Editor’s note: Anybody remember the ‘Bo Knows’ NIKE commercials? Well, let DP Dot Commenter and iNternets Celebrity cohort 40 DAWG tell you what he knows…
I remember my first trip to the “gentleman’s club” it was ’92 and I was a 17 year old freshman in college. My man from Florida JJ (RIP) put us on to this spot and since all the boys from The Bottom were all about Luke records I figured they knew what was up. Video hoes hadn’t become a phenomenon and “stripper anthems” didn’t even exist. See it was still the end of the Afrocentric era of hip-hop and after years of hailing up your queens I figured that the objectification of women wasn’t right by that movement. Alas it was college and we hung out in the dorm drinking 64’s of Old Gold and killing time before we skated. Our destination – the notorious (and now defunct) Fox Valley in North Philly. See “The Fox” as we called it didn’t open until 1 am, and it was a huge warehouse space that doubled as a place where the ladies of the formal strip spots could work overtime and do more raunch for the crowds that they weren’t allowed to do in places with liquor licenses. Lets just say there was a reason why these broads were working overtime, the collection of scar tissue in there was overwhelming on these broads but as the night progressed and the Cisco kicked in the siren song that is a strip club began to work its magic. I was in.
For the better part of my college years after that we explored any environment that had a pole on an elevated dance area with mirrored background. We roamed the corners of North Philly, West Philly, South Philly, Camden, South Jersey, and even Delaware always on the come up for some new flesh den where Heineken bottles were used for more than just holding beer. Like any hobby as your exposure increases so does your standards. I had moved on to the after hours barber shops that turned into booty and BBQ and started moving on to the higher end spots where the dancers worked out but the physical interaction declined. These better joints were better visually and also put me on to the past-time of just building with these gals. See before at the more “grimy” spots its just flesh and business and the personal aspect of it is kept to a minimum. However these spots these were women you’d actually holler at in public and the fact you could see their sweater meat just elevated it all.
My ace cuzzo Panama was in Philly with me and we’d regularly hit up spots like Delilah’s Den at lunch for chicken fingers and tee-tays. Panama was that guy and knew people everywhere including a gang of these strippers so they’d invite us out and we’d just soak it all in. I guess knowing these chicks off the clock caused me to be a little more respectful to these women when they were on the clock. Along with that came the occasional discovery of the girl you knew in Math 255 was working a pole like a bell curve. I have to say I enjoyed the “Oh shit someone else knows” look they’d shoot you from the main stage and then try and go back to dancing. Just make sure you hang it up when tuition is paid!
Time went by and my man hooked me up with a bouncing job at this little strip spot by UPENN’s campus and it exposed me even more to the life of a stripper. One of the best tidbits was the multiple layers of names these chicks would have to throw their scent off. Her stage name could be something based off an alcoholic drink, then she’d tell the custie her real name was some generic porn/sexy type name like “Amber” or “Monique”, then she’d tell her other stripper friends that her name is really “Joan”, and then I’d be in class seeing the same broad getting a test back with the name “Isabel”. Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Time moved on and I left college but still got to experience some of the best strip spots on the East Coast, like Coco’s and the RoleXXX in Miami. In fact its safe to say “The LeXXX” is hip-hop’s first strip club and one of the first institutions that turned the MIA into the playground for rap stars. In fact I was blessed enough to hang out at RoleXXX with Trick Daddy and some other cats that were former “The U” royalty. Nelly’s “Tip Drill” ain’t have sh*t on a “get that bottle” contest. I also have to give a shout out to “38th & 8th” (aka Club Passion aka Club “Assion” – he “p” fell off the door) where you could get the best pat & frisk on your way in possible (they have girls do it). I missed the infamous “Brain Fest” underground circuit that existed in NYC during the late 90’s but I heard those were pretty ill in their own right. Shouts to Nights on Broadway in North Philly which has taken over for “The Fox” and at 3:00 they announce “LOCK DOOR!” and if you got the money – anything goes. Last time I was there I was getting lappies and drinking yak with comedian Michael Colyar. Ah the times.
