membership is anybody's guess.
• casualguy

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  17 years ago

  I checked on this by clicking on a club I recently reviewed. It appears I can post a review on the same club again within 4 weeks but there is a warning message telling me I won't get VIP credit for it unless I wait until 4 weeks have gone by. I thought it got changed from 6 weeks to 4 weeks some time ago. Apparently there could be a bug in the system though. I clicked on Nepals and the warning message stated that if I wait until March 7th, that I would get credit. However it also starts off by giving a warning saying I have posted a review in the last 4 weeks. I'll wait another day if I log on here and see if the warning message went away.
• DougS

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  17 years ago

  Based upon what Casualguy is reporting, it looks like at least one more of my suggestions to Founder has been implemented... definitely a move in the right direction...
• Book Guy

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  17 years ago

  I recently waited out the 4-week period. It turned out to be 4-weeks plus one day. The message said, "Wait until March 4 because you posted 4 weeks ago" (or some such) but I actually got that message all day on March 4, and had to wait until March 5, to get VIP credit for the review.