Strip clubs featuring female dancers serve as great places for heterosexual males to be entertained for a few hours. Such venues are designed to fulfill harmless fantasies and they certainly beat resorting to viewing photographic images found in “girlie” magazines. For that matter, most of the male persuasion would agree that a living , beautiful, unclothed specimen of the female gender dancing before one’s very eyes is also far preferable to downloading some grainy, 30 second movie on an adult-oriented website. After all, we’re talking about the real thing here, right?

With that established, there are good strip clubs, or “gentlemen’s clubs” and there are bad ones. Just what differentiates the two depends on many factors. Perhaps the most significant of these involves the level of etiquette practiced not only by the patrons, but also the dancers themselves. Most clubs of this nature have a cover charge at the door. As is the case in most exchanges of money, you generally get what you pay for. Thus, the higher the cover charge, the better the quality of the club.

To express this concept in another fashion, the clubs that charge $5.00 or nothing at all will usually be dumpy and full of classless, drunk, obnoxious males. In addition, the dancers themselves can either be physically unattractive or worse yet, they completely ignore those who are not regular patrons. Conversely, the gentlemen’s clubs that charge a higher entrance fee will be far more likely to hold a higher class of not only paying customers, but also dancers who exhibit far more professionalism.

Proper etiquette for both patrons and dancers will be discussed in the following paragraphs:

Customers

Most will be male, but even for female patrons, show some respect for the dancers. Contrary to popular belief, they are not prostitutes nor objects to be groped or the recipients of vulgar suggestion. It’s one thing to relax with a couple of drinks, but quite another to become annoyingly intoxicated. This ruins it for the other customers and the dancers will be very uncomfortable. The overwhelming majority of exotic dancers are simply females gifted with appealing looks who disrobe to pay the bills. Many are single mothers, college students, and some even have other jobs but depend on dancing as a second income.

Practice good hygiene. Don’t enter a strip club after mowing your lawn in 90-degree heat without taking a shower! Brush your teeth. Use deodorant. Put yourself in the dancer’s place: Would you want to sit on someone’s lap and wallow around on someone with offensive body odor?

If you’re going to sit directly at the base of the stage where the dancer is performing, be prepared to tip. Oftentimes, this is a requirement for sitting in these areas. In turn, a professionally-competent dancer will ask how you’re doing tonight and tease you for a few seconds. Do not touch her or make crass gestures or remarks. If you don’t wish to spend cash as quickly, move to a table and pace yourself. There is still plenty to see from a distance!

When purchasing a private dance in the “back room,” be sure you understand what is allowed during the lap dance and what isn’t. The dancer will usually tell you in a polite but matter-of-fact tone beforehand. Sometimes, such rules of behavior stem from local or state laws while others are strictly the dancer’s set policies. Should you violate these codes of conduct, a bouncer will probably escort you to the parking lot. In short, just because they are skilled in the ways of arousal, this doesn’t mean you can take whatever liberties you wish back there.

Dancers

From the customer’s point of view, there is nothing worse than spending time in such an establishment and getting completely ignored in return, but it happens. As hinted above, there are clubs out there where the dancers will have nothing whatsoever to do with you unless you are either a “regular” who frequents the club in question or the significant other of the dancer herself. While they are not prostitutes, the primary job duty of an exotic dancer is to entertain and fulfill a patron’s fantasy within legal boundaries.

What separates quality gentlemen’s clubs from those that are sub-par is the competency of the dancers. It is their responsibility to mingle with paying customers and offer one-on-one sessions in the private dance area. The customer should not have to approach them! Most will be middle-aged men who aren’t as buff as they were two or three decades earlier, but this is irrelevant and in fact the very reason such places exist in the first place.

In the dumpy clubs, far too many so-called strippers fail to grasp this very basic concept. Just as with a restaurant whose wait staff provides poor service, a strip club whose dancers ignore potential customers will get bad reviews, no matter how great-looking the girls may be. Half of the average strip club attendee’s fantasy involves the mere experience of having conversation with an attractive woman at their table, even for just a few minutes. When dancers disregard this, the customers will leave shortly!

A strip club’s reputation depends on many things, but the two most important factors are proper etiquette on the part of patrons and professionalism on the part of the dancers. If you walk into such a place and it makes you feel like an outsider who has merely crashed a private party, it will result in a complete waste of time and money.

On the other hand, clubs that practice civility and ensure that everyone is having a good time will enjoy repeat customers indefinitely.