Comments by docsavage (page 46)

The comedian Norm MacDonald said most of the current late night hosts seem to be copying Jon Stewart and that's unfortunate. He said it ends up being a poor imitation since Stewart actually knew a lot about politics and they don't. He also said it's less interesting when everyone is doing the same thing. MacDonald was a cast member on Saturday Night Live back in the days when it was better than it is now.

There's always the problem of girls sitting down at your table uninvited. I've been going to clubs and that is the only thing that has been bothering me a little. It's unneeded close contact with multiple girls per club visit and I wish they would at least ask if I want company before they sit down. They are getting more aggressive since they aren't making as much money right now. I'm in good health, though, so I'm not terribly worried. I keep my weight down and I eat a good diet and take vitamin d, zinc, quercetin, and several other supplements. I've only been off sick from work 3 days in the last thirty years. I would say unless you are over 65 and have health problems it should be safe to go.

Great article and I agree changes in social attitudes and technological advances are the main causes of the decline. There a couple minor factors involved too. I've talked to long time dancers several times over the years and they say business never completely recovered after the 2008 economic crash. The 2006 peak in clubs happened just as the economy was peaking. The recovery after the 2008 crash was largely a mirage. Strip clubs are a luxury and people cut back on luxuries first when times get tough. Another factor is demographics. Girls who have worked in clubs a long time have told me the middle aged white guy customer was a main source of income and there are fewer of them now. Some causes may be the already mentioned elimination of clubbing as an allowable business expense and technology leading to more options, fewer traveling salesmen as more business is done on the internet, and the blocking of new clubs opening due changes in societal attitudes leaving more and more clubs in decaying city areas where they take on an increasingly ghetto feel that makes the old white guys feel out of place and less safe. You also have the middle aged customer of previous years aging and becoming too old for clubbing and being replaced by new middle aged men with different attitudes towards strip clubs. I started clubbing in 2009 so I've watched as the clubs have declined and have seen several close here in Indianapolis over the last ten years.

Some of the clubs here in Indiana never reopened after a month long shutdown here in the Spring. I think if the state government orders lockdowns then they should financially assist the businesses they shut down, both the owners and employees, and then increase taxes to pay for it. The voters can then decide if it is worth the higher taxes to keep businesses closed. The costs are falling disproportionately on certain groups while others receive the benefits. Andrew Cuomo in New York just announced they are going to start reopening businesses because if they don't there won't be anything left to reopen. They have had multiple extended lockdowns there.

One Indianapolis club, the Red Garter, went to socially distanced lap dances. I did one and the girl was about a dozen feet away from me the whole time. It really wasn't much different than sitting near the stage and looking at a girl dancing around on stage except I was having to pay normal lap dance prices for it. I went back about three weeks later and the club had almost no customers. Guys won't pay for that type of lap dance and aren't really that interested in just sitting and watching a stage show.

Every guy has a type. Fortunately we don't have exactly the same type because if we did we would all be trying to get lap dances from the same girl. I like girls who are shorter than me and weigh less than me and have dark hair. Most fashion models are actually taller than the type of girl I like. Some clubs see the tall fashion model type as the ideal type and pick that type of girl when hiring, which leaves me unhappy when I run into that.

Thanks, Nicespice, for the links.

JamesSD, I received two offers from women in a parking lot, one from a car and another with a girl walking up to me outside a chili parlor as I was leaving. Another offer was inside a combination gas station and convenience store. The gas station had an Arab guy working there who may not have understood English and couldn't tell what she was saying to me. She was telling me how good she could make me feel and reached out and touched my crotch. She looked young so I was wary of her. I told her I was too old for that and she was a pretty girl and could find a boyfriend and she didn't like hearing that. We have bad parts of town where guys might be approached for that but these areas were outside of that. I was dressed pretty conservatively and probably didn't look dangerous and also like I might have some money. My strip club offers from girls offering to see me outside the club usually involve situations where they decided I wasn't dangerous and they were a little desperate needing to get some bill paid. Some guys aren't aware how cautious women normally are since they are smaller and weaker than us men. Doing something like approaching a strange guy at night is not something they would do under normal conditions.

