How to own & run a strip club

When is a strip club not a strip club? When it's a performance art center.
Local governments are a pain in the butt to deal with. Their planning and zoning people are often uncooperative if not downright obstructionist. Sometimes, they want bribes. City councils and county governments make strip clubs obey onerous regulations they don't ask of crack houses. Residents in the neighborhood throw a hissy fit, mostly for the media's benefit, even though the customers who visit the area are richer than the neighbors. However, most governments make concessions to the First Amendment when it comes to nudity. These loopholes are primarily an out for nudity on stage during theater performances so that county and city governments don't look like the ignorant Babbits they are. But it seems possible that a strip club could stage performances that were quote unquote artistic but which were also hot. This is reminiscent of the the new burlesquenew burlesque movement which came out of New York City in recent years - alt.striptease - adult entertainment for adults rather than the socially retarded. In a way, that was the point that "Flashdance" tried to make - despite the kitsch - a fusion of the erotic, pop, and modern dance - and to a lesser extent, Britney Spears, who admits to copping moves from strip club dancers as well. Local police are supposed to enforce the law, but what they are actually there to do is enforce conformity. Since this country is sex-negative, that translates into trouble for you. You can bribe them with money in suitcases or you can bribe them with high paying jobs moonlighting as security guards (if the Mafia did this, it would be called a protection racket.) You can frighten them into leaving you alone or you can put them in your back pocket. Your choice.

Sadly, there is no "Strip Club Management For Dummies" books out there. If there is, please let me know, and if there isn't, please write one so that I can read it. Why write about strip club management? There are two schools of thought in magic, and strip clubs are a form of magic, i.e. sexual magic. The point of the strip club environment is to bamboozle the customer. With the lights on and the makeup, beer tap, and the music off, the customer might realize he's not getting anything better than what he can get at home, if not worse. The traditional approach is keep tradecraft secret. The second approach popularized by Penn & Teller is to let the audience in on the secret, and people will enjoy the show anyway. Some people in the business view such information as proprietary trade secrets, and are only willing to share it at a high price. Certainly, they've got better things to do than sprinkle advice on newbies for free. Obviously this site falls under the category of Penn & Teller. One method is to simply go to clubs and observe, not a customer, but as a prospective owner or manager. As Wayne Dwyer says in his book, "Pulling Your Own Strings," practice observing reality as it is, not the way you, others, or society want it to be. Don't moralize, idealize, or impose your world view or filters on what you're seeing. The zen of strip clubs, as it were. Or as the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Teh Ching would say, stay in the center and do nothing until your mud settles. Well, you better do something, i.e. buy drinks, preferably non-alcoholic, and tip generously, or you will find yourself in the parking lot at the worst or subjected to more subtle pressures at best. Afterwards, you can build a theoretical framework to explain what you saw, but it's a good idea to test your concepts empirically. Strip club management may be an art, but it doesn't hurt to approach it as a science. There is no unified field theory of stripping. You're better off with intuition, common sense, and listening to others. If you keep going to strip clubs, eventually you will assimilate them, as described in Robert Fritz' "Path of Least Resistance." The only problem with this approach is that it's an expensive curriculum and could be hard on your liver, if you choose to drink.

Surf's up! Sooner or later, you've got to get into the water and start paddling. The process of creating a strip club is an organic one. Each one is unique. You can imitate the aspects of other ones that you like, but ultimately you will have to strike out on your own. There are guidelines you can use, most of which are the obvious "duh" kinds. Take care of the dancers. Overcharge for drinks. Security is important, and so on. Given a choice between a girl with a beautiful face and a so-so body and a girl with an attractive face and a killer bod, which would you choose? I like dancers who are either voluptuous a la Marilyn Monroe or hardbodies, although both styles seems to have faded in popularity in Hollywood. You may find that another combination works for you. I think that plastic surgery works for most dancers because it produces equally sized breasts which don't sag, rarely found in real life. What some people believe are requirements are often preferences dressed up as requirements. Owners who have a middle-class club may have a realistic idea of what that area will support, or it may be that an upscale club falls outside their comfort zone. Some people believe they are only entitled to so much success or can only handle so much stress, and so limit their possible downside. One of the original owners of Apple Computer bailed out because he didn't want to be exposed to the liabilities involved in a corporation. You have to have a certain amount of tolerance for risk in any small business, or business in general. It is best to be honest with yourself and others about the amount you can handle. As Clint Eastwood opined in one of his Dirty Harry movies, a man has got to know his own limitations (women too, of course.)

Let's go! This blog is about starting and running a strip club. It is designed to provide information for people who may be interested in opening or running a strip club but who haven't been able to find out any information about how to. Such information is hard to find. You could talk to the owners and managers of local clubs, but they aren't interested in having any more competition. Dancers and customers are knowlegeable about their ends of the business, but they don't have the big picture. A strip club is an ecosystem, and you wouldn't ask a turtle how a pond works. This blog is not a porno site. It is not designed to get your rocks off. Neither are strip clubs. Strip clubs are designed to separate customers from their money safely, quickly, efficiently, and legally. People talk about strip clubs as dens of inquity or dens of therapy but they are busineses, similar to and different from other businesses. Having said that, if you are strictly interested in making money, there may be easier, faster, and more profitable ways to do so. The politics and power struggles involved in a strip club as as intense and Machiavellian as in the cloakroom of the U.S. Senate. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the dressing room. A Navy veteran friend of mine ran a whorehouse in Thailand after the Vietnam War. The perks are nice, but sex work is not all that it's cracked up to be. As a general rule of thumb, it is a good idea to do something you enjoy, because if you wind up not making any money, at least you will have had fun. There is a school of thought in small business which says that you should get into whatever is hot at the time. This usually translate into a backyard of smelly, bad-tempered llamas that you couldn't get rid of at a dog food factory. Which is not to say that strippers can't be bad-tempered but the smart ones don't smell at all because that results in husbands having to explain to wives that residue of Chanel No. 9 - unless the dancer is a sadist, of which there are plenty of those too. After all, dancers are in the business of controlling men, and those that can't or won't need to become librarians, albeit extremely attractive librarians. For more on controlling men at a strip club, go to stripper power. For more illumination on the acquisition of money as a goal, see "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips.