Dancers need to prepare for an economic shock
Consider this experienced (no extras) dancer working in a upscale club on the dayshift. She generally attempts 4 shifts per week, sometimes does 2, and on average works 3 shifts per week, basically 12 to 7 pm, and her avg pay per shift is about $350 this past year (versus around 450 to 500 in 2006. That works out to around 50 dollars per hour when she works. The club gives her flexibility if and when she misses her 2 mandatory days - thus giving her near complete schedule flexiblity. She rarely solicits customers for dances, instead letting them ask her. She recently complained to me about making "ONLY 100 dollars" on a Saturday shift. This dancer is unusually decent, but I believe she's become spoiled by the profession and over the years a degree of complacency has set in. A 100 dollars clear is not bad for maybe 2 hours hard work and 4 to 5 hours at a bar schoomzing with various potential customer or quite often time spent talking to other dancers or the bartender.Since she has no particular training or skill other than dancing, her alternatives are either Walmart style cashier work or something similar or maybe waitressing, or something using her model looks and pleasant personality,(e.g as she did yrs back, retail sales clerk in upscale malls, high priced shops of some type) however I doubt there is anything other than escorting (which she will never consider) - that will pay anything close to stripping relative to the effort it requires. Not unlike many dancers, probably 1/2 her shift is typically spent hanging at the bar, (in her case as non-drinker just soft drinks or non-alcholic drinks) - however its an incredibly pleasant way to earn money.
The bottom line is for many dancers, especially dancers who have lived in this sort of Land of OZ, where cash flows freely with very little effort, I believe many are going to soon be in for a rude awakening, and as I've mentioned before this could well include more top shelf girls entering the profession - to give laid-back dancers like this some serious competition. Customers are still at the clubs, but they are certainly reducing spending, and those still left with cash are going to want more value for their money, so the easy lifestyles of these type of dancers will soon become relatively rare.
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no kidding, and its been extremely profitable for me in the past decade. I don't think it will take a "severe depression" to have the impacts I'm suggesting, I would say a strong recession would do it. Meanwhile in the United States nearly all of us are spoiled to some degree (not just dancers), a large amount of american consumers have morphed into physically out of shape/lazy thinking over consuming fat tubs of lard (typical of many Walmart customers) and as someone said usually "buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we dont' like" - so there is a huge cushion. The bottom line is dancers won't starve, because as Bobbyl says they can real jobs now.
Some do quite well.
The ones that take care of themselves physically, don't smoke, stay away from drugs, and look at each day in the club as an opportunity - a suprising amount have been able to dance for 15 to 20 years, and some of these have put away alot of the money. We hear about the 1 to 2 yr shelf life of strippers, that could be the norm, but there's this other group that not many people know about, and I believe most of that derives from the relentless media spin on strippers basically being sexually abused, broken down, drug addicted women - who as a last resort ended up in the seedy world of stripping. I have yet to see the major print/cable/broadcast media run a story about strippers that had any positive spin
In regards to "retirement", the sugar daddy or kept mistress route is always an option for some of the more attractive dancers, however given the huge infusion of asian cash (with more on the way) to bail out (most) of the top investment firms in the United States - its increasingly going to be asian interests having the power and control to buy up these girls. No, these dancers won't be starving, and unless they've gotten too old or lost their beauty, they will have other options in life if they are forced out of the strip business.
The ones who have an entrepreneurial attitude will adjust. A few will suffer, but a lot more will just leave the business because they didn't really care for it that much in the first place. They will hook up with a man to support them or they will graduate from college and get into the profession that they were headed for while they were stripping.
However I really don't know what I'm talking about and I admit it.
I agree with FONDL - yeah, enough already. OK, maybe it's a little slow at some clubs. So what?
Just more opportunities for the rest of us.
Oh I see you've appointed yourself EDITOR of this forum as to what subject can and cannot be brought up by a poster? WHO THE FUCK APPOINTED YOU?
Funniest thing I read tonight. Other than checking the local weather at weather.com and seeing the note "precipitation unknown"
I'm thinking WTF?
Of course we did have 45 minutes of heavy snow and a light dusting accumulation, followed by sleet/snow, then heavy sleet, then apparently some freezing rain, then rain. However I didn't understand how my reliable digital thermometer said the temp dropped to 30.9 but the weather site said it was 35 the whole time. Now my thermometer says it has warmed back up to 33.4 I guess they don't know what's going on here.
David, you're obsessing. Lol, yeah it's a fantasy I could enjoy too if I believed it. Just imagine, dancers giving complimentary BJ's just to entice you to get a two for one lap dance. She takes a break then asks, are you ready for a lap dance yet? You say, uuh, not yet, keep warming me up some more and then maybe I'll buy a lap dance in a little while. Or fantasize some more, she finishes warming you up, then she asks "ok are you ready for a lap dance now?" You say, oh honey, we'll have to do that later, I got a headache. I feel so tired and I'm not even sure why. Go ahead and keep obsessing. I thought that what strip clubs were for.
To a small degree strip club forums can be the next best thing to being there, right at the strip club. Now obviously those apparent sad and miserable fucks that (for some strange reason) need to constantly tell people what can and cannot be posted in these forums - they will probably not agree, as I suspect most have a complete lack of imagination and are to some degree absent a sense of humor
They can push the ignore button.
This is the data just made public and now released via this report Jan 30th, 2007, and obviously President Bush and congressional leaders were tipped on this earlier
A short excerpt from the Assoc Press Story entitled ECONOMY NEARLY STALLED IN 4TH QUARTER
(QUOTE)
WASHINGTON - The economy nearly stalled in the fourth quarter with a growth rate of just 0.6 percent, capping its worst year since 2002.
The Commerce Department's report on the gross domestic product, released Wednesday, showed an economy that had deteriorated considerably during the October-to-December quarter as worsening problems in the housing market and harder-to-get credit made individuals and businesses more cautious in their spending. Fears of a recession have grown
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