Mark94 says: "Here’s what I don’t get. There is a clear trend to legalizing drugs at the same time that government is criminalizing sex." I've had online conversations with a feminist female who opposes legalized prostitution. What she wants is a large welfare state, even to the point of having a UBI given to everyone automatically so they don't have to work. The goal here is to give women unrestricted sexual freedom to have sex with whoever they want. This means the good looking loser bad boy type. These types can't provide any financial support but with UBI in place women don't have to take that into consideration. The money for the UBI will be taken in taxes from the financially well off males. Why have legalized prostitution where women have to have sex in exchange for money when they can have the government just take the money from males and turn it over to them? We are not just talking about prostitution. Why marry some boring average guy just because he is a good provider when you can have the government step in and help pay the bills?

A lot of my regulars have left the clubs completely this year so they probably weren't making much money. Either they were weren't willing to do more and couldn't live just on lap dance money or were willing and didn't find enough takers for any offers to make it worthwhile to stick around. The surprising thing for me is not the offers from strippers but from other women. I've had three women in the last 9 months come up to me in public and offer to do something with me. Normally this happens maybe once every fifteen years so three times in one year is a lot. I don't think they want to do this either. When I politely declined with one, as I was walking off she yelled "don't judge me" in my direction. I wasn't mentally judging her at all so it was all in her own head that I was thinking something negative about her. The epidemic has not just put a financial strain on strippers but on many women. The lockdowns have thrown many of them out of a job and even the ones with a job like waitresses have reduced incomes because of reduced business.

When I started going to clubs about ten years ago there were around eighteen clubs in my city, Indianapolis, and one of the main appeals of the hobby was the variety available. The numbers of clubs dropped over the years and with four closing just this year due to Covid we are down to around half as many. We haven't had a new club open in this city for 25 years so I don't foresee any new ones. The legal climate is less friendly now as far as opening a new club with zoning changes and getting the necessary licenses now more difficult. Strip clubs are kind of a throwback to an earlier era and both the religious fundamentalist right and feminist left see them as exploitative of women. Covid has changed the club going habits of many older customers and in many cases they will never go back to the same frequency of visits as before. Beside Covid, there has also been big increases in crime the last year and with the "defund the police" movement this will continue. At least some suburban customers will be more hesitant to go into crime filled big cities to visit a strip club. The economy may not recover quickly. The Fed printed up 220 billion dollars last month to buy treasury bonds and all the money printing is causing the value of the dollar to drop. Inflation will start causing price increases which will leave less disposal income for many people. Artificially induced low interest rates by the Fed caused a shale oil bubble but this is popping and oil prices are headed up. Many small businesses will not open again and the reduction in tax revenues will cause state and city governments to raise tax rates to make up for loss of revenue. With higher prices and higher taxes, many customers will have to decrease their strip club spending and this will hurt the clubs.

I've been seeing girls getting more aggressive lately and doing things like sitting down at customer tables uninvited and trying to talk customers into doing lap dances. They have always done that to a certain extent but it's worse now. It backfires because a lot of customers don't like it and stop showing up at the club as often. Then the small crowds get even smaller.

I think most wealthier men who would worry about the stigma attached to paid sex would just get a girlfriend. It would take a lot of time to learn "Game"and it might have limited effectiveness. There has been a decline in the number of pua blogs and books in recent years and I attribute that to a declining interest in it because of many guys trying it out and finding what is promised doesn't match the actual results. I also think women have become more aware of pua tactics and that has made them less effective. I've heard strippers laughing about some guy trying to "neg" them or engage in some other form of pua manipulation. Most men in high income professions probably work long hours so trying to pick up girls is for guys with less money and more time. Also, once you get up to the age of forty or fifty it becomes harder to pick up the 22 year old girl so you would tend to rely more on your money rather than spending time learning pickup lines.

I named myself after a thirties pulp fiction character. He preceded later comic book characters like Superman and Batman and was an influence on the the development of those characters. His pulp fiction stories were reprinted in the seventies as paperbacks and I read a large number of them as a teenager.

