Austin Tech Invasion

2018 was a year of a bunch of dancer transplants at the club. I’m not sure when the start of transplant customers coming in would have been.

I feel like this would have been something to ask like…4 to 9 years ago? I’m not exactly sure when the beginning would have been for any of that, since I started dancing when prices was on an upward trend with “cabanas” aka vip time block booth areas. (Austin clubs like to give a different title than other regions for whatever reason)

I think it started with Palazio, then the Yellow Rose, then Perfect 10 Bratton…?

I know at some point before I started at Palazio, that club was forced to get more diverse because they got blasted online for girls only being skinny white and blond. And it turns out people wanted more variety—despite the club owner’s notorious reputation for being racist. And then at some point towards the end of 2018, I actually saw a black dancer working on nightshift. But, sure enough I checked online and that club got blasted for not having any black dancers. I’m not sure what the club looks like now. I do remember a dancer complaining a couple years ago about being given a warning that she might be taken off the roster because her body was borderline as far as weight goes. That was shortly after Covid reopenings. But that’s about it.

I did one shift at XTC in 2016, and at the time that club was more mixed. Lots of Cubans but plenty of Americans too. And some dancers were driving in from Houston to work there. But then at some point later, I heard it became mostly Cuban. Given how club staff acted there, I wasn’t very motivated to keep working there. Turns out the Americans weren’t either, judging by future reviews. Which was a shame because I briefly chatted with some in the dressing room and they seemed like a laid back cool group.

After I tried out for the Yellow Rose a day or two after, I was done with that club. The Yellow Rose was more…hipstery I think back then? There were a couple of pale white dancers with dreadlocks in their hair. A lot more tattoo’d a lot more dancers who were from the local area. The Rose still allows that, but later on it seemed the lineup look was closer to Palazio’s. Heck, a lot of girls over at that club were there because of Palazio’s club politics bs.

I think sometime starting in 2018 the dancer lineup started being a heck of a lot less local, and that was when stripper forums were blowing up Austin asking about dancing there. That was around the time of the highest pushing of Cabana prices. Palazio towards the end of 2018 had a sign up saying that maximum a dancer could ask for was $1000 an hour and no pushing for tips. Oh yeah, and single lapdance prices still had to be $20/song,🙄(that eye roll isn’t against $20 lapdances in general, but low priced dances+ high priced rooms is sooo dumb) but I knew that club would fluctuate with how much that stuff would get enforced.

The early part of 2019 was when the club owner of Perfect 10 was playing around with club pricing. Because he read a report about how much in alcohol sales Palazio made, and he wanted to get in on the cabana thing. That club used to have a bunch of cubicles and different tiers of areas for dances or time blocks. Later, the club owner flattened it. Pissed off a bunch of customers, who were local Texans. Especially because I think they phased away some membership option? If you look at club reviews in early 2019 on this site, it’s full of complaint after complaint after complaint.

Nowadays, I think that club has found its balance. Cabana pricing isn’t what it was in early 2019, but it’s not like what it used to be when the local Texans were fucking for $200 or whatever they were paying back then. I noticed the customer vibe was different when I did a dayshift over a year ago. But I have no clue if that’s because of transplants or it being a dayshift vs night or whatever 🤷🏻‍♀️

I know at one point there was a lot more Cubans in the “regular” clubs, but nowadays there’s a lot more segregation there and one has to go to the specific clubs where most dancers are Cuban.