Where’s The Money?

It's hard to tell. I was in a strip club yesterday afternoon and was the only customer there. That doesn't happen too often. There are usually at least a couple other customers there. Afternoons have been slow in strip clubs ever since the Covid lockdowns. It is either the economy or part of a continued decline of local strip clubs or, more likely, both.

It’s pretty busy down here, I’m not noticing any slowing down Costco was packed on Monday which is probably the slowest day of the week, traffic is congested everywhere, and the last two times I’ve visited a strip club it was very busy both times on late afternoon and one a Wednesday the other visit last week was on Thursday.

^ forgot to add restaurant visits also very busy lines for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, tables full of people eating.

I think things have been slowing since last year or the year before, but it is becoming more apparent now with the continued layoffs and bank failures. Real estate has really slowed down. Alot of people just can't afford to buy a new place with 7% mortgages. Sellers can't fathom their property is not worth what they were told it was several years prior. It is becoming too expensive to eat out. The only place I still see with a crowd is Texas Roadhouse for whatever reason. Some of the businesses I deal with say that they are just hoping to get by this year and 2024. They will make a small profit or lose money. Their costs are up and product isn't moving like it did just a few years ago. Where I live, there are panhandlers everywhere. They used to all be drug addicts and mentally ill people, but now some of them look like normal people who are struggling to pay their rent or put groceries on the table.

Not to get political on you. But are you in a blue or red state ? I spend my time in Florida, Tennessee and Texas. The economies in those states is as busy as it has ever been. I hear Cali, NY and IL are not doing well. Coincidence ?

Miami and South Florida always seems to be an anomaly to the rest of the country. Despite the fact that everything is significantly more expensive these days post-Covid, especially housing, hotels, and restaurants, everything is busier than ever. I might have noticed strip clubs being a little slower, but I think this is due to factors other than the economy.

The biggest thing that has made me not want to do much of anything as far as anything where I’d have to deal with somebody who works a customer service job for the past few months is just toxic vibes in a lot of places. Not everywhere of course, but enough that it’s a roll of the dice.

Like when I’ve already ordered something online to-go and try to pick it up and then people act as if I’m bothering them. As in, I am standing there waiting and people aren’t coming to me even if it looks like they aren’t occupied. Or even doing a cursory “hi, somebody will be right there”. Just, keep ignoring when it’s been at least a couple of minutes and then “oh if you wanted to pick up food, you should be right there.” That’s happened a few times.

Also not too long ago I went to a hookah lounge by myself because I wanted to read and mellow out and ordered a hookah and also some kind of snack food. I think I was there for like 40 minutes and I get up and use the restroom and then the hookah was taken away. The food and water was still there (so it can’t be that they thought I left…?) I had to have had that hookah for maybe 20-25 minutes max so there was no way the flavor or anything was anywhere near done. It’s common for hookah lounges to have people actively smoking for an hour or two (or at a good hookah lounge, flavor can even last up to 3 hours) just for context.

I hurry up and finish the food and I go to the register to pay and then there are three staff members nearby the register frustrated and venting because nobody is tipping them that night. I actually had plans on reducing what I was going to tip because I was pretty annoyed at something that had never happened to me before, but after hearing that, I went ahead and tipped more.

BUT I’m also not likely to go back any time soon, and it’s a place I’ve gone to a lot in the past. Including during my baby stripper days with the friend (or frenemy…lol ) group I had and I worked with them at the same club and we would go to that lounge when not at work.

(I’ll take a few moments to give a shout out to the places where I’ve had way less awkward scenarios, since they still exist ❤️)

I get it that employers have been exploitive for way too long and customers have been overly abusive as well (especially since the pandemic), so I won’t begrudge anybody who wants to fight back and imo bad/lazy employers who have “passive income-d” their way out of actually doing any real work to monitor what’s wrong with their business absolutely deserve to have their business shut down, and if it’s the free market deciding that for them, then even better. But I’m perfectly happy to remove myself from the crossfire in the meantime and spend less money. Idk if my experiences line up with people on this site persay, but I know I’m not the only one who has dealt with similar things.

Seems about normal up here in seattle.

People got into a habit of sitting on their ass during the pandemic with fed injecting money into the system to get people to spend. They did w/out any extra effort and now their behaviors haven’t changed even though the money spicket has shut off. It is starting to change where people realize they have to get to work if they want ammenities above the basics. Nobody is entitled to luxury services, that’s the reward for working and the service sector is seeing the crunch of those dollars 💸 n the average consumer. It takes time to balance out the behavior of consumers, but it’s happening quickly!

"finally an intelligent topic:" I'm impressed. once in a while I can actually agree with desert scrub's reaction!

I think it's going to be a rough next couple years, I think your right shai this is the start of something. The average American is tapped out, prices are up across the board, he's underwater on his car, can't keep up with the mortgage on top of all that his dollars are inflated out, .87 cents dollar worth today matched up against dollar in Jan '21. Strip clubs are going to take some kind of hit here and probably see more than a few go down.

^ pretty soon you’re going to be sleeping at the greyhound bus depot instead of your car.

I don’t even know how to wrap my head around the economic impact of most white collar workers still working from home. I was at a big work dinner earlier this week and no one was spending time at an office. Commercial real estate is fucked as well as any businesses that were supposed to survive off lunchtime crowds or immediately after the work day of office workers.

Where's the money Lebowksi?!

Note to self: buy a hookah, tell hot strippers they can smoke it for as long as they want.

Generally, this has to happen to stop/slow inflation. These anecdotes indicate that prices aren't being jacked at the retail level. Retail business are getting squeezed by businesses in their supply chain jacking prices. The bugaboo is when the industry jacking prices sell stuff with less elastic demand. Energy for example. But seems like energy prices have backed off some lately.

Denver may be a perfect storm. People in service jobs are likely bitter because of low wages and high cost of living. The blue state government and labor shortage may make it hard to fire people. Build the wall people, when you wait an hour for a big mac with no pickles, be glad, it shows your wish is coming true.

Dancers have been telling me they're hoping the clubs will pick up when people get their tax refunds. But doesn't seem to have happened so far.

When you hammer your brain with nicotine with a hookah, and that relaxes you, is it a sign of ADHD.

There wiling be much of any tax refunds this year and if there are they are going to be smaller. How old I know this is true? I read it on the internet!!!!

My area of Florida suffers from a triple whammy- huge seasonal popularion increase, severe understaffinf of the service industries, so many homes and businesses lost to Ian that those suspected people live in a more confined area with fewer options for dining out and entertainment. So everything is crowded, there's no going anywhere spontaneously, and wait times everywhere are crazy. The best thing will be when the snowbirds leave.

Warrior - I’ve seen this both in red and blue states.

So after reading the responses it doesn’t seem to blanket the entire nation but I’ve seen things similar to what Sinclair mentioned.

I’m in one neighborhood where people think you are poor if your Mercedes is more than 4 years old, then 5 miles down the road there’s panhandlers on every intersection.

My point was I am not seeing the same amount of dollars spent or the traffic in retail stores and restaurants. Yes traffic still sucks, people still have drive to work, take their kids to school and after school activities.

From what I’ve heard high end is doing fine, low end is doing okay, and in the middle is suffering. Think of the tiers on any type of retail and it explains it all.

Fed undoing most of their 600B QT in a week. You think they're going to stop there? They will use every accounting trick in the book to print more money, while technically skirting the definition of a bailout. Make no mistake though, the dollar will suffer. Meanwhile, price of eggs gonna keep skyrocketing. All we need now is some moron to do a PPP part 2 on top of everything else going on and we are properly fucked.

^ hey wait I bought cage free eggs for $5.95 the other day, felt like I was getting a bargain.

So when a few members on this board get upset when I say inflation is dropping like a rock since summer of ‘22, I was the asshole whom they made into a political pariah. Now 6 months later we are seeing widespread proof of deflating prices (see Shailynn “bargain”). Thing is, most of us could see this coming with prices out of balance so it doesn’t take much intelligence to figure this out. What’s funny was we had Rickyboi, SkiDumb, 25, and Mark94 along with some others saying this inflation thing was going to continue into the near future, when in real time the rest of us see deteriorating economic activity, brining everything back to balance. If you have a job and your health, this too shall pass and you’ll come out the other end much wealthier as long as you don’t lose away every dime you make on those Hiliter vip price hikes. Stripper talent is rotating, old veterans have left and newer ones filling in. I hope I can support some to get started in their new career. Hit and miss with new ones on board with the service model to keep me Cumming back!

Inflation was still at a 6% annual rate in February. If we measured inflation the same way that we did in the seventies it would be double that. Social Security increases are tied to the official rate so the government underestimates inflation in order to keep the Social Security system solvent a little longer. Social Security recipients will be getting real benefit cuts in the future as benefit increases don't keep up with inflation.

The government has abandoned quantitative tightening and gone back to quantitative easing. The Fed is printing money to buy government securities from banks that they had previously unwisely purchased in order to keep the banks from collapsing. This money printing will increase inflation. The Fed is also likely done with rate hikes. Inflation will increase and we will go into a recession. The last time this happened, in the seventies, they came up with a term for this: stagflation.

Blue state here. I see stuff out of stock from time to time, but nothing like the bread and TP shortages two years ago. It could just be short staffing.

The clubs here mostly have the same old girls. I've met a few new faces who claim to be baby strippers. But it's definitely not shooting fish in a barrel like two years ago.

I also want to reduce how much I deal with retail or food service. I went to pick up some pizzas Friday night. While I was there, the guy (kid?) working in the back got into some kind of argument with the manager and stormed out of the place, and I ended up waiting an extra 30 minutes.

Good question. Obviously individual experience does not necessarily equal the wider experience. You go into a SC on a Friday at 10pm one month ago, it is Standing room only. You make a return trip this Friday at 10pm to find plenty of available seats with a number of identifiable idle girls. What’s that say other than this Friday has better SC prospects? Actually nothing. It’s far too small of a sample to conclude anything. Prices for most things are more expensive than 6, 12, 18 months ago. You’re are either paying more, paying the same for less or paying a bit more for a bit less. This is the effect of inflation, a direct effect of overdriven money printing with the absence of a commensurate addition of goods and services. It’s a pay cut by other means. Also note, Consumer debt increased by about a trillion dollars in 2022, about a 7% to 8% increase. Couple these points of data together and it points to, likely or will likely, decreased consumer discretionary spending. Restaurants to SCs, it will likely affect patronage. But whether it certainly affects it will require a sample spanning a number of months of experiences.