Are strip clubs in your area getting more crowded?

meant to say sales at work are slower than early last year.

Michigan has been in the top in unemployment in the country for way too long. Our clubs are nothing like they used to be. Yesterday I went to three clubs in Lansing. We opened the Vu and were the only guys there for over an hour. It was a lot fun but the girls probably wouldn't agree (money wise). We went to Omar's for dinner. They had a some customers but the dancer that ate with us said it was dead. Cheetahs was busy but not packed.

I ask at just about every club how things are going. I never hear anything but how slow it is and how they aren't crowded as the use to be.

No, Michigan clubs aren't having any trouble staying under the fire code occupancy limits.

I only have a sample of one club visit to comment on. But in my recent visit to Club Risque with Wondergirl during the early afternoon on a Thursday, the place was busier than my last couple of visits 3-4 years ago at that same time of day. It's a pretty inexpensive neighborhood place and my guess is that inexpensive places are doing fine while their more expensive cousins are losing business. And I think we'll see more of that if the economy tanks.

Jay, George Will's most recent syndicated column describes Michigan as having a one-state recession, which he attributes to high taxes imposed by your governor.

I've believe you're referring to the south, whereas I'll be commenting on the northeast USA. I too notice that, and I go to multiple clubs in on a high volume basis, sometimes just for quick hit and run visits

Based ancedotally from I've seen the customer traffic levels are surprisingly good at some of the upscale clubs in the northeast USA since early January, (after the normal christmas/new years holiday pickup) however note 2 factors 1. mild weather, with no snowstorms (with one now on the way), which tends to bring in patrons 2. per dancer comments, except for an ocassional sugar-daddy type here and there the core customers still not spending much on dances so while the clubs themselves (so far) are still doing reasonably well on drinks and house fees etc, the dancers that I've directly talked to.

At this point in terms of the overall economy, there's very little doubt now that there will be a recession of some type, and that's because now credit card companies are reporting major problems with deliquencies, so sub-prime is just the tip of the iceberg. The FED cannot stop a recession, that is a myth. At best they might be able to mitigate it, and even that may be next to impossible in a world where foreigners hold huge surpluses of dollars and will not respond favorably to the FED lowering interest rates as Fed Chairman Bernanke has once again promised. Bernanke has now painted himself into a corner, and there's really no way out. Either accept a recession and hope it cleans things out in a year or 2, or take a dollar crash

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is sometimes referred to as Two Penny Jenny. She's not afraid to tax anything. I'll stop now, there's not enough internet for my rants.

You might just be seeing more people in your local strip clubs than you usually would at this time of year (a normally slow period for sure for a lot of reasons). This is off-topic, but we're headed for a recession for sure I think in this country.

I can only express my opinion on this question based on my recent mini road trip and attendance at my regular club. - - -

My regular club is continuously slow, but I believe that is based on customers being charged $30 for a single LD. (since I'm a regular, all my LDs are 2fers for that price) The club announces 2fer specials on the hour every hour and all night Tuesday. Most customers will wait for the announced 2fers.

As far as the road trip, the afternoons were light, but the evenings filled later in the evening.

Seems like folks are entering the clubs later and later.

Club Risque when I was with FONDOL was pretty crowded at aroun lunch but at nite it was dead.

Actually strip clubs if you go in the afternoon before the cover goes on and you buy the cheapest drink, and/or the clubs not enforcing any 2 drink mins and so forth - then strip clubs can be great low cost entertainment.

Consider what's currently happening in the northeast USA with just one segment of business - home building and remodeling - it has to down at least 80% over 2 years ago (with many builders too busy to even bid on new jobs back then), and these tradesman are either out of work or are fighting for lower paying jobs - and some have alot of time to kill, and might now go to strip clubs, and others who might have routinely went in the past - are spending way less now. I know a number of builders and remodelers who are now down to skeleton crews - if not below that.

99% chance of recession is my odds, and it will take some kind of miracle to avoid it. The flip side of a huge credit bubble will be very nasty.

It's too bad our congressmen and senators aren't focusing more on the economy and cutting out all the fat and pork from their budgets, if you call it that. I still remember it didn't seem like that long ago, the main concern was the budget surplus and paying off the national debt. Now we have people running for office that are currently saying they want to cut taxes but want to eventually raise taxes to save social security etc. when they have been spending that money on other things the whole time. Ahh, I'm starting to rant. I don't want to ever pay any higher taxes on social security ever. In fact if I could drop out of the system, I think I would be far ahead of everyone else even though I've paid that tax for around 2 decades. I read somewhere about a correlation between perceived loss in the value of the home and less spending. I wonder if the same applies to perceived losses in the stock market?

Clubs may be crowded but are they all spending less? Good question.

