My old stage partner just posted this regarding the article... thought some of you might be interested:
I met them, he was real nice though but obviously a pimp, and those girls knew what they got into. The girl who told on them was the most conniving one and she had offered my friends bf 15 dollars for a handy, and the club they worked at knew exactly what was going on but let it happen anyways...Idk whats funnier out of the article, the minivan pimpmobile or using bugs bunny to recruit hookers lol...I feel sorry for the animals and for the girls, they need help if they are easily persuaded into prostitution from a chain wearing guy named jello lol.
The interesting thing about the primary club that this seemed to be happening in is that years ago a customer tried to accuse me of not taking off my top for a dance, & said he wanted his money back. The manager didn't even argue with him or ask me what happened. The fact was I did take my top off, but the guy was a jerk about wanting extras & basically wanted his money back because I didn't offer extras. I told the manager there was no way I was giving him the money back, I sold him a topless DANCE & that's exactly what he got! Then told the manager that if he didn't believe me to go run the tapes from the video cameras in the lap dance room... low & behold, the manager tells me they don't keep the cameras on!
Of course they don't...
According to this article the rooms are "well monitored", but I can say that was not true for at least one of the clubs mentioned. At the other club mentioned a male friend of mine went in as a customer & was told that the dancers could do something that I know for a fact is illegal. This brings us back to certain arguments regarding why this happens. Is it so the dancers earn more money & thus pay out a higher percentage of profits to the club? Do staff members just not care? Are they ignorant/naive of the laws? Or are they chicken? I can say for a fact that my old managers at one of the clubs mentioned was chicken. I reported customers running drugs to him & he didn't do a thing about it! His answer to me was "Well, we're only open another hour & a half". This customer was a total thug, & I really believe that the manager simply didn't want to deal with the chance that a fight would break lose from removing the guy. That was the same manager that told me the cameras weren't actually running... they just want to "deter" people from doing things they shouldn't. That's great, but what about when something actually happens? Chances are... the club probably doesn't want the evidence! I don't know how things are now, but when I worked at that club the bouncers were also not great about coming around to check the lap dance area. Basically, the cameras didn't work, the bouncers weren't checking the lap dance areas, & problems weren't really dealt with when reported to management. That doesn't sound "well monitored" to me! Who knows though, maybe something changed since I've been gone?
With that said, the regional manager mentioned in the article & many of the people in the corporate office are really nice & good people... except for one who I can think of. I've complained to upper management before about issues that needed to be looked into, & they've always done it. I also know that the Denver police are nice, they don't tend to get into things unless its really necessary, but they also are very detailed. The article says that the "Clubs deny knowing of ring", but who did the reporter ask? Probably not the middleman! It's the bouncers taking tips to "overlook" things or pretend they didn't see, & the managers that don't really think about all the repercussions (or get greedy wanting their club to keep numbers up) that are the problem! Entertainers must keep in mind that there is a chain of command, & if one link is broken that means you need to skip to the next one: bouncers, managers, general manager, regional managers, owner/board of directors, police (or alternatively press). When the press says that the "clubs deny knowing" if they are referring to the people in corporate, why would they know? Did anyone tell them? It's fully possible they didn't know! On another note though, VCGH is in pretty good with the government here including the mayor, so its also just as likely that VCGH's corporate people arranged to cooperate with the police on an investigation. After all, that would make sense... once they know about problems cooperating puts corporate or owners at less risk of having to be involved in the case as defendants, & therefore less likely to have to pay any sort of legal fees. Honestly more clubs need to aim to cooperate with government if shady things are occurring, that would help all of us who really are in the striptease entertainment business!
I think somewhere in between all of this probably lies the truth in the story, but of course that's pretty normal. Once again, this is more evidence of why VCGH doesn't generally care to hire entertainers from out of state... seems like a red flag for "potential trouble".
Oh, what I really love about this too is that the girls are making $800 giving extras! Just for perspective, I used to make $500- $800/night as a clean dancer WITHOUT private dances (stage money) at one of the lower end clubs in Denver about a decade ago! To me that's a huge sign of how the extras really have effected our business... & another reason why as entertainers we should be reporting them to the club's chain of command as needed.
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