Over the Wall

My Swiss Miss

2009-07-26T16:03:00.002-04:00

Switzerland is secretly a country full of sex maniacs. I don't have definitive proof, but I do have listings for dozens if not hundreds of massage and modeling houses that turned up while I was trying to identify this place after the fact. Thanks to my lousy grasp of Swiss street signs (and some questionable directions) I was in the middle of a little town called Hegnau in the middle of the night looking for a club called Teatro. The street I was looking for was Zurcherstrasse, and there was about a block of road that had the name as I was looping around this tiny traffic circle trying to decide which of the other roads might be the other part of it. None were, but that's hindsight talking. Off this little strip of road that was part of the main drag (think local highway), I noticed a building kind of set down in a notch heading down a large hill toward the autobahn. Think overpass and next street to the left. It was clearly marked with sign "Studio Girls" and reddish lighting. It was the only thing open nearby around 3-ish, so maybe it was Teatro? I got a little further South and Zurcherstrasse didn't reappear, so I turn and head back.

Parked on the side of the place along Buelstrasse behind another car and took a quick look around on foot. No clear entrance on the topside to Studio Girls, but there was a sidewalk that led to some doors on the second level and small sign that said "Studio Orchid". It was so quiet I didn't even hear crickets chirping, just my shoes scraping against the ground while shifting in place looking for the best way down. Decided Orchid was either closed or a little shadier than I was in the mood for. Teatro looked like a solid option on their website, and after the nuttiness down in the Zurich red light district I was still trying to redeem the evening. So I walk down a steep set of steps and walked along the front of the building until I reached a door at the end of the narrow sidewalk. Still didn't hear anything and the lighting wasn't that great. All the windows were blacked out so that didn't help either trying to figure out what was going on inside.

So I try the door, which is unlocked and I walk inside. I find myself in a little lobby, completely alone. Directly in front of me is a set of heavy drapes that were closed tight and I could not see past. To my right was a long, dark and narrow hallway with a couple of doors on the left side with slight cracks in them…and a room all the way at the end with a door half open. I can see that room has red lights on and a neatly made bed in front under an interesting large red painting. I say hello from where I was standing, and didn't get a response or hear anything stir in the distance. I'm standing there another few beats, and finally pick out something in the distance. It sounds like a female voice, but I can't tell exactly how far off and what's going on. It wasn't talking. Maybe it was a tv, maybe it was a girl getting turned out, hard to tell, but the only way to find out was to walk down that long hallway. I took maybe a step in that direction and froze. The sounds had stopped. Choices? Call out again? Keep walking? Run like hell?

Run like hell!

I bolt back out of the door, dash down the long sidewalk, and practically fly up the stairs back towards the car. Fire up the engine, foot on the gas and I'm gone without looking back. For whatever reason, every horror movie I've ever seen (good and bad) flooded into my head a step down that hallway and turned into GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE. I, of course, felt ridiculous afterward for freaking out. First time for everything, I suppose. But when the worst case scenario is getting ambushed in a sleepy little town with a near defenseless position, and little to no chance of being found if you come out on the short end, there was nothing at the end of the hallway which could have balanced out the risk. Like I said at the top, I did eventually find a credible source for what this place could be, complete with a website and sister establishment down in the city. From what I read it seems to work a lot like the escort clubs all over town, think Club Ahprodisia, and has some pics and info of the girls online. The information looks legitimate enough, but not sure I'd ever go back again.

I did eventually find Teatro. Figured the strange tale of the only club I've ever hot-footed away from rated its own review, though. Yeah, I can laugh about it now...

Ten Commandments for Strippers

2009-07-16T20:13:00.007-04:00

Thou shalt practice, practice, practice.
Thou shall not resist mints, soap, and deodorant as your friends.
Thou shalt befriend the snake.
Thou shall not be a bitch.
Thou shalt accept no for an answer.
Thou shall not blame the customer.
Thou shalt act like an entertainer in a customer service business.
Thou shall not forget your shit is not our shit (and vice versa).
Thou shalt earn (not expect) a tip.
Thou shall not rip the customers off.

The Ten Commandments for Strip Clubbing?

2009-07-03T12:48:00.008-04:00

Found some links recently to Top 10 lists with a twist, they're strip club related from the perspective of dancers and customers. The ones below were the most interesting of those I read. I think I'll take a stab at writing my own, and maybe will post some thoughts on the ones I've linked to. Consider this entry a work in progress...

From a Customer Perspective:

http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/09/10/the-10-stripper-commandments

This is best of the ones I ran across.
The pictures were appropriate, the commentary was hilarious and it is clear this is the set most imitated around the web.

