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Muddy
USA
Portland metro- About 2.5 million with 51 strip clubs.
Tampa metro-About 3.2 million people with about 53 strip clubs
Houston metro- About 7.1 million with about 54 strip clubs
State of West Virginia with about 1.8 million people has about 21 strip clubs
all as opposed to a place like Nashville metro with 2 million people has 3 strip clubs or Washington state with 7.7 million people and 12 strip clubs.
My question is how do all these places stay in business? Are there really THAT many PL's? A place like Portland I could totally see how there would be a huge supply of stripper types but how many truly paying customers are there in a not really major city to go around? The math just doesn't work on all that.
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Around here, the limiting factor seems to be more the number of places they'll issue permits to rather than the number of customers and dancers to go around.
I’ve gone into many hole in the wall type places all over the country and the guys are there just to drink, could care less about the strippers. My theory is if a bar is a strip club it keeps the guys wives/girlfriends out, one of the few places these guys can go and get away from their significant other even though they could care less about the strippers.
I think I got laughed off the page because the thought of “too many strip clubs” is an anathema to most TUSCLers.
I believe I may have cited Flint Michigan as an example. Not that you could PAY ME to go to a Flint SC, but a city of just 80,000 people at one time had maybe 7 or 8 clubs.
Tampa has retirees.
Houston has the oil industry which brings in dudes with money to burn and no women.
There are a few strip clubs left in the Cincinnati metro area but they are across the state lines into either Northern Kentucky or Southeast Indiana. A couple of the NKY ones (Brass Ass and Brass Bull) are less than half of a mile from the downtown Cincinnati Riverfront in Newport Kentucky.
Portlanders who do not visit strip clubs still brag about having the most strip clubs per capita. It's a sign of a liberal city. The post-pandemic problems (crime, homelessness, etc.) have not changed things; we were this way back in the 2010s.
Lesson: it's all politics.
LOL, Tampa doesn’t have retirees flooding through clubs to keep them in business. Naked or partially naked attractive women in a relatively clean setting will attract plenty of customers. Call it 1 per 100,000 population approximately. If a metro doesn’t have this ratio, there is something else keeping the number down.
Providence arguably evens things out a bit if you lump it in as part of Metro Boston, because Providence has a lot of clubs for a city of its size (Providence should have only 1.8 clubs using the 1:100K ratio mentioned above), but I don't know if Massholes (I use that term affectionately) think that way. I do know that, if I have to go to Boston on business, my ass is headed to Providence for fun.
As to how many stay open, that's easy, it's PLs and liquor. If an area has a lot of business/tourism, the more likely you would see strip clubs, save for politics. Many clubs have a house fee before a girl can even get on stage. I don't drink a lot, and if I'm having a good time, I average $300, more if I won gambling or I'm getting extras. I'm far from the whales that I see. Last time I was in Houston, dudes were throwing 100s at a time. Also, except for the house, this money is tax free (largely).