


The only way to get rid of a temptation is to indulge in it...
~I have no roots. I stay away from groups and communities. I wander, an itinerant lone wolf. I have nowhere to go back to. I either burn the bridges or keep walking. I never look back. I detach and vanish. In my mind, I am not human. I am a machine at the service of a madman that snatched my body and invaded my being when I was very young~





^^^ fracking indeed creates new 'wealth' wherever it occurs, by effectively converting oil /gas in the ground ( that costs almost nothing ) into oil in barrels or gas in pipelines ( that sells for big bucks ). This puts new money in the pockets of oil / gas workers, and usually also puts a portion of oil / gas worker money into the pockets of others who provide goods and services to those gas / oil workers.
However, a flip side to that equation is how much of that new money is allowed to remain in oil / gas workers' pockets thus available for spending, versus being taxed away by state and local gov'ts. This is arguably the reason that North Dakota's private sector economy is benefitting greatly from its fracking industry, while similar fracking activities arguably provide far less private sector economic benefit in other areas like Pennsylvania.





note that ND isn't at the top of the list for Economically fastest growing cities, either. See
The two fastest growing cities are actually in Texas ... but similarly 'fueled' by fracking technology !!!
Surprisingly, state capital Trenton, NJ made the list. One can only assume that the city's economic growth is being funded by rising NJ state taxes sucking in money from the rest of the state !!!









Just beware that housing hasn't kept up with the influx of new workers. For every story about truck drivers making 100K per year, there is a story about them paying a fortune for a crappy apt or living in a camper at exorbitant rates... Good luck if you decide to take the adventure! ;-)
Originally Posted by
I don't know what it is about me that says "wife me up." Everyone wants to choke me or date me. Or both. This job is weird.
Originally Posted by Nocturnelle
... Kittens are assholes but they're just so darn cute.





Well I can afford a hotel or to rent my own camper. Are you saying this is how the workers live or I may have trouble finding suitable temp. housing?
XoXo Gia
Danielle Fishell (the Dish): "If the Super-Star thing doesn't work out, Gia makes a great stripper name"





