Are you open about what you do to others? Like if you are at a party and the conversation turns to “So, what do you do?” do you say? What about with guys you are dating?
I just want to echo what other posters have said, you are a serious babe.
[Wayne’s World]
If she were president she would be Baberaham Lincoln.
[/WW]
I find it refreshing to find someone in your industry that explodes the all the various myths that all strippers are dumb/damaged/molested/victims etc.
You go girl.
I would also like to add a few things here. A great book written from a first person perspective is Strip City, by Lily Burana. If you are ever really interested in getting to the nitty gritty she does it better than any other writer I’ve read. When I read that book I was mildly peeved that she put all my feelings about dancing into words before I really could. Props to her though. Some of the other books out there are reeeeally bad.
Back in 1998 I wrote a 4000 word feature article that appeared in Indianapolis Monthly magazine about stripping and being a college student. I got paid $500 and back then that was big shit to me. My pics were in it and everything. One day soon I will write a book. In fact, I should take all of my replies from here and put them in a Word document just to inspire myself. I have always wanted to do a book of interviews of dancers I know. I think it would be fascinating. Who knows, I could get famous from it. 
And I feel I would be remiss without mentioning a great site http://www.gstringsforever.com/. The woman who runs it, Jo Weldon, a.k.a. Jo Boobs, is a burlesque dancer and a former stripper. She’s hilarious and awesome and talks about dancing in a way that I really relate to.
I know comedians get pissed when one of them poaches another’s trademark (“Don’t you ever let me catch you doing my George Carlin bit again!”). I know you and your workmates have little-to-no drama, but is this an issue with strippers in general?
Is there drama in the SC? Lol, of course there is! Girls get mad over a lot of different things, but poaching someone’s moves isn’t really one of them. Mostly, it gets started when one dancer “cuts the throat” of another dancer by jumping on the custie she’s been working on as soon as she goes on stage. And then there are just basic dancer etiquette things that get broken and girls get mad about it. Add alcohol and you have those issues X10.
Personally, I don’t get involved because it doesn’t pay. Even if someone pisses me off I would never say anything about it out on the floor. Guys don’t come in the club to hear about your problems, that is what they are escaping from. I wish more girls realized this. I have ripped into people in the dressing room, but not usually unless they’ve done something to repeatedly piss me off. But it doesn’t happen very often.
Have you given any thought to stepping up a level - running a club, that is?
I was wondering the same thing myself.
Indygrrl, there’s no way to read that Indianapolis Monthly article, is there? I’d love to see it – if your writing on here is any indication, it’d be a fascinating read.
Seconded!
First of all, thank you for this thread- it’s really interesting. ( And, I’m going to Indianapolis later this year. I have a one in thirty chance of seeing you dance ! 
).
I was the uncomfortable guy at the bachelor party. My first time in a strip club. There were two porn actresses “starring” that night. I want to say The Mirrell Twins, but it was a loooooong time ago. Anyway, I was the designated driver so I sat at the bar, nursing diet cokes and enjoying the dances. The female bartender was the problem.
First diet coke? Fine. Second? A roll of the eyes and a frown. Third? She busted my bals and said, look man, you going to drink or not? That was all it took. I was tipping her as though I was doing shots, to justify my seat at the bar. I told her to get the owner. She did, and he and I stepped into the cool evening air outside so he could hear me clearly. I explained that it was my job NOT to get smashed and that was my childhood best friend up there, drowning in some porn star’s cleavage and his bartender was REALLY being a bitch.
He was, to his credit, furious. Went in, reamed her out. He took the idea of not overloading his customers pretty seriously.
-shrug- my first and last visit. Aside from the day I spent shooting a movie scene in a strip club on Staten Island. That was just work. I had to cut film more than once when a dancer’s butt bumped into the camera. I was surprised, she was surprised, and I blushed REALLY deeply. " Uh, sorry about that, is um. your ass okay? " :eek:
When we wrapped and the club owner asked us to stay as his guest, well…THAT was hot. I’d never watched a woman take a shower before.
How can a girl be clean and dirty at once, I ask?
And, your daughter’s lucky because she has a mom with her head screwed on straight. 
Cartooniverse
They could call it Romper Room.
I have to admit, I’m having all my fantasies and daydreams shattered by your rather… Mercenary approach to the whole thing, Indygrrl. Not a bad thing, I suppose, but still.
Are there dancers that do it because they enjoy it? When my ex and I would go, we would try to find a dancer that truley seeemed to be having fun. To many of the girls seemed to just be going through the motions to get the money. Disappointing.
But then, we probably got fleeced by the girls who just happened to be better actresses, I suppose.
I really didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t “really” dancing, as I’ve seen a few strippers work and the good ones definitely know how to move. I was just wondering if you had any training in dance, such as latin, contemporary, ballroom or whatever. I guess I just needed a day to figure out how to phrase it in a more polite way, but I didn’t want anyone else to steal my question!
Thank you for your answers! This has been a very enjoyable thread.
Tristan: I generally enjoyed it. I actually often felt a bond, however temporary, with the customers.
I enjoy it immensely, and for more reasons than the money. I am often told that it is refreshing to see a dancer who really looks like she is enjoying herself on stage. I am a very good entertainer and I take pride in that, but yes, it is mercenary. I won’t make any bones about that. I like my club a lot because we have several very good entertainers who put on a great show and have great personalities. We have fun almost all of the time, but that still doesn’t mean we want to do it for free.
