Comments by FONDL (page 6)

I never sit anywhere near the stage if I can help it. I sit at the bar until I find a girl I like, then we go to wherever the quietest place is to sit and talk, which is usually as far from the stage as possible. Guess it all depends why you're there.

Dudester, I agree with everything you say. But I also draw a very different conclusion - I think the root cause of all that you describe is our drug laws. If we legalized drugs the way most other countries of the world do (they may not be legal but there's little enforcement effort), most of the violence would disappear because the money to be made would no longer be anywhere near as great. As you correctly point out, it's the money that causes the violence, but it's our laws that make the business so lucrative. Drug laws, like laws against prostitution, are unenforcable, which by definition means that they are bad laws.

At the risk of adding yet another silly over-simplification to this thread, let me just say that long ago I learned to group women into two categories: the dumb ones who were attracted to macho behavior and meaningless surfact charactistics (eg. height); and the smart ones who were more interested in intelligence, dependability and personality. I came to regard my limited height as an advantage because it quickly weeded out the dumb ones and saved me a lot of trouble - I would't have found those girls interesting anyway. IMO the comments here about bad boys being attractive to women applies only to the dumb ones, who I personally wouldn't find the least bit attractive no matter what their appearance. The first time they tried to talk I'd lose interest in a hurry.

If you're going to deal with flaky young girls, getting stood up and having to wait are facts of life. If you aren't willing to deal with that, stick with the older ones. It makes no sense to expect 20-year-olds to adhere to adult standards of behavior, particularly if they're doing drugs on a regular basis as most of these girls are. It just isn't going to happen, that's not how they live. If I hadn't been willing to put up with the BS of typical 20-yo behavior, I would never have become friends with my ATF. She isn't like that anymore, in fact she's become very considerate, but that wasn't the case 10 years ago. In fact we laugh about it fairly regularly.

ShadowCat, I'd never buy anything from a private party online either, in fact I rarely buy anything online. In this particular case the person lives nearby so if I can contact him I'll make an appointment to go see the bike. And I do plan to hit some garage sales, although in this particular case I'm probably going to end up buying something new because the technology has improved so much in recent years.

Clubber, my experience is similar to yours. But I'm not sure it would be today if I were still working. When I did most of my business travel, once 5 pm or so came around the work day was over and I was free to go clubbing. But for most of the working people I know now that's no longer the case - come 5 pm and they return to their motel to beging another 3-4 hours of work on their laptops. There are no free evenings anymore when traveling on business, thanks to computers.

And the only reason I raised the issue here is because others have frequently mentioned Craig's List so I assume some people are familiar with it.

Dudester, I wouldn't normally trust Craig's List either but this person lives near me so if I can get hold of him I can go see the item. But I can't get hold of him. And Founder, it's not a comuter I'm looking for, it's a used bicycle, which I would never buy without seeing and riding first.

Book Guy, I don't mean to be disrespectful in any way and I realize that you may be totally different in person. But here you come across as being very cynical and very negative, both of which are huge-turnoffs for most women in my experience. I think if you worked at truly changing those things - not just pretending to but really cahnge - and it can be done (if youre interested email me and I'll suggest some ways), it would make a huge difference in your love life.

And I'm not so sure this is off-topic, I'll bet it's already helping strip clubs and other leisure-time activities especially during the day shift. For example, I bet Shadowcat spends more time in clubs than he would if he worked a standard 5-day-40-hour shift. It's also my experience that once people spend more off-hours time working (eg. checking emalis during the evening) they also spend less time working during normal working hours. Maybe clubs should install wireless internet service so we could pretend we're working while we're having fun.

I am convinced that 50 years from now people won't believve that we actually used to go to an office 5 days a week. Almost every "office worker" I know works from their home at least part of the time and the trend is growing rapidly. Except for the lowerst level people, hardly anyone goes to an office 5 days a week anymore. Which is maybe why therre's so much more traffic on the roads at times like 11 am or 2 pm. The 40 hour week is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. And good riddance.