for what it's worth ... from
(snip)"Wildcatting: A Stripper’s Guide to the Modern American Boomtown
Nothing is more emblematic of the American dream than chaotic mining and drilling towns such as Williston, North Dakota, and the people who flock to them in search of fortune. And no one knows better how these communities work — and don’t — than the traveling topless dancer.
by Susan Elizabeth Shepard
1.
It’s a Sunday evening, early last December, and the Walmart is out of bread. Ten feet of shelves sit empty between the tortillas and the crackers, holding not so much as a single loaf of store-brand white. There’s still some cereal, but mainly off-brands. This is the only Walmart that I’ve seen with empty shelves outside of hurricane season on the Gulf Coast. It’s also the only one in the country that had to ban RV parking in its parking lot — so many people were living there, regular shoppers couldn’t find a place to park.
Four years ago, my traveling stripper/escort friend Tara made a guy pay for her services in gift cards from this store. The only accessible ATM in town was broken, and it was a Sunday, so they had to wait until noon for the store to open because of the local blue laws. It’s to her credit, or all her fault, depending on my mood, that I have to shop here at all, because this is the best option for buying groceries on a Sunday night in this flat, charmless, remote town.
There are gentlemen’s clubs and there are strip clubs, and the differences can be huge. A gentlemen’s club has a DJ, VIP rooms, bathroom attendants, and a dress code for the customers and the dancers. A strip club might have a jukebox and stackable chairs, and share a bathroom with the Mexican restaurant next door. I’ve made plenty of money in gentlemen’s clubs, but strip clubs have always been more fun. Whispers is a strip club. The first time I walked in and saw the carpet — a black light-reactive repeating neon mud-flap girl pattern that looks as if it should be upholstering the back of a shaggin’ wagon — I knew I’d found the right place, even if the stage was just a corner of linoleum-tiled floor bounded by low countertops. You could just tell that this was the kind of club where dancers might occasionally wear flip-flops or cowboy boots on stage and where an ankle monitor or extra pounds wouldn’t keep a friendly dancer off the schedule.
It’s not the charm that brings dancers to Whispers, though. We’re in Williston, North Dakota, because oil companies are here working to extract the abundant natural resources of the region, and to do so, they require many men to work for them. Female company is far less abundant than the petroleum resources of the Bakken Formation. It is mobile, though, so here we come, the next sign of a boomtown after the oil and the men.
2.
The psychological principle of intermittent rewards explains the addictive appeal of gambling and Twitter. You might get a treat and you might not, and you never know, so you keep trying to see what happens next. It is the most American behavioral phenomenon.
Mineral extraction economies activate this neural mechanism: wildcatting, prospecting for gold — gambles that may pay off. Today it’s no longer the individual who makes these scores, of course, it’s corporations, but the work and opportunity draws those with nothing to lose but the trying. California in 1849, Colorado in 1859, Montana in 1883, Texas and Oklahoma in 1912, Alaska in 1970, North Dakota in 2008 — every time there’s a mining boom, it plays out thusly: Someone finds a valuable resource. People hear about it and flock to the area. These people are mainly men. The newly populated area is lawless and lacks the civilizing influence of family life. Among the first women to show up are prostitutes. For a while, everyone makes money and has fun. Or some people do, some gambles pay off. Then the resource dries up or its price drops, and the gamble isn’t profitable anymore, and the town eventually dries up or turns into a tourist attraction — or San Francisco, if it’s lucky. Because our brains are wired to want to continue taking that chance, everyone keeps gambling, no one thinks the boom will bust. It will. It always will.
Williston is booming right now. I’ve worked there since 2007, and oil has changed the town both completely and not at all. Whispers’ transition from typically tiny, haphazard small-town strip club into one trying to balance down home and big city is not working out too well, and it’s an example of the boom–bust cycle writ small. Capitalism’s inherent gamble plays out on a small stage with a chrome pole while lessons in second chances and knowing when to cut your losses are there to take to heart or ignore. It’s more America than anywhere I’ve been. Some oil workers think improvements in drilling and fracking technology will sustain the economy for decades, but that’s not my area of expertise. What I do know about is what it’s like to revisit a place you hate again and again over the span of six years, watch it change, and realize you’re watching history repeating and that you’re just another camp follower along the frontier, profiting from mineral extraction booms, chasing opportunity and running from stagnation.(snip)
10.
Williston has two strip clubs now. There are probably 20 to 40 strippers working in town every night now instead of three. It took a long time for things to quickly change. First, Whispers started booking four dancers. Then a second club, Heartbreakers, opened right next door, and they didn’t even cap the number of dancers that could work. Not only that, they didn’t pay the dancers — and instead charged them a whopping $120 flat stage fee. Whispers upped their game by going to six dancers at some point in 2011. The last time I got a paycheck from them was in February 2012, and then the owner told me they weren’t going to pay dancers at all anymore.
So starting in 2012, instead of getting paid $250–500 a week, depending on the booking, we paid Whispers $120 a night. Instead of keeping $15 from each dance, dancers kept the whole $20. The club was remodeled to add a new stage and more room for private dances. “Champagne rooms” were built from wooden particle board, furnished with pleather ottomans and space heaters, so we could finally upsell customers to a $500/hour (minus 20% to the club). The same dressing room that held six dancers packed in 12 to 22 women a night. The pool tables are gone. There’s a DJ.
Seeing Whispers model itself on gentlemen’s clubs was like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. They brought in a manager from Atlanta who came into the dressing room to give pep talks at the beginning of the week and enthuse about the changes, including the soon-to-be-installed “Vegas-style light show.” Also, the customers, who apparently had CNN, assumed we were making thousands of dollars a night, and seemed to get cheaper as the club tried to become more upscale.
In 2011, North Dakota and Williston exploded in the news. There was a PBS series on the boomtown, New York Times articles, a Men’s Journal feature. Especially amusing to all the dancers who had worked out there was CNN’s piece that claimed strippers in Williston were making $3,000 a night based on one dancer’s testimony. I asked a lot of women I’d worked with if they’d ever seen a time when Whispers dancers were banking three Gs a night. Their answers ranged from “Fuck no” to “The only way someone could get close to that would be to include after-hours work.” I also asked them what their personal best nights ever were and got answers ranging from $600 to $1,600. And that’s best, not average. The ones who mentioned their average earnings put them between $300 and $800 nightly.
The appeal of Williston is, or was, its consistency, the fact that a slow night would equal $400 instead of the potential $0 or even negative outlay possible elsewhere. Add to that its relative ease and low contact levels and you have a place where the work itself is a little easier and more remunerative than in a lot of places. Once that CNN report aired, more and more dancers wanted to work in the two tiny clubs. Younger, cuter dancers from further and further away would book into Williston. Some of the old regular dancers found their bookings fewer and farther between. I noticed fewer black dancers, sometimes none. Some of the dancers who moonlit as escorts gave up dancing altogether, advertising online instead of getting clients in the club.
That’s appropriate for the changing customer demographic; they’re younger and more likely to use smartphones. There’s an excellent Facebook page maintained by a couple of younger transplants called the Bakken Fail of the Day, featuring truck wrecks, equipment failures, and stories about rig workers telling off their bosses. Most entertaining to me is reading the many comments about what jerks Texans are and what whiners Texas guys are about the cold. I won’t defend my native state, because a lot of them are complete nightmares as customers. They tend to want to tell you how they do it back in Houston, something I imagine is no less annoying in the oil fields than it is in the lap dance room. I do wonder what the rig equivalent is of trying to explain to a stripper why blow jobs in the champagne room are a good idea. Probably something about how OSHA isn’t looking, would be my guess."(snip)