The strip club to me has waned in my later years, I think because I spent so much time in them in my early 20’s. Also with the sanitization of NYC and your boys cohabiting with their wifey’s and real wives, its kinda difficult to get out of the house for that purpose let alone coming back home smelling like booty, sweat, strawberry, cocoa butter, and incense. Also like everything else in society hip-hop and the internets has killed off the allure these places once had. Now you got “strip club anthems”, shoot outs from “making it rain”, the abundance of video hoes, and all the downloadable porn in the world makes seeing such lusciousness and lewdness so easily accessible. Gone are the days of grainy VHS porn dubs and hoping the bouncer lets you in to the titty bar so you can maximize the $16 in singles you got. Now strip clubs for me are more of a lark, something you do on vacations, bachelor parties, or when an outta town college buddy comes to visit. But every once in a while I get out there and re-live that old nostalgia. Whether its Sue’s Rendezvous, Strokers in Atlanta, or it was the chick I bagged at the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas, or Amateur Night at Uptown Cabaret in Charlotte, you can catch me clockin’ the clear heels every so often. However if you catch me in there I’m more likely to be found chatting up the ladies more than slappin’ ’em with singles but hey, they’re people to right? But that don’t mean I forgot what to do when I’m there…
40’s Total Experience:
Stripper Type: Well scented, well proportioned (no deformedly huge body parts, even the good ones), 5’8″ or better with out heels, and interesting (just don’t stare at the sky!).
Song: Prince’s “Darling Nikki” (or some other classic piff). Dancing to stripper “anthems” is too easy for them.
Accoutrement: Baseball hat (if you can wear one in, I love a chick dancing in my fitted) & Charms Blow Pop so you can salaciously eat it while giving her eye mojo.
Everything else is up to you… Plus remember the $5-7 per song ratio when calculating the value of a lapdance. None of this $40 for 3 mins shit! (Eh hem – SCORES!)
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‘YE TUDDA: “Locked Door parties is what’s up!” I actually travel with my own pr0n though, because it’s hard to find a club with that good interracial bestiality bondage type shit. |
Yo Beautiful story. I myself patronize strip clubs in Tijuana where all the pussy is from all over Latin America hoping to make that dollar in the slums of Tijuana Tourism Hell. I might add that 40 gets you a fuck with a bitch that looks like she just dropped out of a Barely Legal Magazine. Shout oUt to Adelitas Amnesia and Boleros!
Fellas, I’ve got the beautiful Alizeeeeee coming for back to back dances so I want to hear the sounds of two hands clapping and if your hands are busy make it the sound of money folding. We’ve got 2 for 1 dances coming up next with the exotic, erotic Crystal coming up for twoooooodances.
Let’s hear some noise fellas, its GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!!
Everyone is invited to middle right coast of Florida where the cover is $5, the lap dances are $10, the drinks are $5 and all the girls are actually in college. Sexy.
Dallas, Maybe it was because I grew up in poverty, but I am lost on so many things you seem to espouse. This is not in any way, shape or form a put down, just voicing my inability to comprehend the things some folks seem to value.
Let’s start with strippers. My studio had more than it’s share of the local and national “talent” who wanted a master photographer who could raise their “street value” by making them look flawless and get them into magazines and soft core movies.
They all seemed shocked that I was never on the hunt or touchy feely. First I never mix money and nookie and second I knew they got enough grouping when they went to work.
Maybe it’s my voice, my look or my attitude but since I was 13 I always had more than my share of “female attention”, sometimes so much I had to sneak in my crib thru the window. Anytime I was with a woman it was always clear the way to my heart was thru the bed. All that is to say I did not enjoy being in a room full of drunk sweaty men hoping, lying pretending to myself I was going to buck some million to one odds and get “lucky tonight”. My profession, attitude, game, style or whatever seemed to provide me with a steady supply of A List, nubile, fresh off the bus starlets, strippers, students, school girls and sluts that going to a strip club would be like taking my work with me after hours, neither needed nor appreciated.
So if you guys want to increase your odds and get paid to do what you say you love, learn photography, open a studio and take some multi-vitamins. Oh and act nonchalant and even indifferent. Ladies love that too. Ernie
if you have ever eaten a chicken product at a strip club, then you have a problem. it is a carnal rule.
Ernie,
I don’t care who you are, but even Superman has paid for pussy. The chance to sit next to something beautiful, that smells good, is a fuckin’ privilege.
I like that 40 talks about the smell of a broad. That shit is wild important to me. I don’t care how fine a chick thinks she is because if she doesn’t have the right pheromone blend I am not effin’ with her.
Ladies,
I don’t have a photography studio like Ernie, but I can make you an iNternets Celebrity overnite…
I hit The Rolexx down in Miami over the weekend. Off the hook.
Last time I was in Vegas we popped a few bottles in with a man friend in a strip club and got a couple of dance from a girl with an itty biddy waist and big old booty and I’m not gonna lie, when we got back to the hotel we had a star studded night!
as a chick i have always have loved strip clubs, they are just plain sexy!
