Day shift (and probably night shift) strip club attendance has been dismal on most days since shutdowns were lifted. ATF says income cut in half or less. Why is that? Why aren't you (or someone you know) not going? On limited unemployment income? Sick? Scared of COVID? Got out of the habit of going? We're puzzled. Attendance is so bad that girls leave early and then guys that do come in are disappointed. Thanks in advance.
Maybe you should have a sale? You know, debautchery at half price? Maybe attendance would improve if clubs/dancers didn’t try to make bank off the 5 ppl who show up.
This might be true where you are, but not here. Clubs are well attended and dancers don't seem to be struggling for cash.
Via chats with dancers, I know that business traveler traffic remains way down. I don't think that will ever recover to pre-Covid levels. Everyone has been forced to learn how to use online meeting services and appreciate how much cheaper that is compared to flights, hotels, rental cars, etc.
I don’t know what the attendance trend is here in seattle, but we are still at peak transmission rate and as a fat guy in my 50s with breathing issues, I’m not taking chances. Once it comes down a bit, I’ll dive back in like I did over the summer. My buddy, a younger lesss fat version of me, is vaxxed and went out a bunch, and got to spend the last 2 weeks in quarantine bc he caught the rona. Also has lost his sense of taste. Not worth the risk.
Not around here I was at 2 different clubs yesterday late afternoon and early evening second club was so crowded it was SRO at both bars and the tables were 80% full.
Club attendance around here is about what it was pre-pandemic. There are a few reasons I can think of for why your ATF and her club are struggling.
Maybe your ATF's club just sucks? I've noticed that several of the clubs that were struggling compared to their competitors either didn't survive the lockdowns or are not recovering well after reopening.
Maybe your ATF let herself go while off work for the lockdown? I've seen several dancers that this has happened to. Some let themselves go physically and others let themselves go mentally and lost their competitive edge.
Maybe your ATF or her club hasn't adapted well to the changing clientele demographics? A lot of clubs that used to focus on out of towners, especially business travelers, now have to focus more on locals which means different types of hustles. Instead of the hard sell trying to drain every dollar from a customer before they leave town they may need to pivot to establishing relationships with long term customers.
Maybe the fact that California has some very strict covid related mandates is keeping paying customers away and hurting all kinds of businesses?
For me I am not traveling as much which means less opportunities to club. I know many people in a similar situation as me in similar jobs as well.
I also know a lot of people recently that have been fully vaccinated that have caught COVID (breakthrough cases). That being said I’m going to live my life but I’m not going to be careless either. Would I go into a strip club? Yes. Would I go into a football stadium with 75,000 people right now? Probably not, at least until I get a booster shot.
Sorry for second post. The causes of why it’s down are as varied as the locations. Loss of income, worry over the virus, rule changes, price increases are some of the reasons but there are many more.
25 already chimed in for south Florida, but I'll second it. Most are back to normal. That's not to say there aren't places rising and falling, but that's constant around here. Preferences change, clubs evolve, one gets busier at the expense of another.
But we're Florida, the don't give a fuck state. We opened up before most, maybe you're just behind us on the timeline? At the start most of the talent was poor. You'd often notice the same guys at multiple clubs on the same day, many guys were going in and leaving quick because talent sucked. Once the girls got back in shape or were replaced with new ones, visits started getting longer again.
@axe: scrub has it in his mind that many posters on this board are either clubs masquerading as pl’s so they can drum up business, or trolls just fucking with us. He has claimed “clickbait” at times, but how that works on an ad-free site is unclear. To be fair, the former 2 occur, but not nearly at the frequency he imagines. His main test is how many reviews you have done, he stopped picking on me after a few reviews. Be warned, reviews of certain clubs get marked as a club ad by the scrubaroo regardless of content. Finally, you can always block him, and you will be in good company: he is the #1 blocked member on the site, well over 100. I blocked him for a while, but then found I missed the laughs I got from his Tourette’s like outbursts, and unblocked. I think of him as our own little pl Fran Lebowitz. San Jose Guy, on the other hand, I left blocked and feel the better for it. Fwiw.
