Biggest cause fie decline of strip clubs

I like your guess. Hadn't thought about that conclusion...

This topic has come up before. Some blame the decline in stripclubs to the abundance of free Internet porn, as well as now we have Only Fans to spend our strip club money on, and Instagram to leer at, etc. Others cite the outrageous 21st century costs for parking, lapdances, VIP, drinks at the club, etc, turning off guys.

My guess about strip club decline is retarded--but it's what I believe: today's music is killing our strip club scene. Yes, today we have trap music and twerk music. Today we have stripper music. But IMO, stripclubs were more fun when it had an angle of FANTASY. And back in the day, the music scene had hits that matched with that fantasy angle. Think: Tawney Kitten's iconic dancing on a car in the White Snake rock video of the 80s. The song and music video made girls wanna dance like that and made dudes wanna see that.

When I was coming up and hitting the strip clubs in my 20s, 30 years ago, it was all about dancers having a 3-song set while they were on stage. In my area, the girls had a 3-song set of R&B or neo soul or soul. Other clubs it was techno and definitely hair bands. But the music changed, the lyrics changed, the fantasy was done.

Man, it was so hot to just sit back and watch a 3-song set where a dancer had dope R&B and she's being real seductive, real smooth, sexy, slowly removing clothes, teasing, etc. That was worth a trip to the club. It was something to watch, entertaining. You know that good R&B, that good soul song, that good hair bands rock inspired girls to routines and different pole dances and challenge girls imagination. Good music inspired interesting outfits, dances, routines. When the music changed outfits, dances, routines took a backseat. Different girls took over.

I used to really appreciate a good 3-song stripper set. A girl could really display a part of her personality with the tunes she chose, how she interpreted the song to her routine, etc.

Fantasies in men's heads, imagination in men's heads made stripclubs a different place back in the day.

Ok, so around my way, a popular R&B song in a 3-song stripper set is Janet Jackson's song 'Would You Mind'. Listen to that song. Picture how a stripper would pole dance to that song. Picture what she'd wear. Picture her stage routine to this song. We don't got songs like this nowadays anymore. This vibe is not much around. Guys were going to strip clubs more for this type of vibe, IMO. Bring back this type of tunes, the girls will follow and clubs will return to their heydays.

Your AI response was a decline in the revenue of SCs, not the number of SCs in operation.

The biggest gripe I have heard from girls is that men are not spending money. This is their reason for sitting around on their phones instead of working the room. The rate at which costs have been rising without a relative increase in take home wages is the obvious reason. People have less discretionary income for strip clubs, but still go for the social interactions or to blow off steam.

My first guess to explain anything AI says is that it's hallucinating. In this case, thought, somebody apparently did an actual study.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-…

Looking at the yearly estimates, the story is a massive crash in 2020, recovery to about 90% in 2021, and no change thereafter. A lot of clubs closed, and some of them never reopened.

I think the full report is behind a paywall, so I have no idea where they got their data, or what they mean by "revenue". I can't imagine how it could be more than a wild guess. Around New England, I assume the main reason to own a strip club is to avoid reporting income accurately.

I'll add

decline of the.quality of the girls.
I have no interest in seeing ugly girls or fat girls.

I went out last night. 14 dancers, maybe more. 6 customers max. Two stages. Bidenflation.

Whoever says onlyfans or cam, it's not. Online interaction options have been around for the last 25 years, including periods where clubs and online sites were both growing and lucrative. When the tide comes in, it comes in for both the places with in-person entertainment and the content sites.

My guess is that it is a confluence of factors. For starters, the industry never completely recovered from the Great Recession and the pandemic was the final knockout punch for the weaker ones.

Demographic changes are also playing a role. The population is both aging and moving. Clubs in areas with a decline in affluent members of their local populations seem to be suffering a lot more than clubs in growing locales.

Cultural changes are also playing a role. Younger men don't see themselves in the same provider mentality as us older dudes, making dropping large sums of money on a honey less appealing to them.

And as others have suggested, local and state governments in many areas are doing everything possible to make their locales inhospitable to clubs. They have become increasingly clever with zoning regs and alcohol licensing, making it functionally impossible to open new clubs in some areas.

Finally, if there was one commercial competitor who was also contributing to club declines, IMO it is sugar sites. They all target the same types of guys, affluent provider types who crave in-person interactions. How many guys just on this board have moved a chunk of their spending to sugar babies in the last few years? Seeking and Secret Benefits are far greater threats to strip clubs than a few more content sites, lol.

