-
Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I have been dancing for a little over a year now so I have no idea what strip clubs used to be like back in the day. I have read some stuff and kind of have an idea about how strip clubs have evolved. Does anyone know about the evloution of stripping from the champange hustle of the late seventies, to the intro to lap dancing in the late eightes or the texas style couch dances of the ninties? Does anyone have any stories or knowlege about the day in the life of a dancer in those era's? How did they make their money? What were their style of clothes? What was it like? Mabey Melonie can help me with this she is very knowlegeable! I am just very curious about how diffrent it has changed over these three decades because alot has changed. :D
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I started dancing in 1995 at what used to be Maiden Voyage in New Orleans. Very fitting I thought since it was my first time ;) Anyway, they were EXTREMELY picky about the girls they hired, and trained us on everything from proper eitquette to dancer do's and don'ts to costumes and accessories, grooming and how to sell. The club was absolutely beautiful and well-run. We were not allowed to get on the floor at anytime while dancing on stage or off, we were not allowed to touch ourselves in any intimate areas, no pole work, NO customer-dancer contact. Girls wore everything from elaborate costumes to full-on prom or pageant dresses. Hair and makeup guys did everyone up like models, housemoms washed clothes and towels, fixed torn hems, etc. We had real catered food for dancers. By New Orleans law all table dances have to be done on 18" high pedestals at all times - still that way. When we got a dance, we raised a hand to signal a bouncer to bring a pedestal and place it in front of the guy, and they always did so promptly and extended their hands to help us step up, like ladies.
We were treated like gold and money was great and easy to make. Security and staff were well-trained, professional, and wonderful to work with. In those days anyone I worked with would have been appalled at 95% of the stuff that occurs regularly in clubs now. Ex: I had a customer spending truckloads of cash one day, giving me $100s for every song I danced and buying a couple dances from most of the other girls too...one girl decided to try and get his attention away from me and slid down on the pedestal during her dance and began touching her crotch on top of the thong...a bouncer saw, pointed it out to the manager, was told to get rid of her, and immediately took her off the pedestal and sent her packing. Nothing even remotely close to that would happen now.
Dances were easy to sell, just walk up, smile and ask. Guys spent money MUCH more freely, without all the mileage expectations and without hounding to meet after hours or to date. I never heard of a girl leaving work after a shift with less than what she carried in or broke because business was slow or there were too many girls. I truly loved the job and woke up everyday excited to go to work. I was happy to tell anyone where I worked because it was seen as a nice place with nice girls. Heck, when I opened a bank account I even told the banker where I worked, and she just smiled without a weird expression or questions or anything.
Of course alot has changed since then! Clubs like that don't exist anymore, save for maybe a handful in the world! Customers expect more and more and more and more and more for the buck, and expect to spend alot fewer bucks to boot. There is no dancer training - you are basically hired, told a few rules the manager wants you to know to make his job easier, and sent out to figure it out yourself. There are few if any costume requirements or expectations, and there is no more catered food for dancers, or bouncers who help you up onto the pedestals. Maiden Voyage went downhill right along with all the other clubs and was bought by Larry Flint and turned into a Hustler club a couple years ago. It's a craphole now. Dances get harder and harder to sell, managers who don't hit on all the dancers and scream and yell and curse everybody out every night are considere great. Dancers are treated like so much meat, to be devoured as quickly as possible and thrown out with yesterday's garbage. It is truly rare to find a club where a girl can make decent money without too much hassle, mileage and bs from managers and staff. The most common price of a dance is $20, and it's been that way at least since I started dancing, and guys complain all the time about how high the price is or how it 'keeps going up' - when in most clubs it's been the same for years, no cost-of-living raises for us! Overall, I'd say earnings potential for the same dancer, same age, look and experience level, has fallen by at least half. Of course there's still better money to be made for most dancers than what most of us could earn in straight jobs in the same amount of time, so it's not too bad!
All the older girls I know and work with get nostalgic once in a while and we'll sit around on a slow night talking about the good ol' days when it was so much easier and nicer. And let me tell you, the lower earning potential I see now versus years ago is not due to my being older - I actually do better now than I did then because of experience, and the more experienced girls back then were absolutely making a fortune - it's just harder to make the money now. In cities where there used to be one or two 'nice' clubs, there are now a dozen or more. Clubs don't regulate the number of girls on a shift, the more girls they can get willing to pay the tipouts, the better. There's so much competition now, the pie has been divided so many ways, it's hard to get a big enough slice to feed yourself sometimes. Now it's commonplace for ANY of us to leave work empty-handed or with less than what we carried in because business is that bad sometimes. We learn to expect a crappy day or week now and then. I have danced in well over 30 clubs since my initiation and things are pretty much the same all over, with few exceptions.
