Seems like a fairly easy question but the more I think about it, the more difficult it is for me to answer. What do y’all think? To me, I just feel like strip clubs should have been replaced by brothels 10-15 years ago. They are actually legal in Australia and the girls are pretty fucking hot. Take a look at these:
But anyway - back on topic. Thoughts on North America strip clubs in 2023?
"Are strip clubs dying in North America?"
No Fuckit, they're fine. Not every local economy can sustain them anymore, but the towns with money and not stupid laws will be ok.
I think some of the lesser clubs will start going down here pretty soon. IMO it's for the best, some just aren't that good. Americans are just spending too much right now and it'll all catch up at some point.
As long as there are men who have more money than they have skill with women strip clubs will be fine.
As long as there are husbands who aren't getting their sexual satisfaction from their wives strip clubs will be fine.
As long as prostitution is illegal in the majority of the country strip clubs will be fine.
As long as there are new generations of young women that see dancing naked for older men as a better way to make money than working low level jobs strip clubs will be fine.
Since I don't see any of those things changing anytime soon I must conclude that strip clubs will be fine.
===> "Are strip clubs dying in North America?"
Heck no. They are certainly facing a lot of challenges right now. Affluent population shifts and continued work-from-home policies are doing serious damage to some northern clubs. Certain cities continue to try to zone them out of existence. Inflation continues to put pressure on them by forcing some people to divert more of their money away from frivolous entertainment and towards basic needs.
But as Wall rightly said IMHO, places with enough income and tolerant local governments will continue to be good environments for clubs. Some of this will eventually correct and some of it will not. I'd definitely include many parts of Florida in this, even if attendance is definitely suppressed due to challenging economic conditions. Where there are titties and cold beer, there will always be guys looking to enjoy both together.
I live in a relatively small town. Clubs were struggling before the pandemic (I think there were 4 open) they all closed during the pandemic and none reopened. A new one is being “constructed” in an old run down building.
My point is - in small towns not close to a major interstate or some other type of attraction - clubs are dying. In larger cities they seem to be doing fine, although you may have less choices as you did a few years ago.
I agree brothels would be great, but it will never happen.
People were asking the same thing when OnlyFans came out. They thought strippers would just all move online and make their money there or on Twitch. Some found success, thanks to the simps who "donate" hundreds of dollars just to see a flash of titty. LOL! But for men who like to get more hands-on, we still prefer to see the girls in person. So strip clubs will continue to thrive in America. Lots of strippers also prefer their privacy and going on social media platforms is the last thing they want.
The number of strip club closures posted on TUSCL seems to far outpace the number of new clubs being opened. By that estimate, I guess that means that strip clubs are dying.
If prostitution were legalized and regulated to certain districts (like the Zone Norte in Tijuana where Hong Kong is located, or the FKK model in Germany), that would guarantee their survival.
I've had several long-time strippers tell me in the past that strip clubs never completely recovered from the 2008 crash. You are not likely to hear that these days since most strippers from that era are now retired from stripping. One commenter here who claimed to have been somehow keeping track said that the total number of strip clubs in the country has dropped by a third from the peak. Those who live in high population growth states like Texas or Florida might doubt that but those are not typical areas of the country. Here in Indianapolis, a fairly typical big city, the total number of strip clubs have dropped by about a third.
There are various factors for the drop. Cities have increasingly used zoning and licensing laws to block new clubs from opening and the lack of competition has led to declining strip club quality. New technology has made it easier to by-pass strip clubs and make arrangements directly with females for sexual activities. New technology has reduced traveling as more business is conducted online and that has resulted in fewer men doing their clubbing while traveling. Tax deductions were eliminated for business entertainment of clients in strip clubs. I've been told by long time strippers that younger people use strip clubs more as a place to hang out now and don't buy lap dances as much. As someone who has made hundreds of strip club visits over the last 12 years, I have seen that with my own eyes. This is helping to reduce strip club profits. The economy is deteriorating and real income, adjusted for inflation, is declining. High crime is driving people away from big cities and the strip clubs in them. There will always be some strip clubs but there are so many factors working against them that the decline will continue.
Same thing is happening to strip clubs as to retail businesses in general, there's been a consolidation going on, and the establishments that are weak on the fundamentals are falling by the wayside, seems to me in todays economy, if you can't scale your costs, your business can't show a profit, and the value goes away, what actually seems to be happening, is multi club operators are thriving, and small independent operators are losing share.
Consolidation had been going on in many industries and same will go foe clubs, and I can’t get my favorite local butcher to cut up any of my favorite cured meat, bacon!! They were bought out or went out of business. Sad face 😞
Tl;dr yep, I absolutely think clubs are on their way out.
