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knightwish
06-12-2013, 06:41 AM
I get sad that I missed the glory days of dancing. My mom danced in the 90s and the late 80s and banked. She's told me what it was like back then and things are entirely different now. She was paid hourly as well as taking home hundreds/thousands a night in tips. The hiring standards were much, much higher. To stay hired, the standards were much higher. When she first started, women danced on boxes in front of the customers, who were not allowed to touch them. Because there was little/no physical contact, the customers were willing to pay more for receiving much less than now.

No question late 80s early 90s was a fantastic time to be a stripper in one of those clubs. Absolute golden age. You had a sexually oriented business receiving societal and governmental support creating a high wage large industry with a low level of contact. Today that support doesn't exist. For example strip club expenses are no longer deductible as sales or entertainment expenses. You had a genuine shortage of prostitutes due to AIDS, today that doesn't exist. In this less supported world the strip club world has to choose to break into 3 subgroups where dancers experience any pair of:

large industry
high wages
low level of contact
They can't get all 3.

I don't know Detroit. But not all clubs are the same. Within 50 miles of my house there are probably 25 clubs where girls mostly have to be beautiful (or at least hot), dance, take off some clothes on stage, sell drinks, play pool and flirt. There are still quite a few low milage gown style clubs in that circle. There are clubs where day shift is blow job expected and night shift is much lower milage. You can get (2) and (3) together as a dancer but the clubs are often very selective. You can get (1) and (3) together but you are there to help sell drinks. What you are talking about does still exist. Delilah's Den Philly. Lace in NJ is a fine bikini club with gorgeous women who provide very tame lap dances that are heavily monitored, you want to be naughty you flash a big tipper. I don't think the situation is as black and white as the women make it out to be.


The quality of dancers is diminishing all over the country. Because now the club makes money off of each girl instead of paying her. In the short run, hiring a new girl will benefit the club directly and quickly. But in the long run, the dancer of lesser quality do not help the club. They create a lower caliber clientele as well. Many of the girls I work with at the clubs I work in would not have gotten hired at this club 10 years ago, and certainly not back in the 1990s. Less girls care about providing the glamorous fantasy experience that was so long ago. Less customers respect the dancers. It's really, really sad.

Absolutely agree with you here. Having dancers be independent contractors is terrible policy. Feature dancers are independent contractors, club dancers are employees and the Department of Labor should have snapped fingers of club owners really hard for the nonsense policies. I would love to see a Secretary of Labor who enforced labor laws in the USA again. This situation never should have been permitted. Another reason you all should form a formal lobby advocating for strippers. But to a certain extent the cost shifting is wage reduction, it is a result of an oversupply of strippers relative to the population of men willing to pay what strippers are charging for the services they are providing.

I think the best way to deal with this is change the pricing policies in clubs: $40-60 admission, focus on selling time at $20/10 min kept by the dancers. But either under this scenario or the current one most women working in most clubs will be providing a lot more milage than they would have had to 25 years ago.

I also think there is a bit of grass is greener when looking back. 25 years ago there were a lot of clean clubs. But there were still plenty of very dirty clubs back then. All the clubs were not like the ones your mother describes. There were strip clubs in the late 1980s where club owners were still more or less openly prostituting the girls, though they were far far fewer than there had been five years earlier. And there were a lot of clubs where so-so women stripped and made very little money. People here don't tend to talk about those clubs and those women as much which is why I think there is a lot of selective memory going on.

Additionally there were still many girls associated with the industry, who were providing extras style services. For example the gown type strip club might be located right next door to a bar where hookers were working doing car dates. I get that the bar next door creates a legal separation, and that's a very good thing in a world where stripping is legal and prostitution is not. I think most dancers today if you talked about would love to go back to that system, or something more modern say have the club next door to a full service massage parlor. But would they really if the option were on the table? How easy is it to sell CR at $250 1/2 hr + champagne, plus extras expenses if the guy can go next door and get a full body naked massage at $70 / hr with BBBJ for an extra $100. It might be equally undercutting or even more-so than extras girls.