That is how I've seen things change in the last 8 years. It's been fun, is still fun, good money, good experience, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, depsite the speedbumps! :)
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
"When we got a dance, we raised a hand to signal a bouncer to bring a pedestal and place it in front of the guy, and they always did so promptly and extended their hands to help us step up, like ladies."
Bridgette,
I wish I could somehow snap my fingers and make things be more that way today. I was raised to treat a lady like a lady and it is a shame that it is not still that way.
Unfortunately, it is not only in the SC business that things have gotten more and more cut throat. I work in retail and things are much more brutal today then just a few years ago, loyalty has gone out the window, anything to get the sale has become the motto. I know at least in a way how you feel.
Best regards,
Xmarx52
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I have been dancing 10 years and things really havent changed much in my experience except the music, I have always worked in the top clubs across the u.s and some I have been going to for 7 years on and off and its basically the same even though the economy is hurting there are less guys comeing in I find the ones that are and seek out the ones w/ money ,they are still spending you still get your guys who will give anywere from 200-1000 if they like you,as for guys expecting more I find there are always guys like this that want more, that is never going to change just as prostitution has always existed men have always wanted more, maybe there just getting braver in asking ,since they see its slow they probably think they have a better chance seeing as they are makeing less they think we also are and will be more inclined to accomadate, thats why I like traveling and working places w/ guys who are only in town briefly because these guys usually dont bother w/ asking for more, they are only engrossed in the moment, as for clubs w/ floor hosts helping girls up on the pedistals ect, there are still high end clubs were the girls are treated this way and were they will do your hair and makeup and bring in food ect, and I dont find there being any more girls than before as I have always worked in clubs w/ tons of girls, but thing do change sometimes nothing remains constant and clubs may change over the years, thats when its time to move on.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I've been frequenting US strip clubs since 1975 and don't see a lot of difference.
Couch Dancing was alive and well at Sugars in Austin in 1984 as I recall.
Extras have always been available but probably not in the abundance they are today. Girls prostituting themselves out of the clubs has been around as long as I remember also. Again, not in the volume it is today.
The biggest difference I see in the business today lies in the money that is taken from the girls.
In the late 80's up to maybe 1991/2 the amount of women interested in dancing was far less and in many markets ladies were paid. My wife danced dayshift at a club called Giorgio's in San Antonio and was paid $5.00 an hour plus overtime. She worked a lot of double shifts and had a nice paycheck every two weeks to go with the stage tips and seldom did table dances.
Some clubs that did not pay you by the hour instead gave you "drink tickets" depending on what time you showed up. On time might mean 7-10 drink tickets. When a guy bought you a drink your ticket went with the waitress to the manager, he signed it and it was returned to you. At the end of the night you go $5-$10 per ticket you had signed. I saw this in several clubs.
Ladies were greatly recruited in minor markets with transportation and hotels paid.
And they were much better protected.
Ladies were seldom questioned when they complained about someone and guys were ejected when necessary
Hell. I remember watching my wife deck a guy on main stage simply for touching the inside of her thigh with the end of a dollar bill.
But the way people were raised and morality was much different then. It was a much more "taboo" thing to do. Everyone associated strip clubs to whorehouses.
As clubs got more and more exposure and business grew so did interest in dancing amongst women brought up differently. It lost some of it's stigma.
Look at how our teens dress today. Some of you ladies wear more on stage than teenage girls wear to the neighborhood swimming pool.
And in the clubs I used to run we reagularly ran teen nights allowing 13-17yo in to dance. I saw wilder stage shows in our dance cages than in many a strip club. That was just a few years ago.
Plus the sexuality of our youth over the last 10 years has changed. The "free sex" of the 70's seems to be in the minds of girls coming of age today.
As I remember the Champagne Hustle of the 70's it was built around the "illusion of sex". Guy got hustled for some private dances in a room or private area. Buy a bottle of champagne and we'll go back there and you can do whatever you want to do for 20 minutes. After getting you back there she chit chats for 4-5 minutes while the champagne is being served. Runs off to "freshen up" for another 5-10 minutes. A quick drink while she waits for the "right song" and by the time she's into her first dance the bouncer is back to let you know the 20 minutes is up, Did you want to buy another $100 bottle or maybe the $200 bottle which got you a full hour.
I watched buddies get sucked in for $500-$700 a night THINKING they were going to get laid and instead just getting ripped.
Now with the many, many ladies in the clubs there seems to ALWAYS be a girl willing to provide whatever someone is looking for.
