3 naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps of the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s and today.
For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60′s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance….Men watch.
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Lauri Shaw: In 1997, I averaged $2200/week, four nights. Good hustlers could make $1000/night. Never mind what they promised the customers or did in the back rooms — we’re only talking about money, right? The money was there.
Jodi Sh. Doff: Barmaids made $15/shift in ’75. I’d been making $80/wk in an office and suddenly $85/day in tips, plus shift pay, just being behind the bar in a leotard! When I left in ’84 dancers made $75/shift, plus tips & commission, but rent was only $200/month and cigarettes, less than a dollar. Two shifts a week was more than enough to make crazy money.
Rachel Aimee: Unfortunately those days are over. Money is still better than your average office job, and really good hustlers or girls at high end clubs can make a LOT, but there are also girls struggling to make $50 or $60 for an eight hour shift. And even those clubs charge the dancers to work now! The introduction of house fees has been an awful development in the industry.
LS: Every club I worked in charged a house fee or tip out. Topless clubs made money off house fees and the bar, so they didn’t take a cut of your dances. In nude clubs, house fees were low ($15 – $35) but then they’d take a large percentage from your sales: 50 – 75% of your lap dances, drinks, and champagne room money.
RA: Some of the high end clubs charge $300 a night! I can’t imagine having to do fifteen dances just to break even. I’ve worked at semi-upscale clubs that charged $100 a night — I spent the whole night in a panic, terrified of going home in debt to the club.
JshD: I love that I worked before house fees, tip outs or fines. You showed up and got paid. The options were make money or make more money. Even on a slow night you left with cash. I averaged $150-$300/night and was never expected to give anyone bribe money. My best night was bartending at a club called the Butterfly. Barmaids hustled the same as dancers. I sold one guy the same bottle so many times I lost count. He spent $5000 that night on half a dozen girls, finally, at 3:45am, he went upstairs with me and a girl who looked just like me–we played off the sister angle. Five minutes into that bottle it was last call and they hustled everyone out. I left that night, 1983ish, with $1000 in commissions & tips.
RA: Damn, I wish I could go back in time and work in the 80s!
LS: On top of house fees, tipping the DJ was mandatory. And more than minimum, or he’d cut your throat next time. Cashiers tried stealing. They’d run someone’s card, then swear to your face you’d never been in the VIP room with him. They say they made “mistakes” while cashing you out. I always stood my ground and got my money, but it was not a pleasant working environment.
JshD: Dancers and barmaids got commission on drinks, bottles, shift pay and tips. All the clubs had multiple girls on stage–the DJs just tried to keep things moving. Places like the Mardi Gras, the largest topless bar at the time, there were half a dozen girls on stage at the same time, but if you could get someone to buy you a drink, you could come down.
LS: You faced social consequences if you didn’t tip everyone. The bouncers wanted a cut. The champagne hostess expected one. Bartenders, waitresses… even the janitor had his hand out, refused to do his job unless the girls tipped him. Every night, cabbies waited outside — they expected you to double the meter. Costume ladies sat in the dressing room like vultures. Absolutely everyone got a piece of us.
RA: That stuff still goes on. At my club, the tip out is low and I don’t get hustled to tip out managers or anyone because I’ve been there a long time, but I know other girls do, especially if they’re new or the manager doesn’t like them.
LS: We made our money asking men for large tips — up front — on everything. A $20 dance was really $40. If you got your tips, you could do very well. But on a slow night, you took whatever you could get. The house made more than you did, which was the best case scenario. Worst case, you went home broke and owed money.
JshD: I was an awful hustler, just awful, and even so, I was making rent any night I worked. We paid for our costumes and you did your best to get a tip for the barmaid or the waitress, but that’s it.
RA: The stigma around dancing really fuels the clubs’ ability to charge house fees. Dancers exaggerate how much money they make, because we have to justify doing a job that most people think is degrading. It’s more difficult to justify stripping for the amount of money you could make bartending or working an office job, so we play up the good nights and play down the bad ones. When everyone thinks we’re making hundreds of dollars every night, nobody really believes it’s a big deal for us to tip out $100 or so for the privilege of making that money. It takes a lot of courage to say “I paid $100 of my own money to spend eight hours grinding against strange men and had to go to the ATM to take out money to get home.”
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Posted September 16, 2009 at 9:17 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty money, strippers, Times Square. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
It's so true. I can think of several times I've relied on numbers as justification.
The money was the only justification I could come up with for my family, and even then, it wasn't enough. I can't imagine doing the work without the over the top money. Especially today, when there seems to be a lot less freedom in the industry. There is too much stigma in this country to do it and not get paid properly.
Amen to that. The minute I stopped making stripper money, I stopped stripping. Everyone has their personal minimum, but there was one week I cleared maybe $300 after four shifts in a deserted little club next to the West Side Highway, and I just went, "Bullshit — I'm outta here."
I figured it was because I was burnt out. One of my friends had OD'd not too long before that, and I took it hard. But the truth was, in 1999 it just got worse and worse for everyone for a good long time. Clubs were closing left and right. Suddenly there was a lot more supply than demand. I wonder how long it took NYC's sex industry to recover from that period in time, or if in fact it ever did.
Same here. My last booking was a seven day stint in Montana. I worked four nights and made under $100 for three of them (the hotel was costing $50 a night) I never finished the booking and I haven't worked since.
I firmly believe that stripping saved me from some bad situations, and that my life is richer for having done it, but it takes so much out of me that if I am not being rewarded handsomely it just isn't worth it. (for me)
And I haven't even commented on bribe money…
I quit one club because a bouncer I was sharing my money with every night stood by, watched , and did nothing, as a customer threw something at me on stage. What exactly am I tipping you every night for? I asked him.
(Sorry for all the negativity in this comment, I do think the good outweighed the bad most of the time.)
Deserted little club on the West Side Highway? Was that Busty Babes by any chance? I helped open that club in the 90's – it was a spin off from the BabyDoll. What a dump…a cavern.
The money is still better per hour than most day jobs though. I do it, despite not making crazy money, because I like the flexibility, short hours, and the lifestyle–waking up when I want, having my days to myself to work on other projects, and not having to worry about taking time off when I need it. And for women whose only other options are minimum wage or below minimum wage jobs, the money is comparatively a lot better.
Hi Kelly,
Re: bribe money — I refused to tip bouncers, and a few times that policy really came back to bite me in the ass when the bouncers didn't want to do right by me because of it.
But on another note, I'm curious. What kinds of bad situations do you feel stripping saved you from? If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to hear about some of the positive impacts stripping had on your life.
Actually it was a new club when I worked there, that opened either in '98 or '99 — I'm fuzzy on the year — in response to the new zoning laws for sex businesses. It was called the Carousel Club.
And the place had potential: nice and clean inside; very high ceilings with tall poles; a kitchen that (believe it or not) served halfway decent food. But no one knew it was there when it first opened, and so it was completely dead.
It has a cameo in Servicing the Pole as "The Merry-Go-Round."
I heard that it did pick up, interestingly enough, in the early 2000s. There were mostly ethnic dancers working there, and management finally wised up, quit trying to court white men in suits, and embraced the hip-hop crowd that was their bread and butter.
Oh maybe "bad situation" is an exaggeration but I know I wouldn't have made it through the 18 month immigraton process without it, thus I probably would not still be with my husband. Or have been able to go back to Uni and do an MA while only working once or twice a week. And I wouldn't have had so many travelling opportunities. Oh and I paid off my debts! Those are the things that are tied in with money but I definitely think it helped my social awkwardness too