Comments by docsavage (page 45)

Sex is an anomaly in that it is the one thing where it is illegal to sell but legal to give away for free. I don't think I would want a hooker standing on the sidewalk in front of my house plying her trade but discreet paid sex between consenting adults should be allowed. Vice laws should also reflect local values. I've made about 500 strip club visits in Indiana and have never seen anyone arrested in a club for prostitution. Does that happen in other states? I have heard about girls doing illegal activities in the club. I've also heard about girls getting fired for this but that is usually a case where they were doing it too openly.

Probably 30 total. When I started clubbing there were 18 clubs in Indianapolis and I went around to all of them at least once to see what they were like. Some were so bad I never went back to them. I have also been to six other smaller city Indiana clubs. Outside of Indiana, I went to three clubs in Dayton and three in Las Vegas. Dayton is like Indianapolis but Vegas is completely different. The Vegas girls were prettier but a little less friendly. In Indianapolis with few tourists and mostly locals they think you might come back if they are extra nice.

The novel "Going All the Way" is about the nineteen fifties written by someone who lived through that era. The book has a chapter where the two main characters visit several strip clubs in Calumet City. The clubs are described as filled with steel mill workers and sailors and all on one street along with bars with no stage shows but where you can pay girls to sit with you and do a little touching. Nothing like a lap dance is described as being available in either the bars or the strip joints. I first visited a strip club in the nineteen eighties in Indianapolis with some friends. There was a stage show but no stage tipping where customers could momentarily touch the girls. The girls looked unfriendly, never came to our table and there was no dj encouraging customers to take the girls back to a private room. I'm pretty sure there were no lap dances. I didn't like it and didn't go back to a club until 25 years later in 2010. I saw customers going up to the stage to tip girls. I did the same thing and the girl smiled at me and said I could touch her so I did. Then she asked if I would like to go do a lap dance and we went and did one. I had been living next to the club a couple decades and had never visited but would have earlier if I had known that clubs had changed since the eighties.

One of our local Indianapolis clubs recently switched from rock to hip hop when a new manager came from a club in Louisville and switched to the rock format that was successful down there. It didn't work here and the customers declined and that caused a drop in earning for the girls. I heard this from my regular in the club. I told her I thought stripper earnings would have increased because older guys have more money and they would be more attracted by a rock format. She said it's true they have more money but they are a day crowd and most of the girls work at night and the night crowd is a hip hop crowd.

I live ten minutes away from three Indianapolis clubs and the close proximity of three clubs was probably a major reason I picked up the hobby. I think some younger guys aren't picking up the strip club habit because people are moving further out as the inner city declines and new clubs are being legally blocked out in the suburbs where they are moving to. That means increased travel time and going into increasingly dangerous neighborhoods to clubs that look a little old and rundown. The closing of a nearby army base used to be blamed for the decline but that closed a long time ago and there has been a continued steady decline since then.

One mistake young guys make is that they think strippers are just being friendly because they are trying to get money out of you but other women aren't like that. When you get older you realize all women are being friendly to you because they want something out of you. They want your money or they think your handsome and want sex or they think you are funny and want to be entertained and so on. If you don't have anything they want they just ignore you. There's nothing wrong with that and they have a right to ignore you if they want to. So you can get some form of validation from women in multiple ways. You might be a guy with a successful career who makes a high income. That means you can have the impressive house or fancy car or get attractive women to have sex with you or even just spend time with you. That can be a form of validation and ego booster too, just a different type of validation than the female noticing you because you look good. If it's important to you to get women to want to have sex with you based on your looks, then spend time on things like working out and improving your diet instead of your career. If you are doing that, though, a strip club might not be the best place to go to because they are needing to pay their bills and are focused there on who has the money, not who looks the best.

I mostly just read reviews of Indianapolis clubs. With the exception of Brad's Brass Brass Flamingo, which seems like it gets reviews from everyone visiting here, there are not a lot of reviews and no regular local club reviewer. I think I may be the most regular reviewer of local clubs. I will occasionally read reviews of other cities just out of curiosity and to see how they compare to Indianapolis but not enough to find favorite reviewers. Indianapolis seems not to be typical. There are few in the club extras here because it is a conservative state. I recently started a discussion about stripper heights where I said strippers are taller than the average female, basing it on what I see here, and everyone else said that's not true anywhere else. I've heard numerous stripper stories about managers coming in from other cities and flopping here when they try to run Indy clubs the same way they successfully ran clubs where they came from. I plan to do more traveling in a few years when I retire and I may start picking up favorite reviewers when I start to research clubs in other cities in advance of visiting them.

A just published Wall Street Journal article says that the number of U.S. cases of Covid may actually be much higher than the official number, with maybe 60% having had it. This would bring us close to herd immunity by April. There has already been a 75% drop in daily cases from the peak as the disease finds it harder and harder to find individuals with no immunity from previous exposure. I've been going to Indianapolis clubs for a couple months and there's been a slow increase in customers and return to normality. We went from six foot away air dances in the beginning to almost pre-Covid levels of physical contact now. The areas of the country that haven't opened up should see the same thing when they do. Our missing members should come slowly trickling back as the rest of the clubs reopen.

