It’s a common factoid (in the Pacific northwest, at least) that Portland, Oregon, has “more strip clubs per capita” than any other city in the US.
If you’ve been to Portland, this seems plausible – there are strip clubs galore throughout the city. (Seattle, by comparison, has a grand total of four. Or maybe it’s five now.) And Portland seems like one of those small enough big cities that a per-capita claim makes sense, even if somewhere like NYC or Las Vegas or Atlanta has more strip clubs total.
But it’s a factoid in the true Mailerian sense of the word: Frequently cited, no credible source given. If you look at relative populations, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Portland are all within 40,000 people of each other. Even going by metro areas, only Atlanta gets significantly bigger.
And, of course, there’s the other direction: I’d be unsurprised to find that some small “city” has one or two strip clubs within its limits that really cater to a larger nearby neighbor with more restrictive exotic dancing laws, winning on a per capita basis if you look at just the city itself.
All that said:
Does Portland have the most strip clubs per capita in the US? (“City” and “strip club” may have malleable definitions for this question.)
If not, what city does?
And, perhaps most intriguing, where does this factoid originally come from?
New Port Richey, Florida has at least three and has a population of 26,000 and change at the 2000 census. That works out to one strip club per 8,500-9000 persons.
The three clubs I know exist are Foxy’s, Diamonds and the Brass Flamingo. Seems like there are a couple more in that vicinity, but they may technically be in Tarpon Springs or Port Richey.
So let me know what the per capita rate is for Portland and I’ll see if I can bring that per capita number down.
I have never been there but East St. Louis, IL is supposed to be quite the shithole and a strip club mecca despite a population of 32,000. I can’t speak to the facts but I have never heard that about Portland but I have about East St. Louis. There must be some small town that has 3 or 4 yet a very small population that throws the whole thing off. These types of statistics get complicated the more you drill down.
Here is a google search for strip clubs in East St. Louis, IL:
At least one of the clubs I was thinking of is in Hudson, Florida (near or next to New Port Richey). Hudson has a population of 12,765 in the 2000 census. It has the clubs Lollipops and Centerfold Girls listed in strip club directory dot com (NSFW) so that’s one strip club for every 6382.5 of population.
FWIW that website brings up 346 strip clubs in Florida. Will let you know if it has a number for Portland.
Yes, but to be fair to the residents of Pasco County. These strip clubs are mainly in a couple of mile strip just over the border from Pinellas County (home of Clearwater and St Petersburg - see joke below). The reason they exist is that Pasco allows the sale of alcohol and nudity on the same premises. Pinellas forbids it. What good is nudity without alcohol, and vice versa?
Shibb from Florida, God’s Waiting Room
The oldest people in America live in St. Petersburg. Their parents live in Clearwater.
I figured cities like East St. Louis or Hudson would have a per-capita advantage. What if we limit it to cities of 300,000 people or larger – Pittsburgh and bigger on this list?
And samclem, I’m definitely interested in anything you turn up on the origin of the meme. I’ve poked through my limited resources, but I know you have access to arcane knowledge beyond my ken.
This site lists 65 clubs in Portland, which seems about right, with 568,000 population that’s one club per 8738 residents. If you started adding in webcam businesses, lingerie shows, jack shacks and the like the ratio would lessen quite a bit–but those businesses don’t advertise in a way that’s easily searchable. We really do have a lot of sex workers here though, and there’s not as much of a stigma as I’ve seen in other cities.
