Comments by docsavage (page 48)

SaltyNuts says: "In Arizona I haven't found this to be true, the clubs are full even with some stricter dance floor contact." Thanks for the report. Here in Indianapolis they aren't able to open until June 14th. I've been looking for any information I can find about what is happening in other states as they reopen their clubs.

If you are under 50 years old even if you get it you aren't likely to die. About half of everyone who gets it is asymptomatic and don't even know they had it. Once you've had it you develop at least some immunity to it. Beside wearing a mask and washing your hands, you can also take supplements that boost your immune system like zinc, vitamin d and quercetin. If you are over 65 with health problems then you should stay away until a vaccine comes. I would see a lot of older guys when I went to clubs, mostly earlier in the day or evening, and a lot of money was being spent by them so them not showing up will hurt business.

I went once in my thirties and had a bad experience with the girls being unfriendly and didn't go back for 20 years. I lived by a club in my fifties for several years, never went in, and then just decided one day to stop in just out of curiosity. There was a really cute dancer on stage who was really friendly when I approached the stage. I did a couple lap dances with her and enjoyed it enough I was hooked and then started going regularly. If I had gone in and had a second bad experience in my life I probably would never have been in a club in my life again and would have missed out on a lot of fun. I just had good luck that day.

I've been thinking I don't miss going to clubs as much as I thought I would. Like Papi_Chulo said above, the first couple weeks were the hardest. I got the internet at home so I can telework from there during this and I've been spending my non-work time surfing the internet, hiking in parks more and various other hobbies I haven't spent much time on in recent years after I started up the strip club hobby. My health is better and I feel more financially secure because I'm saving money now. My two regular dancers retired right before the shutdowns and the clubs in my area have been declining. When I go back I'll go less often and skip spending a lot of money on any one girl.

The idea of six foot away air dances is not going to be very appealing to most customers in most parts of the country. It would be nice to talk to a pretty girl and look at her but I personally can't see paying pre-shutdown prices for that experience on a regular basis. Some of the clubs are going out of business and there are going to be unemployed former strippers when they do.

I'm probably saving about $800 a month. I was saving about that much a month until about 10 years ago. When I had saved up about sixty thousand dollars I asked myself what was the purpose of increasing it further since I can't take it with me. So for the last 10 years I've spent everything I earn and just keep the money I saved previously as a rainy day fund.

I can imagine strip clubs being the very last thing to open up. There are other businesses like dentists and barber shops where you might have some incidental physical contact but those are both considered necessities. By the time the clubs open back up everyone who was going to get the disease probably will have already gotten it. The oldest customers who might still transmit it or catch it, to the extent it still exists, are also going to be frightened about going back so the clubs are going to be filed with younger people who won't have to worry much.

Other than not being able to go to the strip club, keeping everything closed is not a problem for me. All my coworkers at work are teleworking and I am by myself so I can sit at my desk and floss my teeth and take off my shoes and socks and cut my toenails. I don't need to go to the store because I have a secret vault filled with rolls of toilet paper. When I started staying home at night my cat was bothering me more for food. He sees me as a giant cat food can opener. I solved that problem. I started picking up my guitar and playing it while singing to him and he would get a disgusted look on his face and leave the room.

I volunteer to be the first person to get a lap dance.

I know what three did. One decided to retire from stripping. The second went to visit some relatives who have been asking her to visit. The third moved to another state. All three were going to do that eventually but this sped up the process.

"It is imperative we work our way out of the lockdowns as quickly as possible." I agree with that. Some sort of lockdown was clearly needed in order to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients as happened in Italy. It's going to be a tough decision on when to reopen, especially since we have little recent experience with this sort of thing. I'm 63 and and have never seen a major disease epidemic and never thought I would. I can remember my father talking about his mother getting the Spanish flu in 1918 when she was a girl and a brother of his catching and passing away from tuberculosis when that disease was common but hearing about something is nothing like living through it.

"I love all the pretend concern about the youth -- the ones who have the most time to rebuild their wealth." How are they going to be able to "rebuild their wealth" when the negative economic effects of the shutdown lead to high unemployment levels and they can't get a job? Since this is a strip club site, do you think out of work girls are going to be able to switch to working in a strip club and make money when a lot of the former customers are out of work too? How are they going to "rebuild their wealth" when the government adds another several trillion dollars onto the national debt on top of the 23 trillion already there in order to try to deal with the effects of the shutdown? How are they going to "rebuild their wealth" when all the government money printing to counteract the shutdown leads to hyperinflation? Did the young people in Weimar Germany "rebuild their wealth" during and after the twenties hyperinflation there?

"I love all the pretend concern about the youth -- the ones who have the most time to rebuild their wealth." It's interesting to know that you can read my mind and can see my concern is pretend. How long have you had that superpower?

There is a saying that old men start wars and young men die in them. Older politicians and the large Boomer generation that supports them may have started a war against the coronavirus where the costs fall disproportionately on the younger people. The old people were able to enjoy their youth but aren't letting young people do the same thing. Because of the economic damage from the shutdowns, we may have more suicides and deaths from alcohol abuse. That happened in Russia in the nineties when their economy went into a collapse. Young people may not be able to afford to get married or have kids. If children are not born in the future they won't be counted as deaths but do we really want someone to not be able to be born and live for 80 years so an old person can live another year or two?