"Hey doc, no disrespect but hundreds of visits in the same metro area still translates to a small sample size if you're trying to generalize for all US clubs." Wallanon, you may be right on that. Someone who travels a lot and does lots of visits to clubs in different cities would have the best idea. Any travelers out there, what do you see in the way of regional variations? If Indianapolis strippers are taller than ones in other cities and I like shorter girls then I'm just out of luck living here. I like ethnic variety too and Indianapolis may be lacking in that area also, though that seems to be changing in recent years. I can usually find someone I like but maybe a third of the time walk out without doing any lap dances.

I think there are enough comments I can see what direction this is going in. Based on hundreds of strip club visits and paying attention because I like shorter girls and look for them, I think the average stripper is taller than the average female. Not a lot taller but at least a couple inches over the 5'4" norm. I've asked several strippers at about that average height if there are more girls in their club taller than them or shorter than them and they say taller so that's further verification. I think, though, I'm an anomaly among customers in noticing that because most strip club customers don't care about height. People don't notice what they aren't looking for even if it is right under their nose. There is also a selection process going on in clubs where there being more of a certain type of girl also changes the type of customer because there are more customers who like that type who come in while guys who don't like that type stay away. So, for example, if there is a club where all the strippers are old, tall, fat, ugly women then the typical customer will be a guy who likes old, tall, fat, ugly women or is at least indifferent to those characteristics and therefore doesn't even notice them. Every other guy will just stay away from that club.

They both are a little too old to be strippers. A 45 year old is someone you might want to have as a girlfriend if you are a middle aged guy but there is really no reason to be spending a lot of money down at a strip club on someone that age.

I see plenty of fat girls in clubs but it's always different fat girls. They usually don't make much money so after a few weeks they give up and quit. There's always new ones coming in, though, to replace them. I see the occasional one who is kind and friendly who I feel sorry for that she can't make money but I don't like most of them I meet in clubs very much because many of them can become overly aggressive and then hostile if I show reluctance to spend money on them. I've also had my regulars tell me some of the fat girls are rude to them and try to drive them out of the club. That's another reason for me not liking them, them trying to drive out my favorite girls. It's becoming increasingly difficult to criticize females for their weight because it's considered "fat shaming" and the mainstream media increasingly pushes the attempt to portray overweight females as sexy and desirable while portraying males who oppose that as being sexist and backwards.

It's bad here in Indiana right now because it's mostly too cold to go outside and take a walk all through winter. Normally I would walk around the building where I work but we are all teleworking from home now. That leaves stores that sell food, since they are considered essential businesses and are allowed to be open. More recently, shopping malls have reopened with limited hours. Last Saturday night I went to a Target store and just circled around the store several times.

The club decline is being driven by it being increasingly difficult to open new clubs due to local governments using all the tools available to them to block them. Behind that are societal changes with stripper jobs being seen as more demeaning and exploitative by the general public. I've had long time strippers tell me the average earnings per girl has dropped and the change in customer composition is more a factor than change in number of customers. A main source of income was middle aged white guys and that demographic is decreasing. Neighborhoods decline over time as people move further out to the suburbs. All the clubs are stuck in the old declining neighborhoods since they can't open in a new location due to local government actions. The neighborhood locals hang out in the clubs and give them a more dangerous vibe. There are more fights and more open drug dealing going on in the clubs than what I've seen in the past. We have even had several shootings here in the Indianapolis clubs in recent years. This scares off the old white guys with money. So in the future, the clubs will take on an increasingly ghetto feel as the customer base moves in that direction. It will be more young guys, more nonstop hip hop music, declining stripper incomes, and less attractive strippers since attractive young women have better options than low paid work that has lost any glamour it might have once had in an earlier era.

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Whodey, thanks for the update. I've seen comments at another customer forum and also talked to a few girls who worked there or another club, Harem House, that had the same previous owner. I hear different things so have been waiting for some sign like this. I had heard previously neither HH or Babes were going to reopen, HH would reopen as a restaurant but Babes wouldn't reopen since the person who bought HH didn't buy Babes, and that HH would reopen as a strip club but Babes hadn't been bought by the person who bought HH. I live nearby so those were my two main clubs since I started clubbing in 2009. Indianapolis has started blocking new clubs with zoning and licensing laws as societal attitudes change and those and other older clubs have declined as the surrounding neighborhoods declined. It was worse for those two since a nearby army base closed a number of years back. The girls had also told me the owner died and the new one treated them poorly. Many of the best girls left. Babes had one manager who reversed the decline a little with Fiona as a bartender and Honey, Miami, and Alize as strippers but he got fired by the new owner and after that the decline accelerated. The manager who got fired, though, showed a well run club with management who treats their girls good would still work there.

