First of all, I just want to say hello, and I’m new, and honored to be posting on boards through which I’ve been worshipfully lurking (not stalking, I promise) for months now. I know if anyone can help me with this question, it’s youse guys…
I should know this, because I just spent two months in the UK, but I never managed the nerve to ask anyone, or try to experience it myself. (For those of you who may not know, England doesn’t have a one pound note; they use one pound coins instead.) Please don’t try to tell me there are strippers - sorry, dancers - carefully tottering backstage with g-strings of heavy one pound coins…
Has anyone visited a gentleman’s club in the UK, or any other country with a monetary peculiarity like this? I’m also assuming they operate pretty much the same the world over…but does this obligate you to tip the girl a fiver every time?
I already tried Googling “how to tip an English stripper”, lol. No joy.
I’m also interested in the answer. It seems likely, though, that stuffing ones into a dancer’s underwear is a distinctly (North?) American cultural phenomenon. I mean, think about it: it’s quite inefficient, messy, and finally, cheap way of compensating a dancer. I have a feeling that other countries have a completely different means of money distribution. Maybe some day we’ll finally abolish the increasingly worth less $1 bill and be forced to adopt similar measures.
I’ve seen once an exotic dancer (belly dance), long ago, and didn’t even expect it.
I noticed that people would slip bills in her garnments, typically 20 francs bills (that was before the euro) or about 4 dollars. She got some 50 francs bills too (about 10 dollars).
I couldn’t tell if this is typical, since I’ve never seen another exotic dancer, and never seen a stripper at all.
I never went in anyplace adult when I was in Japan, but I’m fairly sure that the strip clubs aren’t set up the same as the US. I suspect it’s more one-on-one rather than one girl parading around a room for many men deal, so you pay for the girl and it’s a set value.
Around here, you don’t tip strippers who are just working the room. They make their extra cash on individual lap dances. Usually $10-20 per song, depending on if you’re using a private room or not.
In the context of this thread, I don’t think belly dancing counts as “exotic dancing.” Even though the term can be used to apply to any form of dance that isn’t part of your culture’s norm in a dance club, it’s usually used in the U.S. to refer to strippers.
Based on the one time I was in an Israeli strip club, the girls on the stage would dance for the whole audience without interacting with any individual patron, while other girls would offer the audience members sitting on the couches lapdances for about $10 a pop (I think - didn’t have one myself). There was also lots of booze. Basically, the dancers were like the band at a blues bar - entertainment.
The idea was, for the dollar bill stuffed in the G-string, was that this was before lapdancing, back when the patrons could not touch the dancer. Thus the dollar bill in the g-string was a accepted way of getting a little contact. In places where there still is no lapdancing, often the cash is put on the little rise that surrounds the dance area.
Yup that pretty much nails it in my experience. The girls do a routine on the stage at set times and there is no obligation or even opportunity to tip. The rest of girls go around the room and talk to the customers, you usually pay 10GBP for a topless dance in the bar area or 20GBP for a private, completely nude, dance.
FWIW I now live in Australia and it works the same way.
I have been under the impression that among the places where the majority of Dopers live, the US is pretty much alone in still issuing a 1-monetary-unit paper note AND it representing that equivalent purchasing power level. IIRC the Canadian Dollar, Pound Sterling and Euro only become paper at the level of the fiver, which usually means between the equivalent of 4 to 8 USD depending on the currency. This results in that to many modern Americans, coins have a hard-to-break psychological connotation of “small change”.
In any case even in the US there are varying ways of providing the tip – as mentioned there’s tucking under the string/garter OR laying the money down on the ledge of the stage. Would-be/wannabe “playahs” sometimes do the “making it rain” schtick, literally showering the lady with banknotes. And at some locations folks observe the no-touch rules by wadding up the bills and throwing them – I understand the latter displeases many of the dancers because often they get hit with the thrown paperball.
Where lap/table/private dances are provided, payment and tipping is handled either at the table or at the bar and you can actually get the barman/barmaid to make change if necessary.
In the District of Columbia, where local law forbids lapdances and technically you have to stay at an arm’s length from the stage (I said technically, stage tipping goes on most of the time), what happens is that after her stage turn, each lady does a “tip walk” around the room.
When I’m in Montreal, we use fives. I’ve seen particularly creative clients unzip their flies, stick a twenty halfway in, and let the stripper thing of a clever way of yoinking it out.
We don’t put loonies in, though. Nothing’s quite as sexy as hearing change slosh around in a stripper’s G-string.
:eek:
