The Great Strip Club Crash of 2020?

I read recently that up to 1/3rd of restaurants aren't going to make it through the pandemic. Given that the shutdowns are more stringent for bars, and that topless bars probably have a harder time getting mainstream financing from banks, I would be surprised if only 1/3rd of topless bars closed.

I wonder if strip-clubs actually "go away altogether" once they close - i.e. it's my understanding that most, if not all areas, pretty-much are not giving out permits to open new clubs (seems this has been the case for a few years) - so the only way to open "a new club" is to buy an existing one, or purchase a pre-existing permit from its owner; or lease the permit from the owner - w/ no new permits to open new clubs, one would think it would only be a matter of time b/f someone else bought or leased the permit from a closed club and open a new one.

This is kinda my understanding but IDK for sure if this is how it works and if that's the case in all cities - I also don't know if the club/permit is tied to the specific building of a pre-existing club.

A lot of clubs will not reopen. The financially strong, well managed ones will. I’m guessing half will survive.

Assuming a vaccine is found, demand will quickly bounce back to pre-CoVid levels. So, we’ll have half as many clubs with the same number of customers.

The big question is whether local authorities and state liquor boards will then allow new clubs to open to meet demand.

@Papi - I THINK that the answer to your questions are going to vary widely by location. I have heard that the city of Phoenix won’t allow an owner of a club to move the license to a new address.

But there have been cases of licenses changing hands.

In addition to variation based on hoops that local city councils make people jump through, another unknown is the duration of the pandemic itself

If we still have businessesvlosed a year from now, will buyers step up to buy licenses? What happens when clubs go into bankruptcy? Will the city councils allow new owners to run adult businesses?

I imagine 1/3 of the clubs in my city will close and it will be the bad ones.

That said it's nearly impossible to open a new club here. So the best case is the bad clubs sell and end up getting better.

I guess I'm worried about the #2 club that is topless only and sells booze; I suspect it will have a harder time reopening than the fully nude booze free club.

docsavage, which two clubs on the southside never reopened? I always thought Indianapolis had more clubs that the population could supply customers for.

Sinclair I think he is referring to Classy Chassis and Silk as the two south side clubs that haven't reopened (to my knowledge) and Babes and Harem House that were sold.

To Sinclair's point, I was trying to think of which clubs are sold/non reopening? I can only think of Brad's Brass Flamingo on the south side, and then there are a few along Pendleton Pike on the northeast side - PT's, I think, among them.

Too bad if Brad's Brass Flamingo is gone. That was a fun club.

Brads Brass Flamingo is NOT among the clubs that are permanently closed at least based on the info they were stating when they closed on 7/23. The mayor issued new restrictions on bars and restaurants which closed bars and limited restaurants to 25% capacity.
They said they were going to be closed until the order ends on Aug 12 because it isn't worth it to operate at 25%. By the time you add up dancers, bartenders, security and kitchen staff (to be able to be open as a restaurant) it would only leave room for like a dozen customers at a time.

I've often thought in recent years that Strip Clubs are a relic of the sexualized culture of the 1990s and early 2000s. In my area of New England, hardly any new clubs have opened in the last 15 years. And the opening of my local clubs appears to be nowhere in sight.

Since about 2008, I've noticed a slow, but steady campaign of repression against male heterosexuality. Around this time Howard Stern dropped naked women on his show, and the WWE dropped all sexual content. I noticed that bikini contests at events like car shows were getting a lot more conservative. Wet T-Shirt contests seem to be largely gone.

Softcore porn has greatly declined. Hardcore porn has gotten increasingly perverse, focusing on things like incest, anal sex, CFNM, and plenty of other stuff I don't care to know about. Female beauty has been de-emphasized. The 2000s had awesome nude models like Jelena Jensen, Aria Giovanni, and Monica Mendez, who had successful careers without having sex on film.

The MeToo stuff since 2017 has accelerated these pre-existing trends. Now Playboy and Sports Illustrated are featuring transexuals and fat women. A communist aesthetic of ugliness is being imposed from the elites..

While I would love to be wrong, the future of the Strip Club industry does not look good in my opinion.