I’m sure it would be the safety guy thing . I am a very big fellow , very sturdy in stature and very easy going unless the situation dictates otherwise. Kind of like a bouncer without the attitude if you will. Thanks for the lesson.
I’ve hears dancers mention huge, huge take-home loot, in excess of $2000 a night. OTOH, I’ve watched sets where I’m positive the dancer made less than twenty bucks. What’s a realistic description of a dancer’s income? What percentage of it comes from getting patrons to buy them twenty dollar ginger ales?
How prevalent would you say drug abuse is among dancers?
What are the best and worst major cities for strippers? (I’m guessing Atlanta and Ft. Lauderdale are good and Baltimore isn’t, but I’d like a more informed perspective.)
How, in your life, do you meet your romantic partners?
ooh, I know.
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What is considered a good tip for a) stage dancing and b) lap dancing? For lap dances, since they cost however much to begin with, is it appropriate/expected to tip on top of that, and if so, how much?
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Is there anything you wish more customers knew or took into consideration?
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Why are strippers more ah… touchy-feely with their female customers than with male ones?
Maybe they’re just trying to get the men riled up; maybe they feel safer doing extremely arousing things to female customers than to male ones… maybe it’s some reason I haven’t even thought of. But my god, every time I go to the strip club and give a dancer anything, I’m damn near violated. (It’s not just me, either… lots of girls come away from the stage with a very shocked expression on their faces, as if thinking “how the fuck was that legal…?”)
I do my hair and makeup at home and then arrive at the club around 6. I go in, head to the dressing room, take my time getting ready, and then I go out and tell the dj to put me on the board (if he hasn’t already). Then, depending on how much time I have until my stage set I take a look around and start the hustle. The main objective is to sell private dances for $20 a song. It’s pretty easy to do, and I usually sell 3-5 once I have a guy back there. The entire shift is comprised of going on stage and hustling dances, over and over and over. Sometimes you hit upon a good spender right away, other times you make your money $20 at a time the entire night.
At the end of the night I get dressed, pay my house fee to the club ($25) and tip out our dj (supposedly 10%, but I usually only give $25) and bartender (supposed to be 5%, but I give around $10.). Then I get walked out by the door guy ($5) and go home. Then I take my hair and makeup off and shower if I’m not too tired, and I go online for a bit and eat a bowl of cereal or something and then I go to bed.
I don’t know of any club that gives benefits. Most treat dancers as Independent Contractors and we pay them to work.
That differs from city-to-city, but I don’t believe anyone who claims to make that much. If they do it is because they have expensive VIP and Champagne Rooms that charge by the hour, or because they hit upon a big tipper. Some clubs do drink commissions, but that is less popular than it used to be. Most don’t want to encourage excessive alcohol use.
Maybe a little higher than the general population, but not as much as most people would think.
Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix…I would guess.
Umm, the same way anyone else would.
I’d like to throw in an anecdote here. The first time I visited Atlanta, my buddies and I went to two clubs: The Cheetah Club (which had more really good-looking naked women in it than any other place I’d ever been to in my life) and some seedy little club on Claremont Ave. The women in the latter place–who read their own poetry to the patrons in between sets–were very average-looking women with horrible hair and chunky figures (I’m fat myself, not casting stones, honest). The working-class patrons loved them! There was a genuine affection there that the hotties and stockbrokers at the Cheetah Club really lacked.
For stage it’s $3 or more per song, and for lap dances I would suggest an extra $5 per song. And yes, it is appropriate, but not everyone does it.
Haha, sure, there’s a whole bunch of things I could tell ya. Mostly, if you wouldn’t ask a woman in the grocery, don’t ask a dancer. For instance, age, realness of breasts, etc. That’s rude no matter where you are. Also, don’t blow on us, we don’t like it.
If you are female, tip just as if you were a man. We are not working any less because we are dancing for you than them, in fact, for some of us it is harder. Try not to treat us like a novelty act, you are, after all, in our house. Be nice.