IMHO extras girls are mostly still selling fantasy to a great extent. Mostly strippers aren't good hookers. They just don't have the space, the cleaning supplies, the sexual supplies... to really provide a quality purely sex experience. Extras girls are still selling a lot of fantasy and seduction mixed in with delivery. I think I see "extras girl" as very similar to the old George Carlin joke about driving, "everyone who drives slower than me is an asshole and everyone who drives faster is a maniac". An "extras girl" is mainly someone providing more delivery and less fantasy. The extras girls are using fantasy to take what would normally be very a very mediocre sexual experience and making it seem much more alluring.

I started a thread in the Blue commenting about the irony that in the cam world women really have the opportunity to create a low milage high entertainment experience on MFC vs. say cam sights which are "higher milage" (more sexually oriented). By and large most women even on here strongly prefer the steady income of selling a bread and butter product over providing a more pure entertainment experience. It is not just quality dropping. Seduction is harder and more sophisticated work and many women don't want to put the effort in. It is much easier to sell LDs to a man's penis than to sell a fantasy to his heart and his mind.

knightwish
06-12-2013, 06:59 AM
Burlesque actually lasted I want to say early 60's or so according to burlesque dancers I have met. It is possible they did tricks but I doubt it as these women were into the career first and foremost.

No idea what post prohibition burlesque was like. The main thing is there wasn't much of it. I'd assume it was a lot of nostalgia shows so that might have been ultra clean, very much like burlesque is today. The topless 20's paris show in the 20s were in places often loaded with hookers. The nude 20's paris shows in 2013 are baudy theatrical entertainment they are so clean.


After they died out came the brothel type clubs which I mentioned, and these died out around the late 80's or so. In fact I once worked for a guy who owned a brothel club then when it was raided years later went on to start a gentlemens' club. He told me a lot of stories about how he realized he could make the same amount of money by offering strictly dances, not tricks.

I agree. And that's what I was saying. It isn't a pure line of worse, worse, worse... thing were more complex and nuanced.


Also, contrary to myth not all saloon girls were hookers. Some only entertained the men such as playing cards or waitressing. What many don't realize is these clubs were generally legal and the owners were often respectable. Sometimes I will watch Gunsmoke and while Miss Kitty does run a saloon where it is implied there are extras she is considered a legit business owner. Compare that to brothel owners in areas where prostitution is illegal. I know it's a show but from reading about saloons most of this is pretty true to fact.

Remember in 19th century America prostitution was often legal. It sometimes had strong official sponsorship. Prostitutes were seen as keeping young men not ready to marry from corrupting young women. They help to isolate prostitution and thus worked to prevent casual prostitution. They prevented dating between immigrant works (male) and local women and thus reduced friction. They allowed men who couldn't support a family to remain socially satisfied. They did and were seen as performing important social functions.

Hostility towards prostitution has been steadily increasing for more than a century. I certainly have noticed the shift even in my lifetime. I think it may be close to having topped though with the push towards decriminalization and the escort system.


You can't compare American strip clubs to brothels overseas since it's not the same thing on many levels, including economics. Even today these clubs offer sex but the fact is often the women have no other job prospects and sex work is a more open minded thing there (good and bad)than American clubs.

I wasn't comparing so much as talking about how they influenced one another.


I don't have selective memory at all, and have mentioned that I know at a couple clubs I danced there was prostitution going on both outside and in the club. However, I never was involved with that because I made more than enough money without doing it. Generally the women I saw doing it were the less attractive and older women. Most of the clubs I danced in had a STRICT no prostitution rule, most had a strict no touch rule and we were monitored a lot. I got in trouble for kissing a regular ON THE CHEEK.

How has that changed? It is still older women. There are still strict rules. I agree no touch doesn't exist at all even the pure stage clubs allow the garter tips.

MyButter
06-12-2013, 07:21 AM
^Come to DC my friend. I assure you that no-touching-whatsoever clubs do still exist.

knightwish
06-12-2013, 08:32 AM
^Come to DC my friend. I assure you that no-touching-whatsoever clubs do still exist.

