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12 years ago
If I could make any suggestion it would be to use backpage for escorts rather than massage and use a massage specific review site like rubmaps.com for massage parlors.
The big difference between massage parlors and strip clubs is that massage parlors are a more relaxed vibe, more of a pampering than 'action' and no game-playing.
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12 years ago
By tipping $20 up front for no reason he intentionally gives the impression that he has a lot of money and can be manipulated into giving it away. In the dancer's mind the underlying tone of the rest of the 'relationship' in her mind is going to be built on that template.
Want to go to a club and get sex?
1. Find a club where the girls offer sex.
2. Go there.
If you really want to prove that your game is still there try to get pussy in the real world.
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12 years ago
Having done some gigs as a musician I have some sympathy with how it is to be in a venue and performing and nobody is paying any attention at all. I can only imagine how worse it would be if you are literally up there naked.
When I did my series of articles on building the perfect strip club I had there be three song sets. There was the introduction song which wasn't actually on stage, the performance song, and the tip collection song. There were a couple of rules regarding the 'performance song'.
1. All club employees in the lounge area applaud at the start and end of the song.
2, Any dancer with a customer in the lounge area they 'watch the dancer together' during the performance song. They can still talk and she can still be selling a private dance, but they don't leave until the performance song ends.
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12 years ago
@Che: I am enjoying this discussion. I agree that it is good management practice to have a contract with the performers. But a contract does not make for a contractor. If an auditor or an administrative law judge says "That's an employment contract" then they are employees. The key word in 'independent contractor' is independent, not contractor.
As to the fact that it is a juice bar, that was one of the presumptions. If this was an alcohol bar the design would be almost unrecognizably different. But the pattern is incredibly strong that in locations where it is either nudity or alcohol nudity wins out in club popularity. And it has, or should have a big affect on club design I just came from a brand new nude club that wasted WAY too much floor space on the bar for a juice-only service.
Maybe it is just that I am coming from LA but talent agencies and modeling agencies all work this way. If you are a photographer setting up photo shoot or a planner putting on an event or a party or whatever you contact the modeling agency and they deliver the girls. And if it turns out somebody has sex with one of your models and gives her a little side bonus it wasn't like you had any idea made any promise of that! Having the layer of a modeling agency with defined terms does far more to insulate yourself from accusations that your girls are prostitutes turning tricks in your club when they agree to do OTC.
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12 years ago
@Che One of my first statements in the first part of the series is that if you change even one of the presumptions about the club then the entire design of the club changes. It may be that why you don't think the design would work is that the 'rules' where you live are different.
On to the contract issue. An employment contract can specify just about anything that isn't illegal. But the person who signs that contract is an employee. A business to business contract can also specify just about anything that is not illegal, but the people are employees of the subcontracted business. Next the Federal Government is indeed immune from most of its own rules. For example some of the most serious penalties for failing to classify workers propery are TAX penalties, and the Federal Government does not collect income tax on itself! The actual determination of whether a worker can be classified as an independent contractor is tricky and varies state-to-state as well. Simply saying that you can do anything you want if you just hire a good lawyer is naieve. As I said in California you simply cannot get around it. Dancers in clubs have to be employees, period.
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12 years ago
Sex is not typically a solo activity.
So you can talk all you want about the risk you are willing to take. But there is also ther risk you are exposing the performer to and the risk you are exposing your present and future spouse/lover to.
It isn't all just about you.
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12 years ago
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motorheadFat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life
@Tiredtraveller: You can cool the conspiracy theories. As I said in California they are required to be statutory employees and none of the issues you raise have occurred. Also the entire entertainment industry is employees and they have no problem with letting go with substandard entertainers.
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12 years ago
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motorheadFat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life
In California all dancers must by law be treated as statutory employees. It has not destroyed the industry as some might have predicted. Three systems appear to be common:
1. The Deja-Vu style stripper pole where you feed the money into the machine and it times things like a high tech parking meter.
2. Pay the security guy at the entrance of the lap dance area or the barkeep. This tends to have a problem if you want to buy more dances. The dancer has to run back to the front with your money.
3. Pay the barkeep at the end of the dances. I am not sure what would happen if afterward you had enjoyed more dances than you had money to pay. I would have to imagine it involved and unfriendly exit expedited by the bouncer.