Good question. I don’t really know because I don’t do it. Some of the girls are bi-sexual, I suppose, or they like to pretend for the sake of the guys. Personally, I wish they wouldn’t even let women in the SC, no offense. Guys will never spend like they should if there are women custies around.
I wanted to come back to this one. I would say that a grand is the gold standard of what most dancers would try to make in a night. Personally, I have only cleared that number once in 13 years. But, I come close a lot and I am a consistent earner. I could compare my numbers from last year and this year and they’d be almost the same (I keep a spreadsheet).
But there are many dancers who consider $200 a night good money. It is all a matter of perspective and a matter of where you are and what others are making. Not every club has the clientele to provide big earnings for the girls.
And, just because a girl only makes a few bucks on stage has absolutely nothing to do with how the rest of her night is going. In most places we make only a fraction of our money from the stage.
Thanks for the answers!
Realllllly. Why do you feel that way?
I think most of the places I’ve been to required women to be accompanied by men. I always wondered why, because it seemed to me that if a group of girls were going to the strip club without a man, they were probably going to see (and presumably tip) strippers. Why else would they go?
Do you feel the same way about lesbians coming in? Do lesbians not tip as much as straight guys?
(FWIW, I’m bi, and I buy girls drinks and tip them onstage, but I don’t like lapdances at all. I try to make up for that in the other areas, but I can see how it’d be frustrating for the dancers.)
Think of it this way, the strip club is considered the last bastion of male freedom. They can drink, smoke, cuss, stare at and objectify women and be unashamed, all of those things that are taboo for them in other places. Really, how many places will still let you light a stogie? The SC is the last of that kind of thing.
Now, add one woman to a group of five guys and suddenly they are behaving differently. They don’t want her to see how they’d normally act. Now, add 25% women on a Saturday night and watch our numbers go down considerably. Yeah, they’ll tip on stage and they like to make a production of the whole thing, but what we are looking for are those big spenders who we can take to VIP for an hour. Guys aren’t going for that when there are so many women around.
And you might be surprised by this, but a lot of the female customers are downright rude to us. Put a few drinks in them, let even one of them feel a bit insecure, and you have a recipe for problems. The only reason brawls don’t break out between dancers and female custies is because the dancers don’t want to lose their jobs. I’ve never had a man try to make me feel bad about what I do, but the comments and actions of females has pissed me off more than once. Again, they need to realize they are in our house and act accordingly. We’re not stripping on their front porches, but you’d think we were by the way they act.
Lesbians are cool. I don’t know them to get many private dances, but they don’t put a damper on things like straight females. And that’s good that you tip well when you go, but you aren’t going to hand a dancer $100 are ya? That’s what we’re after, and sometimes anyone taking up space who isn’t workable in that way is not as welcome in our minds. I feel almost bad that I look at it in that way, but experiences with female custies has conditioned me to have a negative viewpoint about them. Not all dancers feel this way, but a lot do.
Have you (or any of the other dancers) ever gotten injured while dancing? How did it happen?
Yes, I’m a klutz. Why do you ask? 
How do customers who try to get too - ahem - friendly with the dancers get handled?
Wow. This has definitely been enlightening. I had no idea that so many people were wishing I wasn’t there every time I sat down. That’s a shame, because I enjoy strip clubs every once in awhile, but I guess I’ll be doing the girls more of a favor by staying home from now on.
No, no, don’t take it like that. I am not saying we feel that way about EVERY woman, but it is a general thing. If you show yourself to be cool, laidback, and a decent tipper, you will get a positive response.
Also, I would not want to speak for all of the dancers out there. I am but one girl and only expressing my own opinions. Some girls on my stripper mb really like dancing for female custies.
Well, we all get lots of bruises, especially when we first start. And there are the sore muscles…but you are talking injuries. Mix alcohol and six inch heels and you will definitely get the occasional sprained ankle or other type of guffaw. It really is amazing more of us don’t get hurt. I’ve sprained my ankle one time that I can think of, and that was because I was wearing 7-inchers. Girls will fall off the stage occasionally, and some get injured learning how to do pole work. It’s a job hazard.