It could very well be true. But we always have to remember, dancers are selling us something. If you're sympathetic to dancers who are in a $ bind, many will claim to be in one, true or not. Does the club seem less crowded to you than before? I suppose rona-spooked customers may decide to just watch the stage show and not get lappers.
As has been mentioned, certain states are behind others; and seems people in blue-areas are generally more wary w.r.t. being in public.
Blue-areas have also tried to extend Covid benefits which likely has kept a good # of girls off the pole; less dancers/quality-dancers means less-custies and less-custies means less dancers.
It takes a while for clubs to stabilize and the clubs that are not as strong may take them longer if they ever get back to pre-Covid.
Current economic conditions/uncertainty (inflation; etc) may also be playing a role but hard to know for-sure/how-much.
Downhere in SoFlo the good/strong clubs seem to be almost if not completely back to pre-Covid levels - but some small dives I hit don't seem to have recovered as well.
I recently met a Cali dancer downhere in a SoFlo club - she came down while Cali clubs were still closed and hasn't made up her mind when she'll get back to Cali - one wonders how many dancers may be in a similar-boat and thus affecting the quality of the Cali clubs?
At my home club, I think the amount of dancers and customers has recovered to pre-covid levels.
Last place I travelled to in Minnesota, where I worked a couple of years ago. The number of dancers and customers were both lower than I remember back then. A lot of the older crew of dancers who had been there for years left, however. There were lots of dancers there who hadn’t been there too long and were younger. I stayed busy however and averaged more money each shift than I did back then. I also tried out a club nearby to there in Wisconsin. I have no frame of reference but there were dancers and customers alike in the door and the dancers I chatted with had a good opinion of that club. And I agree with them.
Heard gossip (but can’t confirm) dancers were still making money in downtown Minneapolis. Or at least at a couple of clubs. (Also heard lots of gossip of super toxic cattiness, but at one club in particular I get the impression it was like that long before covid) Which surprised me, because I figured without the business travel, the number of clubs there would make it over saturated. Time will tell how long that keeps up I suppose.
@ Papi I remember a previously California dancer talking about somewhere that when she moved and started working at The Lodge in Dallas, she ran into 2 or 3 dancers she worked with several years back. It’s nuts
That sucks though if it’s like that in San Diego though. I think those dancers have to spend $500 just to get a license to work over there. Ouch. Hope it recovers for them
As I am seeing here, most all retail commerce is way way down. This is why there are no cars on the street, and this is why even though the number of coins available has not gone down, people are experiencing it as a shortage.
Here in Indianapolis, clubs are as crowded as previously late at night but customers are down earlier in the evening. The decline is because of fewer middle aged customers, due to fewer middle aged business travelers, and fewer old guys, due to a continuing fear they might catch Covid. A lot of local clubs haven't even brought back their day shifts since most customers now are showing up after ten at night. Another thing driving off some older customers is that many local clubs have switched to a all hip hop music format. Brad's Brass Flamingo has a split music format, playing rock earlier and hip hop later when the customers are mostly young guys, and they seem to have kept more of their customers by looking at the type of customers in the club at different times and adjusting the music format accordingly.
What's happening now was going on long before the pandemic. Strip clubs have gone through an evolution the past fifteen years. Going from Gentlemen's Clubs, to Urban Clubs. Anemic dayshift where the hotter dancers only come in at the request of regulars, or on days that draw a regular's crowd- which seems to be Thursdays to me. As others have noted, with most club adapting more urban standards, those closed are packed on weekend nights and most don't even bother to open until after sunset.
In Phoenix, out of all the strip clubs there only one is still decent. The only other clubs doing reasonably well are pure urban clubs that make a ton of money on weekend nights. That's the evolution of strip clubs. They evolved going from the Jazz age to the rock 'n roll era. The '80s metal and 90s return to the classic Gentlemen's club evening gowns and no tats, to what we have now. Life goes on.