I’ve compared strip clubs today to taxi dance halls that had its heyday in the 1910s-1930s. Taxi dance halls back then had similar functions to titty bars. It was a form of sex work that had its own sense of style and was meant to be more about some kind of sensuality and building connection and was supposedly supposed to be sex work lite rather than brothels just like clubs are now. (A worsening economy would change the practice over time)
The format was ballroom dancing at 10 cents a song and its evolution correlated a lot with titty bars, and those who did it who had all the same daily stuff like strippers have dealt with—from “corner girls” who would take customers to the corner of the ball room to do dances in a manner that was above and beyond what was supposed to happen. And also “treating” which was essentially the sugar thing today—where the rise of that term started outside the hall room, but as time went on, the practice became more and more blended with the dance halls.
The 1920 and the 1990 decades had a lot in common both culturally and economically and with a lot of fast paced technology advances for personal use. Currently, the mood of today is a lot like the Great Depression and 1930s. Except unlike back then where things just simply crashed, and the suffering was severe but relatively speaking shorter in duration—now we have the government agencies that were put in place in response to back then to prevent that.
People’s political opinions will decide how effectively or ineffectively the agencies are at fulfilling its tasks. The agencies have managed to put on lots of band aids ever since 2008, in the form of bailouts and pumping markets and all, except most of the band aids have been applied in a way to make lots people very angry and convinced that they are being treated unfairly.
Whether such concerns are valid or not is for one of the very many political threads on this site. But this time around the result of decades of the federal government and also corporations doing their thing may or may not have so far caused a softer landing instead of an outright depression. But as a consequence, wealth has been skewed in a way that favors the elderly. And so strip clubs have and will continue to last longer than taxi dance halls.
But just like what happened back then, (I predict) the trends will reverse. Falling birth rates since 2007 will affect how many 18 year olds there are to potentially even become dancers starting in 2025.
There is the normalization of multigenerational living and continuing to live with parents as an adult, which will also put pressure on how many potential strippers are available. Unlike the 90s/early 2000s, families are stronger than they used to be, which means more eyeballs that can potentially monitor your behavior. There has been a huge uptick in the number of posts on stripper boards (especially Reddit) about “how do I get started as a stripper without my parents finding out”—and most likely the vast majority of them realize it’s not realistic to hide their activities if they want to work more than every once in a while. Speaking of hiding activities from parents, while the news article didn’t outright come out and say it, it was heavily implied that one of the women who was the strongest voice with pushing raising the age limit for working at a titty bar to 21 in Texas was somebody whose daughter was a stripper behind her back and died while driving home drunk and underage. Just like it became less acceptable to contract strippers who were 15 starting in…the 90s or 00s? (I have no clue about when that shift would have been, and good luck finding anybody other than an OG old stripper/ex stripper to even admit to that stuff)…limiting the supply even more.
On the customer end, ever since Covid, there are its own issues that have lots of people wary to go into clubs. And that can depends on either worries about personal finances, health reasons (for either themselves or their loved ones), or just simply fatigue because of increased hostility one could either be perpetuating or receiving (whether due to racism, political views, etc) Add in the rise of work from home and stronger family ties that makes married men (especially with children) less motivated to get out. There was a meme circulating around for a while that said “boomers want us all to return to the office so that they can go back to having affairs”—which is a good summary of a rising attitude that is going to be less likely to be inclined to be a titty bar frequenter.
Also, strip club owners/managers are aging and and are either too ignorant, too inflexible, or too burned out to know how to adjust to an emerging group of guys who, statistically, don’t want to drink as much alcohol as the older generation and who will have less tolerance for the attitude of “I-got-mine-fuck-you” that is commonly part of the hustle from club staff, strippers, and fellow club customers that (whether fairly or unfairly) is perceived as not just merely a boomer trait, but a particularly loathsome boomer trait. So lots of younger guys will come in because of curiosity and rap music videos, but ultimately end up turned off and walking away. Also, plenty of strippers are doing things like communicating online with each other online about their clubs, and doing things like advocating unionizing. That’s going to keep contributing to a lot of spiteful owners who would rather let their club burn than give into stripper demands.
And also, just like taxi dance halls, strip clubs also have and will continue to face “death by a thousand cuts” from police raids and local governments that want them shut down.
If the parallels between titty bars and taxi dance halls continue, the biggest death knell will be when the economy finally normalizes itself in a way that the vast majority of people consider satisfactory. Just like the end of world war 2 was the biggest death knell for taxi dance halls. Sure a few locations will continue to exist every here and there, but they will be pushed out of the mainstream and an anachronism.
And that will pave the way for a new, whatever becomes more culturally relevant in its time, form of “party” sex work that isn’t just straightforward escorting to take its place.
Strip clubs as a business model will never fail so long as there are (1) PLs and (2) lack of pussy available to said PLs. A few years back the hot topic was whether digital sex work would over take strip clubs. We've since come to witness that the market is defined by PLs with the disposable income as well as women who come into the industry for a few years out of happenstance. Unless something is done to address these two factors, this business model will last in perpetuity. I lived in the bible belt for a few years in the past decade and even there (in a community that espouses traditional conservative Christian values) itc extras were all available to outsiders like me.
I think things like liquor laws, change in LLC owners and local economies failing are more likely to lead to strip clubs closing in podunk cities.