That depends on the club and the dancer. Some will get thrown right out on their ass, others will be given chance after chance by management (because they are spending money!). For the most part, in my club, we take matters into our own hands. I’ve smacked guys, demanded extra not to tell, made a big stink with management…all decently effective. But the best line of defense is experience and “defensive dancing,” which is something that becomes instinctual after awhile.
It is kind of like having eyes in the back of your head. You learn what you can and can’t do with certain guys. Some you know right away that you can’t turn your back on them, others you could put your nipple a millimeter from his mouth and he wouldn’t move a muscle. You have to be aware of what is going on around you at all times, and that is why girls who drink at work have more problems. Their defenses are down and it’s easier for guys to put one over on them.
I have only been to a few SC’s, and only had one lap dance (along with my wife), but always wondered: How do you (and others, if you are comfortable talking for others) feel about guys having erections during lap dances? Is it a goal to get a guy aroused? Is it something you would rather not deal with? Have guys ever climaxed during a lap dance?
How do you feel about the new burlesque revival? I am a huge fan of it – more “alternative”-looking girls (Bettie Page-esque vampy pin-up girls, Gothy fetish performers), elaborate sexy costumes, choreographed dance routines, maybe a more innocent, sexy playfulness than your average club strippers.
To me, while a naked girl gyrating on a pole is always nice, if that girl picks out a special song and does a whole little routine with a costume or a gimmick – that’s even better. To me it puts the “tease” back in striptease, and in many cases, the “strip” as well. At the few strip clubs I’ve been to, the girls start out their song in a G-string or completely naked, and there’s nothing to build up to from there, no teasing, no anticipation.
Do you ever get feature dancers (porn stars, etc.) at your club? What are they like?
Oh, I love the burlesque stuff. I am a huge fan of elaborate costumes, makeup, and a huge production, unfortunately there isn’t much call for it in the SC. Guys seem to want the basics, get naked as quickly as possible. But I love to throw in theatrics whenever I can.
We get a feature every few months. For the most part they aren’t anything special. Most haven’t even done movies. The ones we get are all from a certain agency that our company uses. It’s like the generic feature store, lol. They are usually suprisingly chunky and suprisingly bad dancers. I think a lot of them were never house dancers so they never got the stage moves down. Occasionally one will have a great fire show or something.
When I first started I remember features really being something special. There was a girl named Adara Michaels who toured with her “sister” and they called it Scandalous or something to that effect. They were gorgeous and had great costumes and theme sets. Now the features are just kind of annoying because their routines take too long (which affects our stage time and stops a lot of the private dance activity for a few minutes). Personality-wise, I haven’t had a problem with any of them, but then I make a point of being nice to all of the dancers. It doesn’t pay to have drama.
We feel good about boners. It means we are doing our job well. I wouldn’t say its a goal as much as it is a side effect, lol. My way of dealing with it is to move around it as much as possible.
Depending on the contact level, guys sometimes get off. It doesn’t happen at my club, that I know of, but there are clubs that pretty much advertise friction dances with a happy ending. Again, that’s a club-to-club kind of thing.
I know them! Or at least I’ve seen pictures of her and I’ve heard of Scandalous. She has been through quite a few partners, apparently. I also saw a bit about them in one of those numerous HBO stripper documentaries – hot stuff! Adara has an official website at Scandalousworld dot com.
Huh. When I was in college and used to go to strip clubs occasionally, the boys in my crowd of buddies used to beg me to come along with them because invariably the dancers would flock to our table. I always imagined maybe it was a “safe” place to hang out or something because while I tipped average amounts I never bought lap dances or anything special–I was just there to hang out with the boys. Even so they’d keep coming back and would sit and converse, not just quick cruise-by-and-scope-us-out chit-chat. I once spent two hours talking to strippers named Gypsy and Deja about one’s mom’s recent operation and the other’s kids.
Of course I’m pretty mellow and usually wearing jeans and a tanktop or baseball shirt and sneakers without (or with very little) makeup and with my hair in a ponytail, so it could be just that I was laid-back and friendly and not treating them like slabs of meat with tits or like a jealous wife sneering at a bunch of whores.