We had a local club here in Indianapolis, PT's, where each dancer was allowed to set her own lap dance prices. The average price went from $25 per dance up to $40 or $50. The dancer thinking seemed to be if I charge twice as much I'll make twice as much money. The numbers of customers slowly declined as they switched over to other clubs with lower set prices and the ones who did show up bought fewer dances. The empty club gave a creepy vibe to the place instead of the previous party atmosphere and that further decreased numbers of customers. Eventually the club required a lower set price. The girls on their own never figured out the high prices weren't working and voluntarily lowered their prices.

Indiana had a couple of strip club shutdowns lasting only a month or so each and even then there was some attrition with dancers not returning. When the clubs reopened there was an initial surge in customers but that leveled off after a couple weeks and then the new normal was fewer customers and fewer girls. It's hard to tell yet if we will ever return to as it was in pre-Covid days. Weren't the Michigan shutdowns much longer? If so, expect not to see some of your favorite regulars when you go back.

Some of the most attractive females age the fastest because they don't take care of themselves. When I'm in the clubs I'll see girls who had more guys asking for lap dances than they could get to several years ago. Now these same girls get passed over for younger girls. It's very difficult to keep the weight down and avoid the cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. In a strip club, very few people are looking for long term relationships. This helps the hottest girls when they are young but hurts them as they age because many of their regulars abandon them. There have been times I wanted to continue to go see a regular but her physical decline and the fact there aren't many guys who want to stick with a girl when this decline happens forced her out of the business. Since the girls only cared about how much money the guys had, the guys only cared about how the girls looked.

There was a big spike in deaths in the Spring but the all cause mortality now isn't any higher than normal for this time of year. Flu deaths are down so there is a possibility they are being categorized as Covid deaths. Hospitals are given extra money by the federal government for each Covid case so this gives them a financial incentive to label deaths from the flu and other diseases as being caused by Covid. This inflates the numbers of cases and deaths. Part of the higher all cause mortality for the year are also lockdown deaths from people who didn't get diagnosis and treatment for other diseases and deaths of despair from suicides and drug overdoses. Covid is more than "just the flu" but these other factors make it seem worse than it is. In addition to numbers of cases, the severity of the disease is exaggerated. People were asked in a poll what percentage of deaths are among people under sixty. The response was 20% while the reality is 2%. People think this is worse than it is. If you are under sixty in good health there is a 99% recovery rate even if you do get it. You are taking risks when you go to a club but you need to have an accurate assessment of the risks when doing a cost-benefit analysis.

First, let me say anyone should do what they like. Every option has pros and cons. In the club activities are usually safer and you have choices and you can see ahead of time what you are getting. It's not like a massage parlor where you might end up with a fifty year old Asian woman or an escort who doesn't look like her picture. Many cities, though, such as Indianapolis where I live have limited in the club possibilities. Because of greater risks due to the stricter legal environment, only girls who are desperate or a bit crazy and reckless are readily available. The desperate ones are usually desperate because they aren't attractive enough to make money just selling lap dances and the crazy ones are unpredictable. I've decided not to do either in the club or outside the club illegal activities here. Even if you don't do this, there's plenty to enjoy at the strip club. It beats going to a regular bar and sitting and drinking while watching a bunch of other guys sitting and drinking.

Here in Indianapolis the best clubs mostly match the clubs on this site with the most reviews. Brad's Brass Flamingo has the most reviews and most strip clubbers here would think that was the best. The exception is when a club changes owners and takes a nosedive. Based on number of reviews, Harem House is the third best club but has declined in recent years. You might want to just take number of reviews for a shorter time period, like last 4 years. Also, the Pony here doesn't have many reviews but that is because a lot of its reviews are under its previous name, Rick's Cabaret. Same club at same location but different name and owner.

My previous comment just posted without me hitting the post button before I finished. I never had that happen before. My last sentence would have been you can also see girls switching by educational or class level, such as the smart girl who pretends to be dumb with some customers.

If codeswitching is what I think it is, then that is something people do all the time. For example, if you visit your grandmother you are not the same person as when you hang out with your friends. The most obvious example in a strip club is how pretty young strippers treat you in the club versus how they treat you in the real world. In the real world, they would just ignore an old guy like me. I never went to clubs when I was the same age as these girls so I wasn't able to see if their interactions with me would have been different back then and, if so, how. Judging from how the girls act around younger customers,they seem to have more to talk about with them and like hanging out and socializing with them more. If they do spend time with me, it's usually because they think I might have more money to spend. Beside in the club versus outside the club, I also think strippers try to read a customer to see what he wants. They can go from sexy girl to friendly girl. I've even seen strippers try to mother guys. One time a regular offered to sew up some holes in my coat pockets. You can

I usually look for a girl who looks like she is shorter than me and weighs less than me. Usually the more petite the better as long as they are young and attractive. If the girl smiles when I approach her and say something to her that's also a good sign. Beside a girl being too tall, heavyset or unfriendly the only other turnoff is if she has noticeable body odor.