One dancer started seeing me OTC when the clubs were shut down for a while. Could be this is happening a lot, and explain why there are fewer customers and dancers, they are just OTC.
Club prices much more expensive where I live now and almost dead in the clubs early evening. I wait around the house and start watching football or a movie and often stay home because clubs are boring and drinks especially drinks a dancer wants are expensive and I get very little enjoyment out of visiting clubs lately. If my tv turns on again by itself when I get home I might unplug it and visit a strip club again where I met a crazy but hot dancer last weekend .
Strip club attendance is down where I'm at as well. People don't have money or are scared of becoming financially insecure. Strip club attendance is a great real measure of discretionary spending
For me, it was a perfect storm in 2020. Covid kept me away, then I had a lot of disposable income stacking up. I started stacking crypto instead and now when I go to the club, I always wish I would have just bought more crypto. Gotta take care of yourself too sometimes tho
The border is still closed. All of the girls from South America, Europe, Asia, etc. haven't been here for a over a year. It has nothing to do with blue or red states. Once people start traveling more things will recover but there I agree things are down. And hell no, Florida clubs have not recovered. Are you guys for real?
This winter, when oil hits triple digits per barrel people will be spending their disposable income elsewhere. Further, inflation isn't going away for years. Lastly, all the money that flooded in during the pandemic is being spent now and clubs are hurting; when it goes away, so will .....
Florida's club scene has bounced back pretty quick, but we do have a smart gov who made the right decision that people need to be able to go to work and engage in commerce; and he did not want to create a nanny state where people were rewarded for not producing. Other states have not been aa fortunate. California is a particular example of how not to do it.
However, as Bidenflation continues to bite away at peoples' discretionary income (combined with FL's disastrous $15/hr min wage hikes), workers walk away from high-paying jobs with vaccine mandates, while service just quit, we could see a national drop in GDP that really drives down SC attendance while operating costs skyrocket. The worst is yet to come.
First of all, thanks for the multitude of detailed comments. I wasn't expecting that.
Comments on your comments, not to be confrontational, just relating to this area. I was speaking of most of the girls, not just my ATF.
Likely true in our club:
COVID fears
Less travel
Loss of income (or less income) - much lower tips might reflect that
Gone to other States - I know of 2 girls that left
Anemic dayshift - yeah, my original complaint
OTC work - Yes by some, which got them fired
.
Not as likely but anything's possible:
Club just sucks - Not a premier club but the best in the area
Dancers let themselves go - I only know of one but surely there are more so they didn't return.
Poor talent - those that came back are fine, plus lots of new girls
Changing demographics - color me clueless
CA COVID mandates - none right now that affect this small club
Price increases - prices haven't changed
License fees - yes, expensive but there are still plenty of girls if/when guys show up
Change of music - no change in music or DJs.
.
There doesn't seem to be a shortage of hot girls, IF there are enough guys to draw them in. A catch-22.
Thanks again, stay safe.
- Enhanced unemployment, which just ended recently but still has some spillover.
- Rent relief that makes back rent uncollectable from the tenants.
- Free healthcare through Medi-Cal and other state programs.
- Supplemental SNAP benefits not tied to work requirements.
- Yet another round of stimulus checks sent out by CA low income residents by the state.
Now yes a lot of this ended in September, but it's going to take a while to wash through the system. When someone doesn't have to pay rent for 18 months, has all her household food and medical bills covered yet still receives 10s of thousands of dollars in direct cash payments (federal and state stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment, child care tax credit payments, etc.) she tends to have enough cash on hand to ride it out for a while.
FL, by comparison, didn't send out additional stimulus checks and backed out of the enhanced unemployment scheme months ago. It also doesn't offer enhanced state sponsored health insurance.
It's amazing what a difference that stuff makes in motivating people to actually go back to work, including in the clubs.
Relief check just back up landlords and mortgage lenders. Capitalism has reached it end.
Need Universal Basic Income, strong public housing offering, Medicare for all, and free college. This will allow more people to have paying employment and to run profitable businesses.
