I probably should tag this onto the $2 bill discussion which segued to dollar coins, but decided to make it a new thread.
Last February, my husband and I dropped in the end of a conversation in the beach bar at the Islamorada resort where my niece was getting married. They were talking about dollar coins replacing bills and a woman wanted to know how exotic dancers would get tips if there were no dollar bills to stuff in their G-strings.
Unfortunately the question never got discussed since the topic quickly diverted to Woody’s, the local strip club. (Woody’s has a picture of a wood-sided station wagon on its sign for I think the same reason Hooters has pictures of owls on its signs.) Someone asked if the girls at Woody’s were comely and the bartender thought a moment and said, “Let me put it this way. They must not have a dental plan.”
But later I got to wondering what happens in those countries that don’t have relatively small denominations of paper money. Don’t they have strip clubs? If they do, don’t the customers put paper money into performers’ G-strings? How sexy does a dancer have to be to warrant a 5 Euro note, and do the lesser dancers get nothing?
Well, in most of Europe (except the UK I guess) strip clubs are far less common, because outright prostitution is legal. I have seen a couple of ‘tabledance’ clubs in Hamburg, where you could buy fake dollars in advance and put these into ladies’ strings. You see this ‘token system’ also in other joints.
Not exactly an answer to your question, but potentially interesting none the less. In parts of West Africa, it’s traditional for any important people at an event (usually male) to walk up mid-performance to any woman who is dancing for a crowd and give them money, usually by touching the bill to their forehead and letting it fall to their feet. It becomes a bit competitive, with dignitaries dropping significant cash in small bills. The dancer will continue with her dance, as if she does not see what is going on. In practice, it looks very similar to what you’d do at a US strip club.
It can be very disconcerting the first time a foreigner sees a middle school dance show.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been in a strip club in Canada, but strippers on the stage don’t get any tips, and if you want to arrange a lap dance you offer some money up front: $5, $10, etc.
They usually have a cup, put it between their breasts or legs and you try to toss the loonie or toonie in there (or you use five dollar bills). They also just toss the coins on the stage and there is someone to collect them for her. In same cases, the girls will let the guys lick the coins and toss them at her. If it sticks, they get a poster.
This is my very, very limited understanding of how it works.
PS - I just asked my husband’s friend and he said only jerks give anything less then a five, so no coins in most cases anyhow.
In Britain, drop pound coins into a beef glass provided for the purpose. However, when I have seen this it is more a matter of the girls gong round with the glass collecting donations before or after the actual act, rather than money being put in to encourage them during the strip itself.
In New Zealand, they sell you $1 scrip that is redeemable by the dancer. Not nearly as charming as the old greenback, but at least you don’t have to drop a fiver as a tip. Also, you have to spend all your scrip so you have to be judicious in how much you purchase.
In some countries you just buy them drinks or garlands, then they get a cut of that from the house. In most countries that I can think of, outside maybe Canada and the UK, strip clubs are basically brothels anyway. And often not terribly savory.
In Frankfurt, when I lived near there, they opened a place and billed it as an “American style strip club”. Might have mentioned it in one of the linked threads. They had both male and female dancers, and both female and male clientele (club was straight as far as I could determine). It was bizarre, in that the women would go nuts over the male dancers and the guys would be low key when the women were dancing. In between acts the stage was a dance floor and many would fill it and dance. This place was not a brothel, per se, although I was propositioned a couple of times, and it was on the edge of the red light district, just a short walk from the real Puffhauses.