Just curious. In this merry little pit thread there is some discussion as to the appropriate behavior for bouncers in a strip club.
Is being a bouncer the same or different in a gay nightclub or strip club? Do you have to handle the patrons differently? In hetero clubs some of the patrons are always eyeing the bouncer as a potentialphysical challenge and wondering if they could take him. Is it the same in a gay strip club, are there also some gay guys always kinda-sorta looking for a fight once intoxicated?
Also, as a practical matter how important are bouncers in gay clubs with respct to dancer safety? I mean if there’s some muscular dancer who’s gym ripped, I’m assuming he could probably quite easily kick the ass of anyone who messes with him.
I remember one of the superclubs in DC called Tracks (recently torn down to make room for the fabulous new $611,000,000 baseball stadium :rolleyes: ) where there weren’t any bouncers but they did have a sizeable security staff constantly roaming with two-way radios. DC Police were either on site or very close by and could be summoned in the event that somebody needed to be tossed out on their ear. So I think the rule was: if the uncooperative patron won’t leave on his own, let the police do their job.
Although a good third of the customers were so buffed they could have easily qualified as bouncers.
Only if he knows how to fight. Being strong really only helps if both people involved don’t know how to fight, or if both do know how to fight. If you’ve got a smaller guy who knows what he’s doing, up against a muscular guy who has no idea what he’s doing, the smaller guy will win 99% of the time.
Now, as to the rest of your OP, I will let those with the experience handle that.
In all my years of going to gay clubs I’ve only ever witnessed two fights, and both of those were started by straight men. In my experience gay men don’t get violent when tanked up, just witness events like gay pride/mardi gras where there are thousands of people, free flowing booze and virtually no police incidents (compare that to your average football match).
Obviously gay clubs have security staff but they’re fairly unobtrusive, most of the time they’re more on the lookout for people dealing drugs/people getting out of control due to drugs.
This is what I was going to post. I have seen exactly two fights in over 16 years of going to gay bars/clubs. Both of mine involved and were started by gay men, though. It does happen, but it’s rare.
I was the doorman/bouncer for my local gay bar in Altoona for over a year, and I never once had to actually break anything up.
In college, there was a popular dance club a couple of towns away that happened to be a straight friendly gay club. I remember seeing security people there, but not bouncers in the traditional sense. The only people that I saw asked to leave appeared to be straight men who were making unwanted advances at women. Really, what kind of guy goes to a gay club to pick up chicks?
I don’t know what I was thinking…it actually could work very well. A majority of the women at gay bars and clubs are actually straight, most of the time. Some nights it IS a lesbian majority but not always. When you’re one of maybe two or three straight men in the whole building it can be prime hunting ground, I guess. If the guys don’t mind getting hit on by men in the meantime, that is.
My observations from this particular club was that there seemed to be a group of men of appearing to be of Latino origin* at the club whenever I went. They would hang out together watching women dance with each other and occasionally come up behind one of the women and start grinding against her bottom while touching her inappropriately. On the occasions when I was the woman being grinded against, I would turn around, push the man back, and shout “No!” while shaking my head. If the man continued, which was more often than not, he’d get elbowed in the gut. That always worked. I have pointy elbows. These were the men that security escorted out.
While I used the term “picking up”, that’s not really what it was. This was plain ol’ being creepy and inappropriate. I hope that your friend did not use this as his primary method of picking up women. If so, your friend sucks.
*I mention ethnicity because they were a definite minority at the club, so it made them easier to identify. I do not recall ever seeing a man who appeared to be of Latino origin dancing with another man or dancing with a woman who appeared to be welcoming of his advances. If it had been a group of men who always wore green and black polka-dotted t-shirts who always sexually harassed women at the club, I would have identified them as such. In this case, ethnicity appeared to be the common factor, but I do not believe it was the cause. I have met people who appeared to be of Latino origin outside of this particular club who did not rub their clothed private parts against my own.
In my younger days I realized that a straight guy in a gay strip club is kind of like putting a fox in a hen house. A lot of the girls there were straight and, since they thought everybody else in there was gay, were incredibly easy to approach and talk to. Hot girls who would not have given me the time of day in any other setting were quite friendly in the gay bar even after I told them I was straight.
I may have unintentionally broken a few guys’ hearts, but for most of the guys I met their “Gay-dar” worked very well so it was all good.
RE: OP - I don’t remember any trouble in there, ever. There was a fairly burly guy at the door screening people coming in but I don’t remember any other security.
I’ve spent some time in gay and lesbian bars and I never minded getting hit on by men, I just told them that I was straight and had nary a problem. I’ve only seen a couple of fights and they were both in the same lesbian bar where one woman of the couple thought their partner was hitting on someone else. There were no bouncers and the bartender and other patrons separated the combatants.
I had some acquaintances that danced in a gay strip bar. There were a few bouncers, but I never saw any problems. I used to know the owners and bartenders of a couple of strip clubs (women dancing) and was sometimes asked to play bouncer until the regular guys showed up. Most of the trouble that I saw was where somebody got a good snootfull and started to get out of hand. Usually I could calm them down, and when I couldn’t… they usually were too drunk to put up much fight.
Check out my second post; the guys who were asked to leave were crossing lines.
FWIW, I am a lesbian, or at least somewhere on that end of the spectrum. I like to imagine I can ID other not-straight women relatively well. The women at this club were mostly not-straight, as in either super butch or dancing fairly closely with super butch women. Also, the male/female ratio at this club was not the best for those looking to pick up women. I know that as someone who went trying to pick up women. Women who went there mostly went with whomever they were dating.
Yeah he did suck - I never said he just picked up women.
No, he wasn’t like that at all, as nd_n8 says it was more like women in said clubs were more likely to be letting their hair down and be more approachable in general, and he was a good looking guy so they weren’t disappointed to find out he was straight(ish). He didn’t go to gay clubs just to pick up women though, it was because he enjoyed the atmosphere and the music.
To partially answer the OP, I believe gay clubs exist where you have to “prove” you are gay by kissing someone of the same sex, before being admitted. Nearly everyone I know thinks that this is an outrageous, discriminatory, and pointless practice - I merely offer it as a potential difference between bouncing in an open club and a gay club.
I used to love going to a local gay club. I’d get hit on all night. Going to a straight club and I get nothing.
Shame I’m not gay really, I could have had a great time.
FTR, I started going to a gay club because a few gay friends wanted all of us to go. I kept going because there were never any fights, and guys bought me drinks.
Not once did they seem to think I’d cheated them by getting the drink and then telling them I was straight. Some of them just tried harder.
