Strip Club Listings Count Post Covid/Pre-Recession

Imo it’s not at all impossible that even a big time location could get taken down by a recession. Would be interesting to see state by state. Are all states seeing less remaining SCs or only certain ones?

1,718 clubs in the US

Muddy has been to 1,245 of them

Muddy has LDK’d in 749 of them before the first song ended during the lapdance

Muddy has slept in 487 different strip club parking lots from this list.

Damn shailynn I must be slackin' I gotta step my game up!

I wish most of them would close out here lmao!

Thank you for the statistics. I've seen figures like this before here but didn't remember who posted them previously. It looks like a drop since 2008 of about a third. What happened nationally coincides with what happened here in Indianapolis. The number of strip clubs since 2008 went from 21 down to 14, maybe even lower.

Long time strippers who worked before and after 2008 have told me in the past that strip clubs never really recovered from the 2008 economic crisis. Since we are now entering another economic crisis, the drop in strip clubs will likely continue. The lengthy Covid lockdowns also hurt a lot of strip clubs and drove some of them out of business. The same was true for other businesses. The Walmarts and Targets that were allowed to stay open survived but a lot of small businesses and restaurants here in Indianapolis and other cities went under.

A third factor in the decline beside the economy and Covid lockdowns is crime. Crime started to drop in the nineties as more criminals were arrested and put in prison. This has reversed in recent years. "Defund the police" means fewer cops to arrest criminals. People now feel less safe in big cities and are voting with their feet and leaving. Chicago and Los Angeles, for example, have lost 200,000 people each since 2020. These are mostly middle-class people leaving. Middle-class males were a good source of income for strippers and them moving away hurts stripper income. Trying to make up for loss of income by raising lap dance prices or being more aggressive in trying to sell them won't work. Some wealthier males are using the internet more now to make contact with women for sexual activities. As the economy worsens, resulting in lower incomes, eventually this sector of commercial sex work will decline too.

It's nearly impossible to open a new club in the vast majority of the US.

Some of these clubs are literally grandfathered in and will close when the current owner dies.

Looking at the TUSCL listings for Maryland, we’ve had a net loss of about 45% of our SCs. Granted, some aren’t missed at all; others are definitely missed (RIP Players Club @ Wagon Wheel).

I suspect we’re going to lose many, if not all, of clubs on The Block within the next 5-10 years. The real estate is just too valuable for use as a SC.

As others have mentioned, it’s clear that between significant drop in business entertainment, economic changes & additional Internet options for sexually oriented entertainment, we’re moving to fewer clubs in the future. However, there will always be a demand for SCs. It’s just a matter of when we reach the equilibrium sought by the invisible hand of the economy.

^someone told me that a club in portland closed down and that real estate is now used as a Dollar Tree LOL

I think that COVID accelerated a thinning of the herd that was already in progress. Both dancers and customers have other options and online venues that decrease the value of going to a strip club.

I also think that for younger generations going to a strip club is an old fashioned practice that has not picked up any retro / hipster appeal (at least not yet). Sort of like watching TV via antenna or playing VHS tapes, which loses its retro appeal when you realize that the picture sucks.

I think James’s comment is closest to “Why”. Opening a new club in most cities is nearly impossible and prohibitively expensive. Purpose built clubs in Las Vegas were coming in at 10 to 20 million in Las Vegas (there were 4 new ones prior to 2008). Then in addition to the cost there is the politics of permitting. Between the Evangelicals and the Woke crowd there is always some group opposed and willing to fight.

Call.Me.Ishmael is right that strip clubs are now seen as old fashioned and don't have much hipster or retro appeal. I don't see a situation developing where they make a comeback like the vinyl record album has.

In the gentrified areas of Indianapolis, I see large numbers of white young people hanging out in bars and coffee shops. These same young people don't go to strip clubs. I can remember in my twenties and thirties going to strip clubs with friends. The groups of young guys I see in strip clubs now are mostly Hispanic or black with very few whites. Strip club music has moved from white rock to black hip hop since that is what the nonwhite customer base wants now.

This lack of appeal to younger middle-class whites is also behind new strip clubs being blocked by the government from opening, You have always had the rightwing religious fundamentalists opposing them and yet new ones opened. Now you also have younger liberal whites opposing them. They see them as vaguely old fashioned and sexist and exploitative. They are uncool. It's this group that is successfully lending its support to blocking them. This leaves only the existing strip clubs. Those have been harmed in recent years by the Covid lockdowns, increasing crime and a worsening economy.

I’d say it’s all about the money, if someone opens a new club and it’s profitable more will follow. I’d say that right now there are more profitable ways to invest the amount of money necessary to open a club and generate a profit without all of the hassles needed to make a new strip club work

We picked a data point in 2008 (financial crisis) and 2020 (weird situation because stimulus money was floating around but the clubs couldn't be open to take it). We didn't pull any data points (if they even exist) from the 60's through the 2000's. So we don't really know what our normal up and down might look like thus robbing us of the ability to really compare Covid to a normal boom-bust cycle.

Another factor is competition from a wide range of sex industry businesses other than strip clubs. Unlike strip clubs, these largely operate under the radar of community do gooders and require far less to start up. The strip clubs operate at a disadvantage.

A specific example of this is online porn, including only fans, etc. This is especially true for younger generations whose social life takes place online.