And to Stuff, I really wish the article was online, but unfortunately it was published back in 1998 when the magazine didn’t put content on the web. I have copies of it, but that’s about all there is. It was published in either Feb. or March of '98, I can’t remember which. The cover story was about the astronaut David Wolff and right along the bottom was a teaser for my article, something about a college student getting more of an education than she bargained for by dancing. It wasn’t exactly like that, but you get the gist.
You don’t do your job out of the goodness of your heart, even if you love what you do. We are no different than anyone else who is at work. That is something the guys want to forget, that we are doing a job. Like I’ve said previously, I don’t ever try to manipulate men into anything. I am kind to them and I offer my services. If they say yes I show them the best time I can as long as they are being gentlemen. We are selling a fantasy, but just like in the movies, most adults can discern fantasy from reality.
No way. I wouldn’t want to try to run a place like that. It would be stressful as hell, and unless you are the owner and reaping the profits you don’t get paid shit. Managers are woefully underpaid considering what the rest of us make. Maybe that’s why some of them are such assholes.
Incidently this objective has been satisfied.
::Carefully looks around for wife::
So how YOU doin’?
FTR, bob was being a jackass, but this comment is patently wrong. I suppose it gets into the whole bee’s nest of tipping in general, but this seems like a shortsighted and greedy approach. I won’t pretend to know what the support staff at the club is paid, but just because you work your ass off to make that money doesn’t mean that it’s all automatically entitled to you.
Consider a bartender, which I know more than a little about. Bartenders at regular bars work their asses of for the 3-4 hours that they are busy on a given night. They earn a sizable chunk of the money that the bar brings in. Small relative to the overall ring, but still sizable. They have bar backs who probably do very little for them directly. However, that bar back provides the environment in which they are able to earn that money. They stock the liquor they sell and wash the glassware they use. I might not see the guy more than a couple times a night, but you can damn well believe that I’d feel like a slimebag if I gave him less than the 15% that was customary in my bar. I know that I wouldn’t be able to earn that cash without him.
The situation is even more exaggerated in a strip club since the strippers take accounts for probably 80%+ of the money a club brings in. The opposite of what a standard bar does. Those DJs, even if they are not playing exactly your songs, and those bouncers play a huge role in creating the environment in which you are able to earn money.
There’s probably an argument to be made that the club should bear the burden of the cost for that, and the dancers would pay a larger fee to the club to dance as a result, but if that’s not the situation that exists you are being pretty selfish by not supporting the people who help make your job possible.
You’ve stated that the bouncers play a major role in creating a safe and comfortable environment for you, an environment that you need to earn your living, and you seem to not believe that they are entitled to their share of the overall take. I understand that you haven’t said they are entitled a tip out, so perhaps that’s a moot point, but the logic holds for the DJ.
I don’t understand why you would tip out the bartender, they earn tips on their own and do nothing to support you above and beyond that. Waitresses obviously should, but no reason I can see why you should aside from the regular drinks you order for yourself.
The DJ, even if he doesn’t play your specifically requested music, plays a huge role in creating an atmosphere for you to work in. You should compensate him for that. Perhaps the club pays him a good salary, though with a house fee of only $25 a dancer it seems unlikely that is the case, but most likely the bulk of his pay is expected to come from the earners in the club. The alternative is that the DJ and the club take more money from you guys upfront in order to pay him an appropriate fee.
All that said, I’m not going to point the finger. I don’t know how your club works and what a truly fair distribution is. Perhaps the DJ gets paid fine. But for you to say that you worked your ass off for that money and therefore imply that you shouldn’t owe any to the support staff is greedy and shortsighted. Other people contribute greatly to your ability to earn that sizable wage. That the rest of the dancers are equally (or more) unfair with their tipouts isn’t a defense.
Personally I’m curious just how much money this club could possibly be making. If they are bearing the lions share of the cost to the bouncers and DJ, not to mention basic overheard, and only getting $25 per dancer per shift, they are making jack shit. They take a good chunk of the bar revenue, and I’m sure that accounts for almost all of the profits, but in most clubs that accounts for a trivial amount of the business. I mean, when I go to a club I’m half drunk already and am maybe in for 2 of 3 $10 cocktails at most. Of course there is the cover charge, but I’m guessing owning a strip club is a pretty crummy way to make your millions. Seems that owning a regular bar would pay a much better margin.
Either things have changed in Tucson since then, or the club I usually go to (Curve’s Cabaret) has very different rules.
I’ve been to TD’s West a couple of times, about ten years ago. Not very good. I’ve heard that East was better, but I rarely go to that part of Tucson. (I don’t actually LIVE in Tucson, I just visit there for a couple of weeks a year to visit family).
The only club here in my county (in Washington State) has no lap dances, no rail (patrons must sit at LEAST four feet from the stage) no direct tipping (you buy tokens from the bar, and, I kid you not, TOSS them at the dancer during the dance. As a customer, I HATED this. I can imagine how the DANCER’S felt about it), and private dances are, again, paid for via the bartender/manager. The private dances are in seperate booth that have small stages in them; again, the customer cannot be closer than four feet from the dancer. Oddly enough, if you pay for a large enough “private dance package”, you can have a slow dance (think prom night) with your dancer, out in the public area. Weirdest strip club I’ve ever been in. I don’t know how they stay in business (actually, I do. We’re a Navy Town, and they’re the only SC within an hour’s drive).
Omniscient’s post tells me one thing; the whole US tipping system is confusing and creates more ill will and uncertainty than it is worth.
By the same line of reasoning, it can also be argued that the bouncers should tip the strippers. After all, the strippers create the atmosphere to draw in clients, so that the bouncer has a job in the first place.