Only need to raise taxes to the extent that the increased money circulation fattens the fat.
covid killed work related travel for me (with no rebound in near term), which in turn killed my opportunities to hit good clubs. (clubs near to me are terrible)
It is true that some areas are doing better than others. FWIW, drive-able clubs to me have been terrible on Friday (not the case pre-covid) with OK but not awesome Saturdays.
Talent is way down IMO... which is just sad considering all the young nurses quitting the health care field.
35 girls showed up on day shift the other day, for about 10 customers, many of which were not buying dances (campers). The girls left after a couple hours.
47 comments
Latest
Via chats with dancers, I know that business traveler traffic remains way down. I don't think that will ever recover to pre-Covid levels. Everyone has been forced to learn how to use online meeting services and appreciate how much cheaper that is compared to flights, hotels, rental cars, etc.
+ 1. Everyplace is different I suppose.
So desertscrub why for the love of God do you feel it necessary to belittle someone in nearly every one of your posts?
Do you think you are being funny? Does name calling make you feel important? I'm guessing you have few actual friends and this is your only outlet.
Seems most of your hostility is directed toward but not limited to new reviewers. I wonder if Founder every looks at how many you run off?
Bottom line is you don't need to agree with everyone but you don't need to be a douche
Maybe your ATF's club just sucks? I've noticed that several of the clubs that were struggling compared to their competitors either didn't survive the lockdowns or are not recovering well after reopening.
Maybe your ATF let herself go while off work for the lockdown? I've seen several dancers that this has happened to. Some let themselves go physically and others let themselves go mentally and lost their competitive edge.
Maybe your ATF or her club hasn't adapted well to the changing clientele demographics? A lot of clubs that used to focus on out of towners, especially business travelers, now have to focus more on locals which means different types of hustles. Instead of the hard sell trying to drain every dollar from a customer before they leave town they may need to pivot to establishing relationships with long term customers.
Maybe the fact that California has some very strict covid related mandates is keeping paying customers away and hurting all kinds of businesses?
I also know a lot of people recently that have been fully vaccinated that have caught COVID (breakthrough cases). That being said I’m going to live my life but I’m not going to be careless either. Would I go into a strip club? Yes. Would I go into a football stadium with 75,000 people right now? Probably not, at least until I get a booster shot.
In Maryland, patron and dancer numbers are both down in my general observation.
But we're Florida, the don't give a fuck state. We opened up before most, maybe you're just behind us on the timeline? At the start most of the talent was poor. You'd often notice the same guys at multiple clubs on the same day, many guys were going in and leaving quick because talent sucked. Once the girls got back in shape or were replaced with new ones, visits started getting longer again.
Bacon!!
Blue-areas have also tried to extend Covid benefits which likely has kept a good # of girls off the pole; less dancers/quality-dancers means less-custies and less-custies means less dancers.
It takes a while for clubs to stabilize and the clubs that are not as strong may take them longer if they ever get back to pre-Covid.
Current economic conditions/uncertainty (inflation; etc) may also be playing a role but hard to know for-sure/how-much.
Downhere in SoFlo the good/strong clubs seem to be almost if not completely back to pre-Covid levels - but some small dives I hit don't seem to have recovered as well.
Last place I travelled to in Minnesota, where I worked a couple of years ago. The number of dancers and customers were both lower than I remember back then. A lot of the older crew of dancers who had been there for years left, however. There were lots of dancers there who hadn’t been there too long and were younger. I stayed busy however and averaged more money each shift than I did back then. I also tried out a club nearby to there in Wisconsin. I have no frame of reference but there were dancers and customers alike in the door and the dancers I chatted with had a good opinion of that club. And I agree with them.
Heard gossip (but can’t confirm) dancers were still making money in downtown Minneapolis. Or at least at a couple of clubs. (Also heard lots of gossip of super toxic cattiness, but at one club in particular I get the impression it was like that long before covid) Which surprised me, because I figured without the business travel, the number of clubs there would make it over saturated. Time will tell how long that keeps up I suppose.