From a Dancer Perspective:

Others Lists:

http://www.tpsmusings.com/2008/06/do-nots-of-going-to-strip-club.html

I have seen Strip Club Hell...and it is Seattle

2009-06-30T13:34:00.005-04:00

Seattle, I knew you not.

So this town had a great reputation for years and years in the club scene. Apparently so great that LE had to go and foul it up for everyone. Houston is well known in circles for LE taking things to the extreme and ruining what was the best SC scene in the entire country (including that diamond in the rough known as Providence). Seattle has some noise on the wire about obvious cop magnets such as Rick's, but it wasn't until I stopped through town recently that the full extent of the total ass that is the current climate was witnessed in full bloom.

So what's wrong? Is it the girls? No, not exactly. Is it the mileage? No, not exactly. Is it the absolutely ridiculous levels of cop paranoia gripping all strippers from the dimes to the dingbats? Bingo. Disco. Exactamundo. I've been through dozens of towns, hundreds of clubs, thousands of, er, sessions and have never seen anything like Seattle 2009.

The horror. the horror...

Synchronicity

2009-05-16T14:08:00.004-04:00

How to resolve the hobby with the rest of your life?

There's this discussion board that I participate in with one of the better run strip club information sites online. I do a lot more reading than writing there, because quite frankly I still have the opinion that owning one's words means something. A lot of what I write could be utter bullshit, or it could be spot on truth.

If this persona that spouts off about all things stripper had to stand side by side with the one that spun it off I'd like to think it wouldn't be that destructive to claim it. It's what I'd like to think...

A Bit of Clubonomics

2009-03-02T14:19:00.007-05:00

It's early 2009. If you're in the U.S. and many places in the industrialized world, your economy is in a little bit of a slump. Actually, if you're in the U.S. the economy is in the crapper and businesses all around are taking it in the shorts. Strip clubs included. So if you're the proprietor of a certain type of establishment, what do you do? Does the typical manager of a middle to high tier strip club have an MBA? I don't have any real insight into that (and don't have one either). I'm more concerned with the customer side of it myself, given that I'm a customer.

To the point. In clubs where I spend a buck or two on a semi-regular basis, as the economy has tanked the prices have not gone down but up. I'll give two examples. Both in Maryland. The first has a couple of things going for it. It is just outside of Northern DC, and as is widely known DC has been the freaking armpit of the strip club world for quite some time. Taking one last run through the clubs so I could review them has been on my list for a while now, but I can't bring myself to do it because they're so lousy it's like throwing money into a fireplace. The other thing is the price of their lap dances. When they were $5-$10 a pop, $10 in the little VIP couches off to the side, they were a good deal. With the upgraded dances being done out in the open and with minor two-way contact, this was a good thing. Irving's over in Capitol Heights has a similar pricing scheme (they're supposedly owned by the same guy) but is a total dive in comparison and for a club that's still open the body count is a little high. So the fact you get ridiculous amounts of mileage on the cheap at Irving's is offset by other factors.

So Club A has a niche in cheap but decent lappers just outside of DC. With the crowds thinning and customers already starting to cut back a bit, bumping the price of a lapper on the VIP couches to $15 really starts to cut into the sense of "good deal". Is it still a good deal? You start getting into $20 territory and Showcase Theater up the road in Beltsville has better dances and better dancers. Are the girls getting more or is the club taking all of markup? I wouldn't know, because the only reason I occasionally dropped by here and put up with the low rent atmosphere was I could use it as a cool down from other clubs (the place is open til 5AM) on the cheap. If you're in the hunt because of location and cut rate prices, don't forget that because the last couple of times I was there the crowd was pretty thin. The VIP room was about the same price, but hardly any of the customers go there anyway. For me, at the VIP price I'm better off at Players Club or Gold Club since there's no comparison at comparable prices. I'm not really that price sensitive when it comes to clubs. A look at the reviews of mine that keep piling up will tell you that, but common sense will tell any club management that when most of your customers are sensitive to price raising them is not a great idea. I stopped going there because the girls were in terrible moods because of the drop in business.

Then there's Club B. No sooner do I decide to write up a review over at TUSCL and give my first Triple 10 rating (because it had definitely earned it)...I walk in here and have a miserable time. Not much of it had to do with the pricing, but it was the whole notion of pricing and common sense that sent the evening over the edge. But before I go there, if you're going to have half a dozen bouncers on duty, how about you make some reasonable attempt at crowd control. That band of roaming morons with the kid that had just turned 21 was pissing half the club off bumping into people, getting in their line of sight , and just plain being suburban drunk and stupid in the middle of one of the nicer clubs in Baltimore City. Not cool. So here's the kicker, the price of the VIP rooms have gone up $30 or more for each of the different levels. Since the patrons of here tend to be price insensitive (or at least pretend to be), not the worst of ideas but isn't pleasing to those who through no fault of their own have multiple girls they check out from time to time. Since the regular lap dances (which are just as crappy as ever holding steady at $30) didn't go up, won't rake them over the coals for being anti-customer, but their customer service could use some work.