No simple answer. But Jascoi nailed it.

I’ve pretty much stopped going to clubs because of declining quality.

I don't need AI to tell me why no one goes clubbing in a state where nude clubs are illegal and touching isn't allowed 😂

Just drive to Michigan or West Virginia already and stop asking Siri why Indianapolis sucks

And yet the dancers (in my area) are still unwilling to consider OTC or sugaring. What gives? Are they content to be unhappy and make less than go out on a limb?

I think it is a few things. First, inflation squeezed many budgets. Strip clubs have been raising prices, but strip clubs are discretionary spending rather than essential spending. The value for clubs is declining, and this is especially true compared to other traditionally male recreational options (e.g. the price of skiing has gone down a lot, tickets to professional sporting events by and large have increased slower than inflation).

I think the second is the rise of the surveillance society. We all know that is a matter of time until one of these ID scanning companies gets hacked and our names are on a list with all the clubs we've visited. So far, installing cameras in club VIP rooms is a one way street (they get installed, but you don't hear about them being taken down), and the threat of being on IG or youtube when someone inside the club takes out their phone.

It becoming more and more normalized for spouses (and other family members) to spy on each other via location sharing apps and car gps tracking.

I also think that the modern economy provides more non-stripping options for non-educated ladies to make money than a generation ago.

Hey Blah,
Where has the price of skiing gone down? I just blew $1K per day on lift tix for 4, plus another $1K per night for a slope side condo.

Other than that, I agree with your theory that tracking technology keeps a lot of guys out of the strip clubs.

There's also the fact that everyone has their face in their phones and is afraid to interact with another human fucking being.

Younger people are having less sex than ever, too.

Day tickets are higher, but season passes have gone down in price. This is especially true if you live somewhere like Seattle, Boston, NYC, Philly, or LA where you now have access to both destination mountains and local hills on the same pass.

^^^ Got it. So this wouldn’t help a family of 4 from Miami who only skis once a year at a destination resort during the week between Christmas and New Years.

One thing I have noticed in my fifteen years of going to strip clubs is that no one experiments with new ideas. They pretty much all do the same thing. The few variations are things like having an upscale club, something that would work in a tourist town but not here in Indianapolis. Most of them even play the same music rather than different formats. Even the same food is served in every local strip club here.

@ rickdugan, I completely agree

@ docksavage, I noticed that too. Every time I go to an urban or lower-end club I hear the same soundtrack. Its honestly not much better even at the more prominent strip clubs.

The pornstar promotional nights are good, but if anything that only attracts a particular PL that was already a regular. I believe the biggest concern is that clubs are simply milking the current base and not really trying to get more customers.

As mentioned the pandemic and its economic aftermath are big factors in why SCs are "not a growth industry" (thanks AI). I think the economics and regulations/local opposition are much bigger reasons than cultural ones for the total number of clubs going down and hence total industry revenue.
In my area a lot of clubs have shutdown in the last 5-10 years and are not being replaced. The pandemic accelerated the decline and "thinned the herd" so to speak in most industries. Business closures and bankruptcies were up in both 2023 and 2024 relative to historic norms. This was true for both small local operations (as most scs are) and national chains or larger corporations. Most restaurants for instance will be replaced pretty quickly, most SCs will not.

@iknowbetter In your scenario it probably still makes sense to get the season pass (or possibly just one or two and then use the "Buddy" discounts for the rest of your family) if you are going for 4 or 5 days. However, I won't argue that prices have deflated for your use case.

I have seen people mention the IRS handles expense accounts differently now. But I don't know the details. When I saw huge money getting spent on gorgeous women, there was a lot of business entertaining going on. Absent the big money, the gorgeous women are no longer performing.

Other than that, I agree clubs underestimate how many customers don't want to be under electronic surveillance.

I think the younger generation's attitude toward sex has changed quite a bit from when I was young. Sex encounters are more casual than ever, and that makes the strip club model a little outdated.

I think the music thing is part of it. Black culture seems to be considered the most sexy by young women, so they consider that sexy music. And a lot of the male customer base only wants to hear so much of that. I can take it for a while, but there has to be some variety. Yes, of course I know Black culture influenced a lot of the music I prefer. But the songs all about "bitches" and "MFers" wear on me. Call me names, whatever, but I have to be enjoying myself to spend money.

Also "employees" (even if they are independent contractors in this case) are currently hard to find in all industries.