A big thing different for me from the early 80's to today was the Corporate Expense account I had available and the free flow of company money I was allowed to spend entertaining customers. It was not unusual for me to drop $2K-$5K a week in strip clubs that simply got wrote off. We dealt with multimillion dollar machines in an industry that was booming.
I think the semiconductor industry as well as the oil industry fueled a lot of the growth of clubs in the Southwest as well as GoldCoast.
But those days are gone and Uncle Sam is not as willing to let you write so much off any more.
Anyway. That's my little contribution to memory lane.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I started dancing seven or eight years ago in Alaska. I was so obviously way underage it was a miracle anyplace let me work, and the place that did was the worst place in town.
It was rough, but there weren't many extras going on - there was actually a whorehouse down the street for that! Security was non-existant and mostly consisted of me, the bartender, another dancer who was nuts, and the regulars. I would carry a knife in my costume on busy nights. We danced on stage and did table dances (actually dancing on the tables). This place was fun and let me run around barefoot half the time. Costumes were mostly cheap lingerie.
When I was sixteen I got a fake ID and worked in some nicer clubs, travelled a little. One club was very nice, had etiquette training for the dancers before they could work, elaborate dresses, etc. Dancing was very important in the place and I remember practicing that burlesquey kick for hours - the older dancers would all watch my show every time and I could tell by the looks on their faces how I looked. We sold Champagne and table dances. Champagne got me to stay at your table, and then you could buy a table dance. It wasn't uncommon for people to spend a thousand dollars on champagne and tips.
At another club the dancers were cocktail waitresses, and every fifteen minutes one would get up on stage and do a show. There was no pole and this place was all about the theater in the dance. They paid dancers $350/wk.
All of that's much different now, tho I hear that the last club is still open, has a pole now, and pays dancers $500/wk.
Lena
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Bridgette pretty well summed up my feelings about the changes in the exotic dancing industry over the past decade. Even though I started dancing in New York, her description of the mid-90's club scene was uncannily similar.
Whispers is correct that the biggest difference between 'then' and 'now' is that the number of available dancers has increased tremendously. This has gradually allowed clubowners to stop treating dancers as rare and valuable assets to his business (which resulted in excellent dancer treatment, clubs paying primo dancers to retain them etc.) and instead start to treat them like interchangeable pieces of meat. Part of the reason for the increase is that today's young girls have fewer "straight" job options such that more of them consider dancing. Another part of the reason is that many clubs have been closed by conservative crusades/zoning laws/anti-dance club ordinances thus reducing the number of dancing jobs available.
Unfortunately, with a shitty economy a double whammy to dancers has taken place since 2000. First, the amount of money that most customers are willing to spend has gone way down (and the customer expectations in regard to what they'll "get" for their money has gone way up). Second, the straight job world is now so bad for recent high school graduate girls that many see dancing for $100 a night as a bonanza compared to their other options i.e. BurgerKing, WalMart, night shift at a factory for $7 an hour.
Another factor is that many of the younger girls today see dancing as part of the sex business and don't have any hangups about providing "extras" in exchange for extra earnings potential. You can thank Hollywood for this, by cashing in on the stereotype of a dancer being dumb, easy, and criminally inclined in countless movies and TV episodes! In the old days, dancers were considered part of the entertainment industry and treated as such. Any girls who were into "extras" in the good old days knew enough to keep a low profile, too (and were paid EXTREMELY WELL for them).
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
one of the first clubs i worked in. had national burlesqe acts and "go go" dancers. we were paid 350 a week, or if we stayed at a beach side apt they owned we got 300 with 50 a week for rent!!! we had a champange hustle, but that was just to sit and talk at the table with the guy. we got 25% of our champane sales too. mostly stage tips but right before i left a new thing out of orlando came about... the lapdance! i was shocked...lol. anyway the club did go nude but usually with a cape or something to kinda cover you. on third song and certantly not on the floor. i saw some awsome acts from the "combat zone" in boston. these girls were much better then modern day features with eloborate stage shows and costumes. i guess im showing my age here, but like bridgette said i do better now then i ever did as i've gotten older. im extremely luckey that everyone in my family... both sides look about ten years younger then they are :)..... oh this was in the early eighties
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Quote:
Bridgette pretty well summed up my feelings about ........... You can thank Hollywood for this, by cashing in on the stereotype of a dancer being dumb, easy, and criminally inclined in countless movies and TV episodes!
There is one positive portrayal of a stripper on Primetime.
The female investigator on CSI was a stripper and it's been handled in a few shows.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Quote:
I've been frequenting US strip clubs since 1975 and don't see a lot of difference.