Book Guy, funny but I just had a similar converstion with my ATF the other day. One thing that may help is to understand the difference between right-brain-dominant people and left-brain-dominant people. Most women are right-brain-dominant, most men are left-brain-dominant. The two look at the world entirely differently and have trouble understanding each other. For example, most men are all about concrete things and ideas, while women are all about emotions and spirit. I once read that "Women give sex to get love, men give love to get sex." I think that illustrates the difference exactly. (I'm right-brain-dominant BTW, which is kinda interesting because there aren't very many of us around, especially heterosexuals. Any other right-brain-dominant males here? I doubt it, which is probably why my opinions are often so different from the others I read here.)

Shadowcat, everyone in this country pays taxes, maybe not income taxes but they pay a hell of a lot of other taxes. In fact if most people realized how much they actually pay they'd be outraged. Which is why politicians keep it so fragments, so it's hidden. There's an excellent editorial by George Will in today's papers on oil prices and the impact of our self-imposed restrictions on exploration and drilling. If you're interested in oil prices, I highly recommend you read it - it's probably the best and most honest thing I've seen on the subject.

Book Guy, I think that's a big reasson why I rarely go to clubs anymore. Seems like when I do I spend more time watching sports on the TV set than the dancers because I rarely find them attractive. Last couple times I've gone to a club most of the girls should have been at Weight-Watchers instead of dancing. I've stopped tipping girls who are less fit than I am, which isn't a very high standard. Maybe I'm viewing the past with rose-colored glasses but I don't recall it being like that 10-15 years ago.

I think I'm pretty easy. All I ask for is a moderately fit and attractive smaller girl (I'm small), a nice smile and a friendly manner, at least average intelligence, and no attempt to feed me a bunch of shit. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Wouldn't you think most dancers would fit that description? So how come it's so hard to find?

Ironcat, I disagree. I think you'll find that places with very liberal leanings are often just as tough on strip clubs. Ever try to get an LD in Boston? The extremests at both ends of the political spectrum try to tell everyone else how to live, it's the moderates who are most likely to leave you alone.

I enjoy conversation with people who are very different from me, I find I can sometimes something, and I enjoy trying to find out what makes them tick. I try never to pick the topic with a dancer, because then I'll end up doing all the talking. When I meet a new dancer who interests me appearance-wise, I ask her a bunch of very broad open-ended questions to try to get her to talk about things that interest her, and that usually will get someone to open up. That's when I find out whether or not I want to spend time with her. If she's an air-head she's one quick LD and gone (or I am); if she has some interesting things to say, I spend the rest of my time with her.

I hope I learned a long time ago never to allow it to get that far where a girl has the opportunity to piss me off. I'ts one of the most important lessons to learn when starting clubbing.

I agree with SLIDER and clubber - most don't care and it can sometimes be a slight plus. It's how you treat them that counts.

As an old guy I think age is irrelevant, if they can make a decent living at it they should be allowed to. I usually prefer the young ones myself, but that's more a function of how they act and look than their age. I would find an older girl who is young at heart and who takes good care of herself just as attractive, but that seems to be a rare combination. It gets harder as you age. I have found older dancers who I have enjoyed very much but it's been fairly rare. So I usually pursue the younger ones to improve my odds.

Evilcyn, I agree with every word you said. But I bet she wins a sizable settlement. Can you imagine the club's owner trying to convince a jury that yes she was required to get customers to buy her drinks but no they aren't responsible? He'd be laughed out of court. Which is why it'll never get there, they'll settle. I also agree with DancyDan, this is a common practice throughout the industry. But maybe it won't be for long.