@ Papi I remember a previously California dancer talking about somewhere that when she moved and started working at The Lodge in Dallas, she ran into 2 or 3 dancers she worked with several years back. It’s nuts
SJG
https://tuscl.net/photo.php?id=8929
In Phoenix, out of all the strip clubs there only one is still decent. The only other clubs doing reasonably well are pure urban clubs that make a ton of money on weekend nights. That's the evolution of strip clubs. They evolved going from the Jazz age to the rock 'n roll era. The '80s metal and 90s return to the classic Gentlemen's club evening gowns and no tats, to what we have now. Life goes on.
SJG
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt…
Last week there seemed to to be a few new hot dancers I hadn’t seen working before, which makes me a little more hopeful.
September is usually one of the shittiest months of the year for SCs so if someone is measuring these things without considering that, it’s a flaw.
However, as Bidenflation continues to bite away at peoples' discretionary income (combined with FL's disastrous $15/hr min wage hikes), workers walk away from high-paying jobs with vaccine mandates, while service just quit, we could see a national drop in GDP that really drives down SC attendance while operating costs skyrocket. The worst is yet to come.
Comments on your comments, not to be confrontational, just relating to this area. I was speaking of most of the girls, not just my ATF.
Likely true in our club:
COVID fears
Less travel
Loss of income (or less income) - much lower tips might reflect that
Gone to other States - I know of 2 girls that left
Anemic dayshift - yeah, my original complaint
OTC work - Yes by some, which got them fired
.
Not as likely but anything's possible:
Club just sucks - Not a premier club but the best in the area
Dancers let themselves go - I only know of one but surely there are more so they didn't return.
Poor talent - those that came back are fine, plus lots of new girls
Changing demographics - color me clueless
CA COVID mandates - none right now that affect this small club
Price increases - prices haven't changed
License fees - yes, expensive but there are still plenty of girls if/when guys show up
Change of music - no change in music or DJs.
.
There doesn't seem to be a shortage of hot girls, IF there are enough guys to draw them in. A catch-22.
Thanks again, stay safe.
- Enhanced unemployment, which just ended recently but still has some spillover.
- Rent relief that makes back rent uncollectable from the tenants.
- Free healthcare through Medi-Cal and other state programs.
- Supplemental SNAP benefits not tied to work requirements.
- Yet another round of stimulus checks sent out by CA low income residents by the state.
Now yes a lot of this ended in September, but it's going to take a while to wash through the system. When someone doesn't have to pay rent for 18 months, has all her household food and medical bills covered yet still receives 10s of thousands of dollars in direct cash payments (federal and state stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment, child care tax credit payments, etc.) she tends to have enough cash on hand to ride it out for a while.
FL, by comparison, didn't send out additional stimulus checks and backed out of the enhanced unemployment scheme months ago. It also doesn't offer enhanced state sponsored health insurance.
It's amazing what a difference that stuff makes in motivating people to actually go back to work, including in the clubs.
Need Universal Basic Income, strong public housing offering, Medicare for all, and free college. This will allow more people to have paying employment and to run profitable businesses.
Only need to raise taxes to the extent that the increased money circulation fattens the fat.
SJG
https://www.houseofharlot.com/
It is true that some areas are doing better than others. FWIW, drive-able clubs to me have been terrible on Friday (not the case pre-covid) with OK but not awesome Saturdays.
Talent is way down IMO... which is just sad considering all the young nurses quitting the health care field.
SJG
WOW!
https://tuscl.net/photo.php?id=4643
Lady Love, Robin Trower, playing his own backing track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41jn94hf…
Kristen J. Sollee, sex positive feminist
https://tuscl.net/photo.php?id=9027
House of Harlot, London
https://www.houseofharlot.com/collection…
Here, she is more covered:
Kristen Sollée: Witches, Sluts, Feminists (pretty cool!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neySFVru…
SJG
Pick the one you want and take her home with you.
SJG