My sister went to Williston last week of January through mid Febuary
There is still a lot of drilling going on with guys coming in from all over the country for 3-4 weeks at a time but the money has really dried up. The cheapest motels are over $200 a night and the stage fees are over $100. Girls weren't able to making over $500 even on a weekend night, I was told these girls were hustlers too.
If you still want to go I can ask her for the booking info.
Admire her if you will, but imitate her never, said the parents to the enamored children.





^^^ those financial results are, unfortunately, rather consistent with the 'evolution' of boom town economics. The number of total club customers has increased, but the number of total dancers has increased more ... thus diluting available total club spending dollars per dancer. With a larger number of willing dancers now available, clubs are charging those dancers relatively stiff house fees ... which directly 'siphons off' dancer earnings. And prices are rising for 'necessities' that are in comparatively short supply, i.e. motel rooms, food etc. ... which creates a double whammy for dancers who are both directly affected by having to pay these high prices themselves, as well as indirectly affected by reduced club customer spending as a result of club customers having to pay these high prices as well.
As with historical boom towns, the 'real' profits are earned by local capitalists ... the clubowners, the restaurant owners, the motel owners etc. However, those local capitalists are also taking a big risk in that their capital investment may quickly turn unprofitable / worthless should the 'boom' factor run dry.


Oil is starting to get big in western Wyoming, maybe that will be the next ND.
Admire her if you will, but imitate her never, said the parents to the enamored children.





^^^ unfortunately, with domestic oil and gas production, profitability depends on the 'local market' price levels for that oil and gas. It's already the case in the US northeast and western Canada that some recently drilled oil and gas well production has been shut down ... because the ability of 'local markets' to consume that additional oil and gas is limited, and because lack of pipelines, LNG terminals, refinery capacity etc. limit the quantity of oil and gas that can be affordably 'exported' to other markets. Rail and truck transportation of oil and gas are expensive ... expensive enough to render some oil and gas production that can only be delivered to outside markets by rail or truck to be unprofitable.
Or put another way, oil and gas 'exploration' activities are one thing. Sustained oil and gas production at a profit is something else altogether. So until some major decisions are made by the gov't concerning the future availability of new pipeline capacity, new LNG export capacity, new refinery capacity etc. I wouldn't 'bet the farm' on Wyoming oil and gas projects.





Ladies, be aware of your safety if you choose to visit Western North Dakota. A lot of the men hanging around Williston tend to be crude and often felons...Not a recipe for peace and quiet. Also the newer club there has a really bad reputation. Don't put yourself in any bad situations.
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