Dear Mr. Penn, When you have a moment please come over to see me in Jersey City (before the fuc*** yuppies buy it, paint it white and send my dumb ass back to a reservation). I’ll show you why I could never go to a strip club and why it would be calmer in a strip club than in my studio. I have shot, filmed, videotaped and shared many nights with some of the finest smelling, looking and bumping ladies in the free world. The fun part is they pay me for my services and pay me well, probably thousands of the same dollars they hustled off your gnarly ass. Sad part is most of them have and need a big, muscular, ugly mean MF they pay to protect them and they still get ripped off by the clubs and their management. While I never let their sad stories keep them from paying me it often struck a nerve how this twisted economic system seems to force them into stripping/hoeing/ prostitution and how even then they get ripped off and exploited. And I don’t want to be the one to spoil your fantasy, but most of these women hate you and all their johns/tricks/patrons/customers. And don’t think those with female pimps/bodyguards/managers/lovers get any more of a fair shake. Dykes are meaner and tougher than their male counterparts and will kick a girls ass even quicker if she violates. Maybe it’s my revolutionary background and training and hatred of oppression but it is very difficult to see a Black women in the skin trade and not think of slavery, racism, segregation and it’s horrible echo all these years and decades later. Peace, Ernie
I wudnt kick a girls ass if she violated but I’d choke the shit out of one lol and how u figure dykes are meaner than their male counterparts @ Ernie
I wudnt kick a girls ass if she violated but I’d choke the shit out of one (nullus) lol and how u figure dykes are meaner than their male counterparts @ Ernie
Hey Dallas — Please visit my friend http://gen-si.net and tell her what your favourite soul or rap music video is! Gen-Si is a French Rapper who has been blogging about “the road to stardom” if you could call it that…
HEY props for the uptown caberet shout out, next time your in town check out some of the more “hood” spots like champagne, peaches n cream, or onyx (aka the old rick’s cabaret)
Ernie,
You self righteous fuck. Don’t ever compare slavery to a bitch dancing on a pole in the club. That was her fucking career choice. She could have read a book like my old lady did, but ultimately she was too dumb or too lazy. So now that bitch is a stripper. Yes, that stripper ho hates me. And yes, I hate that stripper ho. We are both playing out a fantasy in this great big American gumbo. I’m willing to pay for my part in the play.
Nothing, but nothing on this planet fucks with my mortgage money, my cable money (broadband’s a bitch), my traveling money, my sneaker money, my Belvedere vodka money, my weed money or the money that my old lady says that we need to do shit.
If a stripper ho will shake her ass for the five dollars that I have left over then all I wanna say is “Shake what ya’ momma gave ‘ya!”
*leaves room*
*smell of ether luminates*
None of this $40 for 3 mins shit! (Eh hem – SCORES!)
^^
Word to the Mother! That’s got to be the oooldest trick in the book.
Damn….seems like the smoke is getting thick here….
*** DJ starts playin the scrippa’s anthem — Shake what ya’ momma gave ‘ya! ***
*** all right you put ya hands togetha for strawberry starbeline!! and don’t forget those tips– rent is due!! ***
But really, Ernie, DP, ya both right. Yeah the lifestyle probally sucks like a dyson (no kanye) but it was their choice (even though they were probally ill-prepared to make it). That beinf said, just cuz someone else spends their dough on em makes doesn’t make it their fault or should they feel the guilt. Hell, if no one did throw dollas at em they would be worse off. MCdonanalds is an effed up job for anyone over 22, but I damn sure see some 40+ crew cheifs working there. Should I not get my Big Mac on?
I have bartended in these dens of inequity and I sometimes came out with more money than the broads that were dropping it like its hot. And as a chick with clothes on, thats the one place I dont have to worry about being hit on, cause there is nekedness to distract them so i can drink my Absolut in peace!
Dear Brother Penn,
The invite to my humble abode to see the ton of skeezers I shot for Black Tail and the like is still open to you.
I also shot for their white counterparts like Genesis and yes my Hip Hop soaked camera also had work in Playboy. Perhaps I was lacking in clarity. I am no holy roller/Jehovas Witness/Saintly/rigid self righteous ass only stressing that the closer you get to the skin trade the less illusions and less tolerance/fantasy you can project onto to it.
If Selma Hyack and J-Lo both gave me a lap dance and ate each other out for me I still would not take a $5.00 bill out of my wallet to tip them. Not cause I’m cheap or disinterested, just have better things to do with my loot and a part of me still sees them as hoes (better paid ones to be sure) and hoes only love dollars. Peace and yeast infections to you. Ernie P.
Big Brother Ernie,
No disrespect meant and when I come out to the sticks to peep your flicks and your Geiger ‘Alien’ collection best believe I will take off my shoes.
My point in defending 40 Dawg’s story is that at the end of the day we are all actors on the stage of life. My role changes from seller to consumer and it doesn’t bother me because it keeps the wheel turning.
I ain’t gon’ lie though because if Salma Hayek and J.Lo would let me watch in the corner of the room while they banged each other out, I would definitely leave a goo smeared twenty spot on the dresser for them to split. But hey, that’s just the generosity that I have for foxy ho’s.