Wallanon asked if there was an inspiration for the thread. This was mostly something that accumulated slowly over a long period of time. It was a slow shift from having about a dozen girls I knew over the years pretty well. There were a couple of things recently that got me to think more about it. First with the Covid-19 coming along, there were clubs locking down and even when they were open there were fewer customers. This seemed to have caused a lot of girls I know in their late twenties to finally leave stripping. One girl in particular named Fiona was leaving who I had known the longest. I mentioned I wouldn't see her after she left and she looked angry and said "why not"? I thought she might be the one I might still see. When she actually left, though, she didn't call and would cancel out if I called and we made plans to go somewhere. Either she realized she didn't want to spend time with some old guy former customer or she was planning to drop me all along and was just annoyed I was thinking of dropping her first. I was only going to drop her because I automatically assumed she wouldn't want to see me in the future. So my longest regular was like that in not wanting to see me after her stripping days were over along with the other previous girls. The other thing was the only pet I've ever had, a cat, died recently of old age. I was always protective of him and wouldn't let him outside and was unhappy when he was gone. My sister, on the other hand, has had lots of cats. She lets them run around outside and if they get killed or just run off it's not a big deal to her because she has had so many of them. She kind of sees cats as I've come to see strippers, just something that is around temporarily that is friendly for a little while because you give it something it wants (food for cats, money for strippers) but may leave at any time and can easily be replaced.

I thought all the comments were interesting, especially the comment by Warrior15 who has been going to clubs since his twenties. I never went to a club in my twenties or thirties and have always wondered if the girls would have treated me differently than they do now as a middle aged guy. Would they have been more or less friendly, done more or less on the lap dances, or been more or less willing to see me outside the club and even date me as a twenty something? Warrior15 said his youthful efforts to date them were mostly unsuccessful, he saw them as pieces of meat to use sexually in middle age, and in old age there has been another shift to sugar daddy relationships. I think if I had gone in my twenties I would have had limited success with the girls too but might have had better luck with the average girls or the single moms since that was what happened with non-stripper females in my twenties. I don't see many long term relationships ever having developed with a stripper if I had started going at a younger age. I go out various places and never run into a stripper I know so me and them don't have the same interests at all.

I'm a little surprised the Evansville, Indiana clubs are open this late. The Indianapolis clubs are closing at midnight due to the COVID-19 thing and I think the Hip Hugger up in Kokomo may have closed at midnight too last time I was up there. I should make a trip to Evansville sometime to see the clubs there. We had a shooting at the Pony here in Indianapolis a year or two back. A customer was kicked out of the club and then drove around in his car by the entrance and shot the security guy standing outside. It may not be a good idea for a club to have their security guys standing outside where they can make an easy target.

I don't agree with the MGTOW philosophy but the people who attack it never ask themselves why it is more popular now than it was forty years ago when it was uncommon enough there wasn't even an acronym for it. I'm 64 years old. Looking at younger women, I see a lot of tatted up promiscuous females who go for bad boy loser types when they are young and at the peak of their beauty. Then, when they are on the downhill slide in looks and are the 30 year old single mom, want the same guys they previously ignored to marry them and take care of them and the bad boy loser's kids. If I were young I would still look for a girlfriend but I can kind of understand the reluctance of some younger guys to spend time on that and just be the slacker type who doesn't spend a lot of time trying to please women, doesn't work hard and just enjoys life.

I go to several clubs and have a regular in every one. One of my friends said it sounds like I have a "girl in every port". I get enough variety because I see each girl only once every month and they all eventually leave so I can replace them with a new girl when they do. If I want a little more variety I visit a club in another city. They don't know me well but they know me well enough that when they see me they will often come over to my table. I'm that guy who comes to see them about once a month. Also, when I go to clubs in different parts of town I will eat in a nearby restaurant and visit some local store or park so I get variety in those areas too.

I set down a pair of glasses once at a club and someone stole them. Why steal something like that? It's not like you have the same eyesight as me and can wear the same pair I do. That's not the biggest ripoff I encountered, though. One time I had a girl charge me forty dollars for a lap dance in a club where dances are really half that, as I found out on a later visit. On top of that, she danced around in front of me without touching me and was smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke in my face while doing the dance. I rate that as my all time worst lap dance.