In all three systems any tips given would appear to be entirely the dancers. I could imagine in an extras club the dancer might have to spiff the security to be sure they looked the other way.
Still having seen how it works OK I would have to recommend that club owners classify dancers as employees. The lawsuits are almost always lost and the penalties for misclassification are substantial
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13 years ago
Santiago, I'm still having a little trouble envisioning how what you are describing would be built. In the sample club there are six VIP rooms and ten lapdance seats. Only at the very slowest time would there only be six dancers so that each could have their own assigned room. Mostly they would take whatever room was empty. So they push a button when they enter a room and push it again when they leave. But how does the system know who pushed the button? Is there a separate button for every single dancer the club employs? Or do you need some sort of an imput station with for example a card reader that will read the dancer's ID card? Having to install of those in every VIP room and every lapdance station is the kind of complexity and cost that I was seeking to avoid with the idea of having a single check-in/out station at the entrance to the private dance area.
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13 years ago
Typically local building codes specifiy a particular number of stalls for men and women based on square footage. That total can include both employee and customer spaces, so more spaces for women employees could be balanced with fewer for women customers. It is also possible to have single person unisex toilets and have those toilets qualify as meeting the accessible space requirements. But everything of course depends on the locality.
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13 years ago
@santiago. Remember that the initial goal is to be able to reduce the overhead of having a 'floater' constantly tracking the dancers' entrance and exit times. If you have to have somebody constantly monitoring the video system or reviewing hours of tapes then you haven't saved the overhead and might as well just have the floater. Because just having the tape marked does not answer which dancer it was, and if you have some sort of time entry/rfid station in each room then you are pretty much back to the expensive and complicated Deja-Vu style stripper timer device.
The other thing you want is a system that can give the dancer what they owe/deserve (depending on how the cash is handled) right as they are leaving at the end of their shift. Because they are not going to leave without their money and if you give them too much you may never see them again.
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13 years ago
In my opinion you need to be no more generous to the bartender and wait staff than any other bar. You just don't want to look like a cheapskate because the reputation will get around. Beyond that though the bartender and wait staff have little influence with security and the dancers.
Ditto for the DJ. In most clubs with strong management the song length is set. Teh DJ is not going to alter it for just one of the many customers and dancers in the club at any time. On the other hand if a dancer has a customer on a hook then letting them do their stage rotation later is standard practice anyway and doesn't need to be tipped to make happen.
On the other hand tipping security is worth it if you plan on doing something where their needing to look the other way is essential. The very best scenario is if you can tip the security on the way to the back area with the dancer in tow. That way she knows that you are serious about wanting extra attention and that she is likely covered against getting in trouble for providing it.
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13 years ago
I disagree. What you call a bad hustle I call a scam. Let's not sugar coat it.
And I regard the 'buy a girl a drink' as a good hustle either. If I didn't come to pay for somebody else to drink then pushing me to spend money on it will never, by definition, make me a satisfied customer.. If that is what the club needs to make money then the club needs to reorient its business model.
A good hustle is one in which what I want to spend money on is the same thing that the dancer wants me to spend money on and the club wants me to spend money on.
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13 years ago
On the timer concepts...Two things have to be kept in mind.
First is what happens if you want to buy more. If that means that the dancer has to take your money, run back to the bartender, get them to add time to the timer, and then have to run back it will kind of kill the mood.
On the other hand if it is an open-ended count-up timer then you might have times when the dancer might shut off the timer early and cheat the club out of some minutes. If to avoid that only the bartender is able to shut off the clock then it can result in some tense situations at the bar if multiple girls finish a set at the same time and all want to get his action RIGHT NOW, since the clock. literally, is still running on them.
Remember that the whole idea is to reduce administrative overhead and hassles.
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13 years ago
@3LeggedMan. The 'moat' is perhaps the most misunderstood part of the design. Think of it as an 'upper' and 'lower' stage rather than a 'stage' and 'moat'. The intent is to get the dancers more face-to-face with the customers rather than looking down at them to improve interaction. Note that the 'tip rail' is wide...wide enough for the dancer to sit, kneel or lie on.