I personally don't much care whether we ever allow drilling in northern Alaska or not and I don't have an agenda on the topic. I'm retired and don't drive much anymore and therefore I use little gasoline, so the price isn't a big deal to me. But what I do care about is when people who are in favor of some regulation or other try to convince the rest of us that the cost of the regulation is small or non-existent, which is almost never the case. In the case of oil, a very small change in either supply or demand has a huge impact on price because, as I already mentioned, the price is set at the margin. A very small increase in production would result in a large drop in price, just as a small increase in world-wide demand caused a huge increase. The cost of artifically restricting the domestic supply of oil has been huge, and the public should be made aware of that. Maybe that money could be better spent elsewhere, like finding a cure for cancer or providing health care for everyone. IMO that's a choice the public should be allowed to make, whith all the facts in hand. Let the public rather than the courts choose what it wants. And make all the facts available without bias. I believe in democracy - let the majority decide. That's my agenda.

Shadowcat, you just described the type of girl I look for in a club. Actually I look for a subset of those - the girl who fits your description but who is more intelligent than most of them. And if she's really intelligent, like my ATF, and you get to know her really well, you'll find that it's her act, she is very good at making money but pretends otherwise. That describes my ATF perfectly, an intelligent part girl who knew exactly what she was doing and having a lot of fun doing it.

I can see that some additional information is needed for my example. First of all, the place I described has a pretty unique situation. Their location is nearly perfect - they are on a main older commercial drag in a large and growing metro area and they're the only game in town, there aren't any other strip clubs within 20 miles in any direction. Second, they've been there forever, at least 25 years, and therefore are probably grandfathered in and it would prbably be impossible for anyone else to open a similar place nearby. So they get not only all the customers in the area, but the pick of the available dancers too. And they keep the dancers happy by letting them keep all their LD money (some of the girls make a ton in this place without having to work very hard - my ATF did.) And they have virtually no investment in the place, they spend very little on improvements and everything is probably fully depreciated. Which allows them to keep prices fairly low which is essential b3ecause they're in an ethnically diverse relatively low income area. (They also have almost no turnover - the barmaid who really runs the place has been there for over 25 years, and the girl at the door who is either her neice or daughter has been there at least 12 years. Many of the dancers have been there a very long time too. Which makes it easy to manage the place.) I don't believe that this place is at all typical, I think it's probably an extreme case, but there are probably other places doing as well out there, especially places in ethnic neighborhoods, small towns, and rural areas where there's little competition. As I've said before, I think there are probably two winning strategies for strip clubs: the no-frills low investment low overhead low price model, and the exact opposite, the high frills high investment model that makes lots of money from hiring lots of girls and charging top dollar. But the model you choose has to match your location, the second model won't work in a low income area and probably vice versa. My guess is that the places that follow neither of those models are the ones that often don't do very well. It's what used to be called "being caught in the middle" in Marketing 101.

I've written this before but not lately, so here goes again. The place where my ATF used to work is a tiny no-alcohol lap dance factory. The managers own the building, as did his father before him. He charges a $14 admission fee, and sells sodas, NA beer and bottled water for $4-5. There's a 2-drink minimum and each dancer must sell 5 drinks per shift. That's it, that's his income, he doesn't take anything from the dancers. Nor does he have any employee expenses, dancers tip out the only 2 employees - the girl at the door and the bartender. The place is open 2 am to 2 pm, 6 days a week. Girls work 2 shifts, 2 to 8, 8 to 2. The place is packed SRO on Friday and Saturday nights, busy on week nights, and fairly empty on week days. Girls must work a day shift to work Friday or Saturday night, so there are always girls there dancing, even when the place is fairly empty. So let's work through the owner's economics. He probably averages 30 customers (they come and go) during a typical week day, maybe 60 on a week night, and 120 on the weekend nights (these are pretty conservative guesses, the actual figures are probably higher.) Which means that 540 people walk through the door each week, at a take of maybe $22 per person = about $12000 a week or $600,000 a year. Subtract $100,000 for heat, light, insurance, maintenance, and other expenses (they're probably a whole lot less than that and a corner of the building is leased to a Chinese take-out place which probably covers all his ejxpenses but we won't count that.) So he clears conservatively $500,000 a year. Not bad for a tiny hole-in-the-wall cinder-block building kinda place that's been there for many years. Wish I owned it.