It was my understanding that the strippers at clubs using drugs and engaging in prostitution in VIP rooms was very common. I have no idea about the clients buying drugs though, but the dancers using drugs is common.
It does remind me of one story about a bar that was selling drugs and letting people buy them with credit cards. I’m guessing their method was to sell a bottle of champagne, charge it to a credit card and offer cocaine with it so people didn’t have to pay in cash. of course that would create a massive paper trail.
The one time I went to a strip club was in college, a couple weeks before my friend’s graduation (he was a bit ahead of the rest of us who were not graduating yet). For literally years, whenever anyone would ask “what should we do now” he would jokingly reply “strip club?”. And just before he would graduate and leave, we decided to tell him yes when a baseball game ended and we had no plans for what to do next. Most of us just hung out, but the one guy made “friends” (in quotes because obviously he was paying for the pleasure) with one of the strippers, who he kept getting dances from.
Well, imagine his surprise a couple weeks later when we went to my friend’s graduation ceremony, and she was graduating too?
So some of them are paying their way through college. She wasn’t a struggling actress, though - she was a Business major.
Yes, that one is the high end club in Inkster. The girls charge $300 and up for private dances with full service. Many times they just charge less for non-contact services because they are hot and they can get away with it.
Many, many years ago we had an undergrad research assistant for a semester. We overheard her telling someone she was a stripper. She kept trying to get me and my fellow grad students to ask her about it, but because we knew she was trying to shock or titillate us, we refused to bite.
Her: I’m tired from being up late at my second job.
Us: Yeah, it can be tough going to school and working.
Her: The job pays real well, though.
Us: That is very lucky of you.
Her: I’m proud of my job, but some people think it’s wrong.
Us: It’s good to take pride in your work.
etc.
The only time I got a lap dance it was from someone who claimed to be a grad student in English.
So yes, in my experience, with an n of about 2, they’re all working their way through college.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere about having once employed a stripper for an ordinary office job. She was aging out of the dancing biz when I hired her and only later did her side gig come to light. She had some interesting stories.
Relevant to this thread, she was the only one of the ~20 women who did customer service work for us who had in fact gone to college. IIRC she never quite got her 4-year degree, but stripping is what paid her tuition & living expenses for the years she’d been in school.
Oddly enough I have knows quite a few women who have worked in strip clubs in their past. Very few of them were putting themselves through school. It was just “easy” money. They eventually found other careers. They all told me that the back rooms were full of drama and drugs. Not all of them did drugs but most got involved with drama. All of them had to deal with stalkers and weirdos. A lot of them found sugar daddies from time to time who took them away from the life temporarily.
They typical setup as described to me is that they are independent contractors. They either pay a fee to work there or the house gets a cut of the lapdances but not tips. In the fee based system they could lose money for the night. If they were savvy they would write off their outfits against their income and also stuff like travel fees. One doesn’t typically strip in their own town. Like they’ll fly into Vegas for big nerd conference weekends or just drive over to the big city and stay in a hotel. One friend would fly to Florida to visit her sister for a week and work one night and the whole trip would be a net loss against her income.
I remember reading an article, probably pre-covid though, that said every Friday night the planes from Los Angeles to Las Vegas were filled with college students, who spent the weekend stripping in clubs and returned late Sunday so they could go to Monday classes.
There is one strip club in Santa Barbara and it’s a funny story.
In California the law (or at least it used to be) is that topless places can serve booze and therefore you need to be 21 to enter. Full nude places can’t serve alcohol (so just juice, coffee, water) so you only have to be 18. Municipalities can ban them altogether. In the mid-90s some guy read the regulations and realized that a full nude place that didn’t serve food was legal in town. He quietly opened one in a non-residential area near the train station and there wasn’t a damn thing that they could do. The city counsel called an emergency meeting and fixed the loophole but homeboy was grandfathered in. In short order he sold out to the Spearmint Rhino chain and made a mint.
I went when it first opened with full permission from the wife to mock the evangelicals who I had heard were protesting out front but was disappointed to not see any.
I think that a lot of the more attractive women who used to work at such place have found other avenues for exploiting their sexuality. I was acquainted, through my work, with one who did bachelor parties and such. She was quite attractive. These days I think that a lot of the clubs are the end of the line.
I would tend to think the opposite. A woman performing naked on stage knows that she is not creating a permanent record that might come back in the future. This is not true if she decides to perform on the internet or on film.
“Shit, man. I didn’t know they had a college that only took one-dollar bills.” -Chris Rock
“Pimpin’ got harder, 'cause hoes got smarter.” -Wyclef Jean
Permeant record or not, Sites like OnlyFans and presumably others let women monetize their sexuality without having to spend long nights having to dry-hump strangers for $20s.
From my experience, I’ve never really seen fights or drug dealing like you might find in a nightclub or bar. Not that it doesn’t happen. I just think strip clubs are more of a chill environment. Mostly dudes drinking overpriced drinks and watching topless girls dance. Plus a lot of bouncers to make sure you don’t bother the girls. Bars and clubs you get dudes fighting over girls or drinking way too much and they tend to be a lot more crowded.
I would imagine that many of the girls might do coke or other drugs to keep their energy up throughout the evening. Plus talking to them, many strippers are into a general “party” lifestyle.
Prostitution wouldn’t surprise me. I can’t imagine paying $1000 to go to a VIP room unless I was getting something more out of it than a bottle of vodka and some lap dances.
Well. I only know one friend who is a stripper, but she claims she does not deal (or use) drugs. Sure that is no statistical sample, but we cannot assume it’s 100% drugs all the way down. If fact, those articles (“first-person accounts”) do not seem to mention drugs at all.
It does mention “pole dancing” but I have to point out that is not the same as stripping. In fact, I know an (unrelated) person who does pole dancing like you would go to a gymnastics studio or something. It is fun and good fitness.