"No need to guess on that -- from data so far, they're achieving what was hoped for, the curves are flattening, and predictably, those who SIPed first are the ones seeing their curves flattening first, as a general rule." The people who wanted shutdowns were predicting extremely high levels of deaths if they weren't done. If the shutdowns are not as effective as originally thought, then the numbers of deaths we are seeing may be close to the number that would have happened anyway. The shutdowns may have just spread the deaths out over a slightly longer period of time while not decreasing the total numbers of deaths by a large number. In exchange for this, we may have damaged the economy for years to come. The hardships coming from that may cause additional future deaths.

The mayor of Chicago got angry when she was asked why she had her hair just done by a hair stylist when no one else in the city is allowed to go to the barber or hair salon. Like in Orwell's "Animal Farm", all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Indianapolis used to have a nice strip club row. Harem House, Babes and PT's were all on Pendleton Pike. There were also porn video stores and massage parlors. This was probably due to it being near an interstate exit and also an army base with a lot of young guys away from their girlfriends. Since the base closed and the area got poorer the clubs have declined.

I was thinking about going back on my birthday, June 28. If the government keeps the clubs closed all through May, though, I may become annoyed that they are overdoing it and not letting me make my own decision about when it is safe for me to go back and not letting the other customers, girls and club staff make their own decision when it is safe for them to go back. So I may end up going the first day they open back up. You have to be aware that there are authoritarian types who will use this as an attempt to increase their power.

"Strip clubs get lots of older guys (50+) many of whom have underlying conditions - not sure I understand your premise." I can see what you are saying. The general population wouldn't have to worry much about visiting a club. Those between 60 and 70 have a two thirds lower death rate from the disease than those over 70. For those between 50 and 60 the death rate is even lower. In Italy, one of the hardest hit countries, the average age of death was 78. Ninety percent of those deaths involved people with other health problems. There aren't a lot of guys in their seventies in the clubs. The ones who are that old should reconsider going, especially if they do have health problems. A healthy person in their fifties or early sixties shouldn't worry a lot. Many of the people in that age group who have serious health problems probably aren't going to clubs. They can't work and are on disability and can't afford to go. I do think there are enough older guys with health problems who will decide not to go that it will cause a problem for the clubs. I'm 63. I probably won't go until July just to be safe and once I do go I won't go as often as I did before. This seems like a good time to find other hobbies.

This may not result in high numbers of deaths. Daily new infections are declining in Italy. It appears the disease may look for and infect people with weakened immune systems while passing over healthy people. Once it has found and infected the subcategory of susceptible individuals new cases decline. The shutdowns may just spread the number of infections and deaths out over a longer period of time rather than decreasing them. What this means for strip clubs is people may not be at high risk while visiting them in the future though the clubs will have to worry about eager lawyers filing lawsuits for the people who do become infected. We have 60,000 people who die every year from the flu but people haven't been avoiding strip clubs up until now because of that.

I agree with this. Strip clubs may become a little more like brothels, wherever that is legal. Maybe not forever but at least for awhile. Strippers will need to undergo regular testing and customers will need to take measures to protect the girls like wearing face masks or at least washing their hands or having their temperature taken. Air dances in clubs will be more common and the old time strip club where the girl just strips while the customers watch may come back. The possible legal liability will encourage clubs to do this. Some of the older customers will want this but some of the younger customers won't so the clubs will need to decide who to placate. I think the economic effects of the coronavirus will last even longer. As the recession takes hold, more girls will try to strip as other jobs become scarce. This will give customers more choice initially but in the long run the extra girls will find that a lot of the customers have lost their jobs too and don't have much money to spend. Many of the girls will then give up and quit. Some of the marginal clubs will then go under. From what I've read, strip clubs don't qualify for the small business loans in the stimulus bill. There will then be fewer clubs, strippers and customers overall but some of the remaining clubs may have about the same number of customers as customers from closed clubs move over to them.

"They can make more than $600 a week. Its not an incentive to not work. You can't live off of that." The $600 is just the additional amount the federal government is adding on top of state benefits, not the total amount. Average state benefits are around $280. As I mentioned in my original post above, the top earners are not going to be tempted by this. There are plenty of girls who only make between a hundred and two hundred a shift in many parts of the country. Getting close to $900 a week will tempt them to stay off, especially since there will still be a possibility of catching coronavirus for some time to come and a job where you come into close physical contact with a lot of strangers will be the type of job where you would get it. I would agree with theDirkDiggler above, though, that if and when the waiver ends and everyone is required to look for a job the former strippers will be back in the club. So will a lot of new girls who lost their old jobs. There will also be plenty of customers who lost their old jobs and they won't be there in the future.

"Also, if the governments are smart (big if), they'll treat dancers as furloughed workers instead of independent contractors. " I hope you are right about this and your other comments are also right. The long term negative economic impact of this is going to be bad and may be made worse by poorly thought out plans to help people. If the government wisely does what you say they will, we will be ok here. I agree with those that say some short term government assistance is needed here.

"you assume they will be responsible with this money and not piss it away the day they get it." They may piss away the $600 the moment they get it but they'll get another $600 the next week as long as they stay unemployed. There is an incentive here not to go back to work.

Like nickifree just said, the federal government is going to add $600 a week to whatever they get from the state. This extra $600 will last four months, probably until the end of July. I haven't seen anything saying this stops if the former employer opens back up and offers an employee their job back. You could have the clubs opening back up in late May or in June but some of the girls won't want to come back as long as the government check keeps coming. This will leave the clubs understaffed. Being understaffed, one unintended consequence may be that some of them may go out of business which may create more unemployment in the long run.