Club income is directly related to the local economy, so Setroit area clubs are in trouble. Clubs might get a lot of laid off and lonely guys who don't want to face wives or girlfriends without the fat paychecs they are used to getting. I don't blame them. Hanging out in clubs might ease the pain, but it don't buy $30-35 dances. Raising prices in Detroit clubs is stupid and only accelerates the decline.

In my area, I have been seeing a lot more females and couples. At times it seems like there are more girls tipping the dancers than guys. I enjoy that if it means I get to see more tits on occasion. They didn't look too lonely to me.

I've definitely noticed a decline in the SC's here in L.A. - especially during daytime hours. The dancers have noticed it too, and are more aggressive than ever. There seems to be alot more jumping back & forth between clubs by the strippers, chasing the ever-elusive and diminishing dollars.
Hmmmm....I wonder if the writer's strike has made it worse here?

Michigan: where the high business taxes keep the manufacturing away and the extreme brain drain keeps everyone else away. As a grad student, I can attest to 95%+ of people that obtain graduate degrees from Michigan Universities leave the state immediately after graduation (including myself in a few years).

Not that things are getting too bad for strippers, but if possible avoiding clubs during (bill paying time) at the end of the month - might be a wise choice for some customers

Actually thinking about Michigan, it does make sense. Put high taxes on businesses and they leave. Unemployment increases. Maybe Michigan just needs a smarter governor. One who will provide tax incentives for businesses to expand and locate in Michigan. I live in a small community that is providing tax incentives for businesses to come here. They are coming too. Several of them. I think the total amount I've read about so far is close to a billion dollars worth of business if they all come here and that is a good possibility. I live in a small town too. Population less than 100,000.

Today on some visits in northeast USA clubs, I noticed same pattern, traffic ok but customers in general are not spending. They appear to have more time than money, and could be part of the massive downsizing in business segments related to residential housing construction, perhaps people laid-off or waiting for new work

Phoenix area, a bit less crowded in the clubs, and this is affecting the marginal quality clubs more (no surprise there). But I also think club attendance is lke New England weather, jut wait 10 minutes and it will change. We are going into "high season" here in Phoenix now. All those guys playing golf and watching Cactus League baseball need something to do in the late afternoons, before they skedaddle back to the hotel or condo and shower before dinner.

Less. The conventioneer market is down all over the country, and here in New Orleans there's roughly a 1-to-1 relationship between male conventioneers and strip club patrons. I swear that a company logo on a polo shirt is just a dollar sign to a girl on Bourbon Street. :) Tourism isn't going too bad in NOLa -- Americans are traveling within our country rather than abroad because the dollar is weak, and we're a warm location, so any hold-outs from Caribbean cruises or South American trips can end up here; plus European aficionados of jazz and food are returning here because their currency is stronger, relative to ours, than it has been in a long time -- so we're still getting the "real" tourists. But they don't necessarily go to strip clubs. It's the "boy" tourists -- male conventioneers -- who are in lower supply than usual.

But that analysis is specific to New Orleans and few other locations -- Vegas and Tampa, I guess, but not even Miami. Other cities? I can't vouch.

Where I live (PA) remodeling still appears to be quite strong. For years you couldn't get a contractor to return phone calls, so there's a lot of pent-up demand. As a result, construction workers may not be getting as much overtime as they used to but they're still working. Which is typical, by the way, of periods of decline in new construction - when people decide to stay put rather than buy that new home, they will often do some remodeling. And for many trades (eg. roofing) repair and remodel is a much larger market than new construction - there are over 100 million existing housing units vs. only 2 million new homes built in a good year. Don't overestimate the impact of a downturn in new housing construction.

Boston and RI clubs have been getting less and less crowded, over the past year. Suspect it is the economy. There are other seasonal factors as well - clubs are always slow before Christmas - but I think that the trend is definitely down. As confirmed in coversatiosn with dancers here.

"Where I live (PA) remodeling still appears to be quite strong."

Not in some locales in the the northeast USA. Its off by a huge amount. The problem is the equity (to borrow against) is either no longer there, vastly reduced, or lenders have bumped up standards via tighter appraisals etc. So without credit it doesn't matter how much pentup demand there is, many consumers unless they got the cash -will simply not be able to opt for remodeling

There's little doubt that we just went throught a massive credit bubble in the United States - in part due to remote and disconnected lender/investors, of which many were in effect foreign savers. Just the unwinding of that bubble (by itself) will put a massive debt on the economy. Next is credit cards and consumer loans - also a product of a bubble, and the flip side of that is about to hit. Its now very hard to conceive a way that the economy can avoid a recession. The FED is now talking about aggressive monetary policy and easy money and the politicians are talking fiscal stimulus. When that happens its usually too late anyways, and in any case huge economic bubbles eventually create crashes or downturns - regardless of what the FED or the lawmakers have done or plan to do.