The Lodge, Dallas (460 views)

Higher end (for the area) gown club. Two piece outfits are okay, as long as they're 1) classy and 2) fully cover (no sheer) your butt, crotch, and boobs. The Lodge shoots for an "expensive" look, even if all your stuff comes from Goodwill and the dollar store. No one cares if you buy pricey, just as long as you look it. Management is solid and will have your back as long as you're not obviously trying to rip a customer off or drunk. Keep it professional and drama free, and they'll stand by you all the way. That said, they will pull you off the floor if you get too drunk. Pretty much the moment people can look at you and know beyond a doubt that you're drunk, even if you're not causing any trouble and you're actively making money, they'll pull you off and possibly send you home, so just be careful with that. Try to use it to get him to take you to VIP. Most of the guys who come in are the same guys who've been coming in since the place opened 20 years ago. So, they already know the rules and what they want, where they can get it, what's reasonable to expect, etc.

Going rate for VIP is $500/hr at night, though day girls will often charge less. Never go below $300/hour. These guys can afford it, and they know it. If any of them tries to tell you "most girls only charge..." they're lying through their teeth. If you sit with someone who can't afford an hour, pitch him a cheaper option ($250/half an hour, $200/20 min, 3/100... basic $20 lapdances...) and/or move on to the next guy and see if you have better luck there. You take 100% of whatever you charge for VIP, and also 100% of your dances. The club doesn't take a cut of your money, and tip out is optional. The only people you're allowed to tip are the DJ and Housemom, and again, both of those are optional. Like legit, they won't screw you over or anything if you don't tip. Standard tipout is $10 to each of them, given to the housemom to divide between them. Housefees range from free to roughly $60 at/after 10pm. They give you a few ways to avoid paying house fees, so in the year+ that I've worked there, even though I often come in for the last 3-4 hours of the night, I've never paid a house fee.

Shift Perks:

Ready and on the floor by opening on a weekday will get you $40 in the club's funny money and a free meal, and no house fee. The shift meal, you can eat at any point on your shift (this is so far the only club I will willingly and occasionally look forward to eating at, so the meal is actually worth it) but the $40 won't be handed out until the end of the shift (which goes from 11am - 7 pm).

Night shift (weekdays 7pm-2am) will also give you a free house fee if you're dressed and ready in time for the shift start.

Saturday is couples' night. The women here are still your typical female customers generally, but ime, they're a *lot* better. They still don't wear panties. They still get drunk and act/talk slutty. But they're otherwise pretty respectful, compared to their counterparts from the rest of the country. They at least tend to ask about contact rules before the dance starts. They also don't tend to be jealous/possessive of their boyfriends/husbands/whatever, so it's a lot easier to approach their tables. Plus, there's a swingers club right down the road, apparently, so a lot of the couples use The Lodge as their Pre-Party stop on their way there for the real fun. I always do well on Saturdays because it's like a 2-for-1 hustle in that way. Again, still not perfect, but compared to female customers pretty much everywhere else I've danced, these ones are a lot better.

Saturday, if you're dressed and ready by 7pm, you get a free meal and a house fee voucher to use on another shift, good for a year.

Sunday is super slow unless you have regulars. Most of the guys who come in are coming in for their specific girls, so it can be hard to make money as a newbie on that day. If you're dressed and ready by opening (6pm), you get a skip pass that's good to skip you off stage for one rotation. They need a good number of girls to be there before they can use it, though, so they're hard to use in my experience. However, you can use two single skips or one all night stage skip in place of a house fee voucher, so it's not entirely worthless.

This is not a stage club -- people rarely tip, and when they do, it's often $1-5. $1-2 is average, $5 is considered good. It's totally normal to go an entire shift without any tips on stage, or only a handful of singles to show at the end of the night. You can make a little more if you go all out on your stage, but it's generally not worth the effort unless you're actively having fun and enjoying yourself. If you're having fun, definitely go for it, because even if you put on a killer stage show, there's still a solid chance you'll leave with 0 tips. Just not the right kind of club for it. There are poles on 4 of the 6 stages, but only one of them is good for actual pole work... and it's in an area where no one tends to see it. The other poles are thick and slick, so you need to be pretty strong to do anything more than a simple spin on them.

If you can sell VIPs/you have regulars who buy them, you can easily leave with close to or a bit over a grand a shift, consistently. If you only sell lap dances, depending on the shift (day v night, monday v friday, etc) you can consistently expect to make $200-600. Not 600 itself on the regular just from lapdances, but definitely closer to 6 than 5. Leaving with less than 300 is a bad shift, imo, but it's not unheard of for early-in-the-week day shifts. As you get regulars (at this club, regulars can be your bread and butter, even if you don't normally cultivate them) your numbers will go up. Girls are rarely possessive over "their" customers. The customers here have a very low tolerance for that (again, most of them have been coming since day one, so they've seen their share of dancer rotation. These dudes ain't loyal, and will drop you fast if you act like they should be.) At other clubs, it can definitely pay to be possessive, but at this one, it will actively hurt your money.

Audition:

Treat it like a professional job when you come in. They go for a classy, expensive look, so one of the things they do in their screening process is look for professional, sane girls. The club has a very low tolerance for drama, so they vett accordingly. The dancer hiring manager was fired a couple months ago, and they haven't replaced her, so right now, it's kind of a grab bag surprise as far as who will come see you when you come in, and you might have to wait for a few minutes. If they call for Mike Gandhi, prepare to come back on another shift. He rarely lets girls audition, and even more rarely hires them, but he *does* have an impressive collection of imaginative excuses for why we never seem to be hiring on his shifts. Just come back during the day some time when he's not there and try again. Don't take a shot before you come in, or it'll be an instant "no" if they smell it on your breath. Some girls get auditions with a slutty stripper look, but from what I've seen, it hurts your odds significantly. Sexy but professional and clean cut is definitely your best bet. Honestly, getting hired is the hardest part. Once you get passed the gatekeepers, everything gets so much easier.

One more thing: When I was hired, the dance manager drilled it in that the club hires girls to do stages. So, when you check in, you pay your house fee up front, and then you stay until the end of whatever shift you checked in for, and don't miss your stages. Realistically, if it's an oops, they'll just talk to you and send you up again in 45 minutes. Otherwise, if you make a point of not doing them, they'll just fire you and tell you not to come back. Once you're I think 30 seconds late, you'll have all the managers combing through the VIP, smoking area, dressing rooms, and bathrooms looking for you. It's like a stripper amber alert, just about. That said, as long as you do your stages, they generally don't care if you spend your whole shift in the back or on your phone or at the bar. Generally, you can expect to go on stage 1-2 times at night, 2-3, soooometimes 4 times during the day. Customers also have the option to buy a $75 shot or bottle of champagne to skip you off for a rotation. Otherwise, if you're not skipped, you need to go up.