This is very odd. I’m an American male over 40, and not only have I never been to a strip club, I can’t recall any guys I’ve every hung out with talking about going to a strip club. And I was single until I was 30, so I hung out with mostly single guys.
I remember one time in college a fraternity brother got engaged and someone hired a stripper to come perform at our house, but if you’d asked me I’d have said that the % of people who go to strip clubs was pretty low.
Guess I’m an outlier.
The only time I’ve been other than a few bachelor parties was when a friend befriended the shady Russian owner after meeting him at a regular bar in town. In turn friend befriended 19 year old stripper from the club, so we went down a few nights when she was working.
The last night was when I had my true anti-strip-club epiphany – it was in the men’s room (no, you perverts, not like that). In this college town, it was almost literally the only men’s room I ever saw that did not have a condom machine. It was the one place in town where they were 100% confident no one had a chance of going home and getting laid. So, not a great takeaway or ROI.
Do you have any sort of evidence for that?
I can only speak anecdotally, but I’ve associated with a wide gamut of young American males, between being in the Army, going to a very liberal philosophy school, and holding down a white-collar corporate desk job. No matter the demographic, it’s generally expected that young men in their early twenties will occasionally hit up a strip club at least once or twice. Even my gay buddies will come along for bachelor’s parties or for that rare weird night where there’s nothing much to do and somebody suggests going just to see if things have suddenly gotten magical cool (they haven’t.)
Hearing someone above the age of 25 say they’ve never been to strip club is somewhat along the lines of hearing that someone has never seen Die Hard 2, or been to see the local minor league baseball team.
And my anecdotal experience is the opposite of yours. Most of this tread is anecdotal evidence for that matter. I’d be interested in real data.
I’ve never seen Die Hard 2 and I’ve only been to one local baseball game, which I left halfway through out of sheer boredom.
Then please read the paper I linked to, which contains references to hard data and statistics on strip club visits.
This basically covers it. I don’t know of any male who has not gone to a strip club, in my experience most will go once or twice a year on special occasions, but there are a few losers who live there and think the dancers actually care about them.
This is silly, the grand majority of people don’t go there thinking they are going to pick up a dancer. You can straight up trade money for sex iif you ask the right girl, but no guy that isn’t completely deluded goes there thinking spending money on dances and tipping is going to get him laid. They go to look at tits, you give a girl a dollar and she waves her tits at you, you give her a 20 and she grinds on your lap for 5 minutes. That is a great ROI for most guys.
Sigh. Well, the strip club really isn’t that interesting, either. So we’ll duck out at 11, go over to Skammer’s place and catch DH2. I think it’s on loop every weekend night on either TNT or TBS.
Very intersting indeed! That’s some large numbers…
Yeah, this seems to be the straight dope:p. I think you get these kind of ‘losers’ in most of the ‘red light businesses’; except that in brothels they actually get to have sex with the working ladies.
The girls that are up for ‘more’ (if such a thing happens:rolleyes:) will probably want to provide protection themselves. Trust me, you won’t find any condom machines in brothels either.
While the cliche is that a bachelor party must involve strippers (either at a club, or hired to come to wherever the party is), it’s a really bad idea, and sensible grooms/best men will avoid it. At least some of those guys you’re inviting will be married or have SOs (including, of course, the guest of honor), and some of those SOs will have objections to their boyfriends/husbands watching strippers, so by having a bachelor party at a strip club, you’re putting some of your friends in a very awkward position.
But that’s the best part! Watching your friend twist in the wind of the SO’s fury for a bit can be very entertaining. Of course, if you’re any kind of friend you’ll convince the SO that Herman only went with you after much cajoling and MIG influence (Men in Groups). My mother has this theory that Men in Groups will automatically default to the lowest IQ in the group. She is a wise woman. As is my SO, who is smarter than me, and may read this.
As quoted upthread, Ron White nailed it. As a general class, most guys are there to have a few beers, watch the girls and go home. A few lonely souls may convince themselves that they have a shot with the dancers, but Life will generally sort them out in time, although thier wallets may be considerably lighter for it…
Then those men should leave.
The last bachelor party I was at, all the wives and girlfriends knew that we were going to a strip club. They were okay with that (though one forbid her husband from getting a lap dance).
If a man cannot convince his wife and/or girlfriend that he should be allowed to watch a stripper, then the evening should consist of two parts- drinks, billiards and such without a stripper, and then the part of the evening with naked chicks. The men in question should leave before the second part.
Re Male Strippers
Every year, I go to the Henri David Halloween ball. As this is a very gay event, there are always male strippers. Judging from years of seeing them on stage, it is my opinion that while they can thrust and grind rhythmically, they cannot actually dance.
Cell phone cameras have been a big problem. You just can’t get people to leave those things home. Let’s take a bunch of pictures!! What could possibly go wrong??
I like watching Castle every week. But I have no illusions that I’m ever going to sleep with Stana Kanic.
You have to enjoy a strip club with the awareness that it’s a form of entertainment not a social opportunity to meet women.
Ugh…if I wanted some girl to talk my ear off all night, I’d stay home with my girlfriend.
You mean the awkward position of going into his wife’s purse and borrowing his testicles for a few hours?
Actually, I know a couple of guys who married strippers. After all, they are banging someone.
If, for some reason, you actually do want to date a stripper, you have to spend a lot of time hanging out in a strip club not spending any money (at least not on girls) and not wasting their time (that is to say letting them talk your ear off without tipping them).
But really, most guys are regular middle class Joes making $55,000 a year who have to get home to their high school sweetheart wife or she’ll divorce him and take the 2.3 kids and the Honda Civic. Those are the guys who go like once in college and once again for their bachelor party.
Aren’t you old enough to be her dad? She’s around my age, so I think I might actually have an outside shot.
I had no interest in hooking up with a stripper even if it were likely. Once when I was getting a lap dance, I even told the stripper I could never date a stripper because I’d get jealous.
I like strip clubs. The trick is to go with your girl instead of your guy friends. The strippers are always way friendlier when you bring [del]bait[/del] a girl with you. Every time we’d go the dancers always hang all over her while I watch. It’s definitely a form of entertainment, and in no way a place to meet women.
Do you also bring your own sand with you when you go to the beach?
Here in Denmark there are also only a few strip/lap dance clubs in the traditional US style, the rest are more shady joints that at least to some extend serve as fronts to prostitution. The first type are definitely acceptable to go to with friends for a fun night.
My girlfriend works as a dancer in a lap dance club, so I have a little bit of insight in her work and they seem to get every type of customers imaginable.
There are the lonely guys who visit every weekend and to pretend they are in some kind of relationship with the strippers. Groups of drunk young guys who get each other worked up about seeing some titties and people who just hang out there like in a regular bar, but with the added benefit of lots of pretty and flirtatious girls that approach and hang out with you.
I’ve gone with colleagues as a fun way to end a night out and we’ve talked openly about it at work afterwards. In my experience it if you go with friends, it’s socially acceptable, if you go alone, it’s weird.