As I described in the section on the stage out of a typical three song set the dancer spends two songs in the lower area ('moat'). The first 'introduction' song is spent saying hello and welcoming everybody at the tip rail and the third song is spent collecting and thanking for the tips (and making a pitch for personal dances).
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13 years ago
@george. The method you describe seems less complicated but first of all it requires a fulltime bartender, which this club would not have at slow times, and it no doubt requires a lot of manual logging and tallying of time. By putting it on a computer all the downstream calcualtions can be done automatically. Sill the kitchen timer thing does have a certain appeal
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13 years ago
The more I read about clubs that serve alcohol the more I think that states that do not allow both nudity and booze might actually have a good idea.
Before you get too down on the guy who thought that the dancers came wtih the bottle think of it from his drunken point of view.
1. The dancers were already in the room without his asking.
2. How much the club charged for the bottle.
3. What the retail (not to mention wholesale) price of the bottle was.
4. What the bottle would have cost at a club without dancers.
When you put it that way could you see how the dunken ignorant wannabe whale thought that the bottle included at least the base pay of the girl?
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13 years ago
I can see guys getting forgetfull about how much is still in their wallet, but that guy tearing up the bills is a jerk working against his own best interest. He still loses the dollar and the dancers are going to treat him as an anathema.
And the club manager who does not back up his dancers is also working against his longer term best interest. Dancers will go to the club where they can make the most money with the least hassles, and the best ones will be the first to leave for someplace else.
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13 years ago
Thinking of most of the So Cal clubs I have been in are pay at the start, either with the Deja-Vu ttyle timer device or by paying at the bar or at the guy at the entrence to the dance area. If you have negotiated a tip that is usually extra at the end but might be at the start.
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13 years ago
Are there dancers that just give dances to no touching? Sure. Are they working at Adelitas in Tiujuana? Of course not.
So don't get santimonious about how you won't give extras. You work in a market where it is feasible to get away without giving extras. If you worked in a market that expected extras you would likely find yourself not able to cover your stage fee or tipouts...or the management would drop you as a low-earner. You can make up for some of not giving extras with great looks and personality, but there will be girls with great looks, personality, AND extras.
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13 years ago
Well ask yourself this. Why are there any clubs in San Diego, or even Los Angeles, when by any concievable measure there is better value at Adelitas and Hong Kong in Tuijuana? For what I would pay in COI (about $250) compared to TJ (about $100) I could clearly cover my travel expenses. But it takes almost four hours of driving under the best conditions just to and from the border crossing. How often does anybody have five or six hours to spend on a clubbing trip.
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13 years ago
Mjx01. A lot of laws do require the moat but that is not why it is here. If you read part 2 on the stage the reason for the low area is to give the dancer a chance to get closer to the customer when interacting with them. The dancers spend two songs of the three song set (the 'introduction song' and the 'tip collection song') in the moat and/or using the wide tip rail itself as a performance platform.
As for no booze, that was a presumption of the scenario. An alcohol club would have a very different design. In all though my experience is that there is a lot more problems with secuity in alcohol clubs. How many '2AM' incidents do you see at the non booze places?
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13 years ago
Furthermore on the subject of temperature in the scheme of things the dancers were occasionally going to be doubling serving drinks or working the front desk so I would have the club invest in some satiny robes with the club logo embroidered on them. I would regard it as OK for the dancers to wear them when socializing with the customers in the club. If you think that might cut into sales the typical request for a dance would likely include flashing the robe.
I definitly agree mjx01 that it is way easy to go overboard. A lot of inexperienced club owners and unthinking lighting designers presume that they are equipping a disco and think that they have to include a lot of strobes and other pulsating lights, which are headache inducing. From the prior article on the stage one of the reasons I went to an against-the-wall stage (as opposed to a lot of clubs that do all high mounted spotlights) was to reduce the lighting shining in customer's faces. It is also why you will notice that I went with equal quanties of footlights and spotlights, because the footlights were less likely to reflect into people's eyes.
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13 years ago
@canny. Temperature is a tough one. On one hand the dancers are skimpilly attired but on the other hand they are also putting out a lot of energy and you don't want them getting all sweaty. Best advice...listen to the dancers.
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13 years ago
Best Choice in Utah? Drive to Nevada.