I'm in DC quite regularly. Though the domination is so fantastic it is hard to go for the stripping. But I heard that with JP’s club opening with 2 way touching nude dancing... that DC was shifting to more like the rest of the country? Any truth to that?

MyButter
06-12-2013, 09:09 AM
Wat! The two way touching is news to me. By my understanding it is supposed to be structured like Stadium(at least...I think you can get table dances at Stadium?) where you can purchase VIP rooms that are basically private no-contact shows. Given DC's super conservative stance on the rest of the clubs in the area, where floorwork and polework and touching yourself suggestively are often prohibited, i think JPs would encounter some difficulty in trying to allow two-way contact.

IMO, it's a bit of a marketing scheme. They'd have an upper hand in the fact that they could advertise as offering "private dances". Mwahaha!

I could totally be wrong about all of the above though, as this is all stuff I've heard through the grapevine.

I've heard the layout is beautiful! I'd love to go check it out one of these days!

Nina_
06-12-2013, 09:39 AM
^Come to DC my friend. I assure you that no-touching-whatsoever clubs do still exist.

Is there any money to be made here?

MyButter
06-12-2013, 10:48 AM
DC is tricky. Imho, the financial celing is much lower due to the unavailibility of lapdances or alternate methods of earning money such as ladies drink sales(I'm not sure if not getting a cut of ladies drinks is club specific), so you are thrust into this weird position where you are entirely dependent on the generosity of customers as (this also could be club specific) we aren't even allowed to ask customers for tips.

A lot of dancers financially thrive via building a large regular base. However, Ime, these regulars often want OTC interactions--which are common here. The expectations of these interactions are normally quite innocent and revolve around the exchange of time for compensation; a lunch or dinner date, escorting them to a venue, a trip to the museum, etc.

So if a dancer is available to offer her time for compensation I think DC has the potential to be a lucrative area. For dancers who don't or can't do OTC, I think it is a little harder to make great money within the club because you end up having to be reliant on customer quantity, which doesn't always = more money.

knightwish
06-12-2013, 02:02 PM
deleted

knightwish
06-12-2013, 02:17 PM
Wat! The two way touching is news to me. By my understanding it is supposed to be structured like Stadium(at least...I think you can get table dances at Stadium?) where you can purchase VIP rooms that are basically private no-contact shows. Given DC's super conservative stance on the rest of the clubs in the area, where floorwork and polework and touching yourself suggestively are often prohibited, i think JPs would encounter some difficulty in trying to allow two-way contact.

IMO, it's a bit of a marketing scheme.

Well it is a fairly successful marketing scheme. I'm not sure though what happens when they create an expectation of full on lap dances and then can't deliver. It could turn into an anti-marketing scheme very quickly as upset men start trashing the club in their reviews. Anyway if I had to guess I'd assume your grapevine is better than my grapevine so if you think it is BS I'll count that for a lot.

Darkblue
06-13-2013, 05:24 AM
I think JPs club has not opened yet. They mentioned there will be enclaves which are like VIP rooms with no doors. They did not mention anything about nude two way touching dances. If they allow two way touching then its huge loss for other clubs in DC area and they will also try to allow two way touching eventually. At present DC's loss is Maryland's gain. Even West Virginia strip clubs do not allow two way touch or full grinding lap dances. I have a hard time to get lap dances in Virginia . I go to baltimore. It's expensive trip for me. High time we need full contact lap dances in DC area.

Kellydancer
06-15-2013, 10:31 PM
I can't believe I forgot to mention the pedestal! My mom explained to me how they would carry around the pedestal to customers. She's filled me in on the glory days and how great they were. What a difference there is now!

It seems so odd today explaining the pedestal to many, along with the fact that at many clubs we literally danced at the table, usually in front of them. The pedestal could get heavy at times and awkward to carry around but we were even charged if we didn't use it and were caught. One poster even accused me of lying because they had never heard of it. Yes there was a big difference 20 years ago versus now and it's really sad. I know there is no way I would dance today because I wouldn't allow men to touch me or sit on their lap to make money as many have to.

lestat1
06-16-2013, 09:54 PM
I still haven't noticed any difference in the lap dances today compared to the late 1990s or anywhere in between.