To answer the question posed by adjudicator Electronman on why so many positive reviews of this club, it's several things. The prices are in line with other clubs in the city and may be slightly lower than some. Extras are rare, though not impossible, and that is also like many other clubs in the city. Indiana is a fairly conservative state. Club Rio has the reputation of having the most extras but when I go there the attractiveness of the girls doesn't impress me. In one recent review at another strip club website a Club Rio girl was described as"missing several teeth". That wouldn't happen at Brad's. Many customers care as much how girls look as how much they will do and Brad's has the most attractive girls. It is seen as a slightly higher class club than many city clubs and has decent management so the best girls want to work here. Many of my favorites at other clubs ended up heading to Brad's eventually.

I was the one who posted this for discussion and I think the observations given about these girls are accurate and the solutions given are ones I've not been following so I run into more of this than other customers. To sum up, dancers react according to their current emotional state and their emotional state is always changing so their reactions are always changing too. Some of them have psychological, drug or alcohol problems and that exacerbates the problem of erratic behavior. Women also like drama and some of their behavior can be explained as a desire to manufacture drama where none exists. To counteract this and get them to behave better would be to act a little less eager to please, don't put up with bad behavior, drop them and find someone else if bad behavior persists, and don't reward the bad behavior by throwing more money at them.

Good comparison. I wrote something like this in one of the PUA blogs one time, Roissy aka Chateau Heartiste, and the proprietor did a whole post where he took my comment and attacked it. When I tried to respond in the comments, I found I had been banned on a permanent basis. For someone who is such an Alpha male, he certainly seemed very thin skinned and touchy. I think the fact that he wouldn't get into an exchange with me is a sign he was in a bit of denial. I noticed this similarity between PUA types and strippers when I started reading a site for strippers, stripper web, and noticed the advice given was somewhat like the advice given on the PUA blogs. For example, they both say you should act like a high value person, act like you are the prize and maintain an aloof attitude. Any guy who goes to strip clubs knows that only the really attractive girls could get away with that and if an average or below average girl tried it then it wouldn't work. Pretending to be a hot girl isn't going to make all the customers think you really are one and the same thing would be true about PUA types in their interactions with women. There was a period when there were a lot of PUA books and blogs but the numbers have declined in recent years. Partly this is because average guys who tried to follow the advice found it had limited usefulness. Some of it was of value but too many guys expected a magic formula they could use instead of making the effort to improve their appearance, personality or financial situation. Others realized that changes needed to be made at the societal level involving things like excessive welfare or affirmative action for women or unfair divorce laws that benefit women and the focus should be put more on that.

JamesSD says young women have extremely high sexual value and young men resent them using it for economic gain. I've noticed this in strip clubs where you sometimes see resentment among younger men that us older men are getting attention from the strippers. As an older guy, though, looking at things from the other side I see very attractive young women throwing away their prime years on loser boyfriends. By the age of thirty, many of them have three or four kids and it wasn't usually the older strip club customers getting to be the ones having sex with them and impregnating them.

Instead of a one size fits all strategy it seems like it would be better to look at your goals and then look at your resources to achieve those goals. Let's take looking for sex as a primary goal instead of another goal like finding a relationship. An older man who is less attractive but has a lot of money could use his money to get sex. A really good looking guy who doesn't have a high income could use his looks. A guy who is an entertaining conversationalist could use that. For me, I had a wife and some girlfriends when I was younger but I've reached the stage now where I'm happy living alone. I can do what I want when I feel like it. I'm set in my ways and wouldn't want the disruption of having someone live me. I still like female company, though. So leaving home and going to a strip club and then leaving the club when I get bored and coming back home by myself works out for me. For a guy in a different situation, though, he might want to do something different. I have read PUA blogs like Roosh and Roissy. There's some useful information in there but they over promise how effective their methods are. Stripperweb with all of its unrealistic tips on how to make thousands of dollars a night as a stripper reminds me of some of the PUA blogs giving advice on how to bed down dozens of beautiful women.