The waitresses have gotten pretty bad with the service lately and a little mouthy, too. Since there was so much random traffic with the birthday crew and the odd little dancing Mexican who was bouncing around and throwing balled up dollars at the stage, it was tough to zero in on dancers. So, because I hadn't been able to see her before she hit stage, the dancer I was trying to get in a VIP room wound up on stage after 1AM which was cutting it pretty close. She gets clued in, of course realizes she's about to leave cash on the table and all but flies off stage. If you've ever seen a dancer try and rush up a flight of metal stage stairs in those heels, you'll know why I still got lousy $30 dances after the dust settled from the tight-fisted manager inspiring this article. The room we settled on was somewhere in the $250-$280 range for a half hour, which throws in a couple of round of drinks but not any tip that the lippy staff expects from customers already shouldering more of the cost because the floor customers aren't spending any money. We let the waitress know we're looking for a room (it's 1:30 on the dot), she gets a weird look on her face and goes off in search of the manager. Comes back pretty quickly and says the room is ok but it's only 15 minutes at full price.

How quickly can a person say no? But, really, it wasn't about the no so I ask her to bring the manager over. Two anxious looks later, the waitress was off and the dancer was asking me in a slightly puzzled way if I didn't already know the manager since I've spent a buck or two in the place. No, I didn't know the manager. If a club is run well I shouldn't ever need to speak with the person unless they seek me out (which happens on occasion). So the guy walks up and introduces himself, we shake hands and he's pretty professional. All good. He tells me that people need to be out of rooms by 10 til 2AM because of some regulation or law or whatever, maybe it's true, but that was beside the point. I let him know that I'm fine to take the room for less time, but am not interested in paying full price for half the time. He then gets a little short and says something like "some customers are able to pay the full price with less time", and I honestly don't remember if anything else was said other than thank you before he walked away. I can't remember the last time I got called cheap in a club, and certainly not to my face by some manager who with a little sense might've agreed to say 20 minutes for $200. Instead, he'd rather leave money on the table and piss off one of his most popular dancers when there is no chance anyone else is going to drop VIP money on her that time of night.

This place is still going to get its Triple 10 review because it's half written, but doubtful if it's getting any more of my premium cash for a while. Will they miss the cash? Maybe not, I'm just one guy, but there are two reviews going up to back to back and the second one won't have much in it other than a link to this. Don't screw over your customers. The first example was them taking a risky gamble (and possibly losing), but the second example is just plain stupidity. Actually, I do remember what I said, "It's not that I can't pay the full price since I was going to anyway, I'm just not paying full price for half the time". Hey clubs, give your customers a break every once in a while. It'll work out better for you in the end.

Research: Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say

2009-02-22T14:41:00.005-05:00

The gist of the news story is that a research group over at Princeton reported findings at the 2009 AAAS annual meeting that male brains responded to images of women in bikinis as they would to objects such as tools. There is little firm data in the public about the mechanics of the study, other than it involved 21 undergraduates who were required to undergo MRI brain scans along with completing questionnaires as part of the research. Reaction to the disclosure of the findings has been both broad and swift. As of today, the Top 200 hits on Google for "men bikini objects" is dominated by references to the story (or 20 pages deep in the search hits) and on Twitter the search hits are 6 pages deep for what on the science could be considered a marginal item of interest.

Links to the story:

I posted this story to a discussion forum over at The Ultimate Strip Club List because it seemed like something that would generate some conversation. It certainly did, and you can read it for yourself over here.

Good Morning Buzz

2009-02-16T14:38:00.000-05:00

U busy today??? If not u should cum nd play

Many, many, many strippers ago this would have set my day on fire. But now? There were a few texts before that, and the day started with the phone buzzing too close to my head (another story entirely) bringing sweetly crude nothings from one of my favorites.

You see, this blog is about a lot of things, but mainly about exotic dancers and the clubs where you find them. It's also about the whole scene built up around them. Coast to coast and beyond. But back to the matter at hand...am I going? Nah. Not today.

Use Only as Directed

2009-01-10T05:34:00.000-05:00

Apparently there isn't a way to hide this blog until I feel like typing something interesting. Nobody likes and empty blog, so here it goes. Since I don't have time to write a book, why not blog?