Couch Dancing was alive and well at Sugars in Austin in 1984 as I recall. .................
The biggest difference I see in the business today lies in the money that is taken from the girls.
In the late 80's up to maybe 1991/2 the amount of women interested in dancing was far less and in many markets ladies were paid....................
Ladies were greatly recruited in minor markets with transportation and hotels paid. ..........
And they were much better protected.
Ladies were seldom questioned when they complained about someone and guys were ejected when necessary
Hell. I remember watching my wife deck a guy on main stage simply for touching the inside of her thigh with the end of a dollar bill.
These are huge differences. From being paid by clubs and treated as an asset to having to fork over large portions of your earnings every night to the club and to several staff members with their hands out. From being protected from rule-breaking customers to being left to fend for yourself, at best, or literally being expected to 'put out or get out'. From competing on a more even playing field with beautiful girls mostly providing similar service, to competing with any and everything in the club. And finally from being treated like the assets we are to being treated like meat.
I'm not complaining AT ALL about couch dances or lap dances or whatever one wants to call them, and I'm not really complaining about the overall degradation of the industry, as I'm well aware of the causes of that. As michelle stated I too work in better clubs and have travelled ALOT, but being at a point in life where I'm beginning to get ready to settle down, retire, move on, I'm less willing to travel to work. Because of that I'm stuck with settling for one decent club where I'm reasonably comfortable in an area I like and dealing with it. There are so few nice clubs left, they get harder and harder to find. Michelle is also right that there are still a fair number of guys willing to spend money on our form of entertainment with an attractive intelligient girl, but they are also much fewer and further between, so a girl like me has to wade through ALOT more schmucks to find them. I still like stripping, and I will look back at it years from now with fondness, but that doesn't change the fact that it was so much better years ago!
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I guess what I meant in saying there is not much difference over the years was that for me, a customer, I see little different in the amount or tyoe of attention available in or out of the clubs over the years.
There has always been ladies more approachable and willing to go farther than others.
Today there is just far more of them.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
bridgette, I know what you are talking about (the area you are in ) I went to new orleans because a bunch of girls from florida were going and saying how great it was, my friend and I went to all the clubs we thought would be nice and upscale on the first night we arived boy were we disapointed we worked three clubs,ricks,gold club and larry flints , were all the girls from my state were, I didnt like it it was slow (and this was during jazz fest,last year) it stunk and the clientele wasnt what I thought it would be in general the money wasnt bad it just wasnt what I was use to and dancing on those fricking things and no one would be around to bring it over for you I would even ask anyone I could that I needed one but would get sick of waiting so would get the darn thing myself ,almost breaking my leg on the metal thing and also haveing to retrive it for my friend also because she was to week to lift it, bridgette, let me tell you there are still good clubs out there just not in new orleans I guess I feel bad for you but in the area Iam in its becomeing the same, which just makes traveling inevitable.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Heck, I've only been going to strip clubs for three years, and it seems to me that they're a fair amount more sex-oriented just within that time.
I'm behaved, I don't grope, but I get body parts and fairly sexual behavior thrust at me in places and ways that didn't seem to happen just three years ago. I don't ask for it, and I don't expect it, but it happens more often now. I'm talking nice clubs, too.
- Jason
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Michelle, sorry I didn't clarify. I'm not in New Orleans anymore - haven't been for a while. I've been in Puerto Rico for a year, travelled ALOT over my previous dancing years and have found a place I like to possibly settle in. I work at Divas in San Juan and although there are problems here, like anywhere, it's better than most places I've worked in the last 2-3 years. Larry Flint's is the club that I first started in 8 years ago, what was then called Maiden Voyage. THAT was a nice club, but I haven't seen one that nice in the US since. I worked at Stringfellow's in London for several months back in 2000-2001, and that was just as nice as what Maiden Voyage used to be, but being American I couldn't stay longer and now I just don't want to travel that far to work anymore. Anyway, I left Maiden Voyage years ago, long before it wasted to the point of being sold into the Hustler chain. I do know when it's time to get out of a place! ;)
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I have been dancing since 1994. I have always worked at Deja Vu, where they used to treat us like princesses!! Now, the money is harder to hustle and the clubs rape us and take every dime (maybe even back rent too)
As for the dances? Our Texas style couch dances have changed very little, but you used to get more $$ for doing less. Today, the customers are dirty, perverse and grabby, if he tries something, the club is more likely to send the girl (the girl who pays $120 a day) home than to kick out the man (who pays $17)
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
i started as a waitress in 1994, i started dancing a year later...the biggest change that i've seen has been the amount of money the clubs take from the girls!some of the clubs i started out in actually had what they called shift pay! meaning the earlier you came in the more YOU got payed by the club! if you were on the floor and ready at say between 6:30 & 7 pm, and completed your shift you were paid $40.00 at the end of the night...if you were ready by 8 then $30, by 9 then $20, and by 10 then $10. also some clubs just paid you for coming in and being ready at or before 7 only. then some clubs paid you at the end of the week if you work so many shifts that week, were on time and completed you shift!...hell on club i worked at ...at the end of the month, what ever dancer sold the most champagne...won cash and a trip! boy do i miss those days!!! also my first time to dance on stage...i guy who came to tip me...told my friend that i had watched flash dance one to many times!!! lol...the first song i danced to was Strut ...by shenna easton...now that's real funny!!! :dance: also the amount of extras and drug use...i'm sure it was still there...but for some reason it's more acceptable and out there ( like coming out of the closet?!) but it can still be fun to dance!!!
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I'm never 100% sure about this because there can be totally different things going on in one city (in NY, for instance, we have nude clubs which don't serve alcohol, upscale clubs, dives, and peep shows, all going on at the same time), and whenever management changes or law enforcement gets picky about something, everything can change in a matter of hours.
As far as I can tell, the biggest change is in the number of women prepared to work and in the large stage fees (with justifications that make no sense to me whatsoever, since I worked for so long without them and the clubs were banking hugely without them).
When I first began in the 1980s, men didn't use their expense accounts in clubs. During the late 80s and early 90s, it seemed like it was acceptable for them to do so. Now there's this kind of thing:
http://www.theconglomerate.org/2006/...at_the_aa.html
So maybe that practice is history, or becoming history.
There's a bit of the history of the lapdance in this article:
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2004-...feature_1.html
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Just wanted to comment.. where did you dig up this thread? Notice the dates on the first page? 2003! Oh my....... :laughing:
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
...just looking around the forum! i read it and it brought back alot of memories...so i thought i'd comment on it! :)
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
doh! I never notice the dates unless I'm looking through a search.
But I wouldn't have been able to resist even if I had.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Oh, there were dives and middle of the road clubs in every city I saw in the 90s too. But there were waaaay fewer "gentlemens clubs" or "showclubs" it seemed, and definitely alot fewer strippers. Isn't it funny how years ago when there were FEWER girls willing to strip, the "nice" clubs were more picky than they are now, when we have an overabundance of strippers?
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I agree totally with Bridgette's assessment....I no longer feel valued and treated like a lady. Without going into it all again; I do have one opinion about all of this: I really do think the pendulum will have to swing back the other way. Some clubs will end up either being allowed to be whorehouses or be closed down. If you have noticed; the industry is becoming more centralized into several corporations and chains. The individual smaller mom and pop operations will not survive in general. This will require that the larger corporations start to run their clubs more "professionally". to turn a more consistant profit..and eventually; that means they will run them like any other business. THAT means they can't just let any one work there anymore; and some of the better tricks of the trade that us oldtimers know (working together "springboarding"; etc.) will need to come back into use. I will state this for a fact: the way that some of these clubs are running right now; with the girls not being classy or trained or putting on a show; the DJs same thing; the bouncers being stupid; the managers being all of the above as well as greedy and abusive; does NOT maximize a club's earning potential. It also attracts the local community to try and close the club down. The owners are coasting along on some profits now; but eventually the noose is going to get tight and it will be time to put up or shut up. I just hope I'm not too old when the time comes. It has already almost come to this here...the city and the clubs are going to be in court all year long. My club (part of a corp.) will either have to move; or clean up...but we WILL be the only game in town eventually...which means they can be picky about who they hire.
We'll see.....
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
I remember when I started over a decade ago,it was fun and actually looked forward to going in every night.Now,I dread going in.
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Quote:
Originally Posted by StevieStar7
...just looking around the forum! i read it and it brought back alot of memories...so i thought i'd comment on it! :)
And I'm glad you did. What made the tides change ladies? What made clubs want to bring in "more girls" instead of having an elite few? Will there ever come a time when clubs can go back in time to be like Bridgette's or at least treat the ladies like princesses :-\
Just curious,
CK
-
Re: Dancing in the 70's 80's and 90's
Greed and the cookie cutter industry line, with the onslaught of the invention of the breast implant any girl could strip.
Not the special woman that knew how to light cigars, adjust a mans suit coat, make sure he had his keys and pocket change when he left and so forth.. When the difference between sexy and slutty was a well defined line and men knew that strippers were NOT hookers. Now it's just well.. different.
Use to they did treat the Strippers like little queens, then again they deserved it.