This is a really interesting post from detroitblog — Dirty dancing is a nice long piece describing what happened when one man took a seriously scary, rough and hardcore strip club (mostly African American) and made it an upscale entertainment space. And the old customers where not happy — as in, shootings and more. It’s a compelling, but intense, success story. Here’s a good snip from the middle:
(…) Lawrence is the ringmaster. He’s the one who bosses the strippers, watches the door and makes sure the money flows in. His initials are short for DJ Hard Body, the name he had for years while spinning records at strip clubs around town. Before that, he was a male stripper. Between the two jobs, he’s spent 20 years in more than 20 clubs learning how the business works.
He was a DJ at All Star for years before convincing the owners to pour a quarter-million dollars into its renovation — a gamble to convert a ghetto dive into a glitzy club. They made him general manager. First thing he did was ban pot smoking in the bar. Then he tore down the VIP wall, turning what was essentially brothel space into a display area with little privacy. Next, he ruthlessly culled the crew of strippers.
“When the bar went upscale, I had to let go of a lot of girls I really care about because they’d gotten on in years, gained 30 to 40 pounds, 33 years old now,” he says. “In the old days you had a little longevity dancing. Now you burn up a girl in a few years.”
He outfitted the bouncers and the valet staff with earpieces and walkie-talkies, coordinating who gets thrown out or invited inside. “Lots of things let you know not to let somebody in,” he says. “Twelve guys wearing white T-shirts with the dead guy on their T-shirt and they just came from his funeral — uh-uh, you’re not coming in here, baby, ’cause I know what happens. They want to grieve, and ‘grieve’ means pouring alcohol on the floor and slapping girls around.”
Old customers got tossed from the new All Star, or were refused entry. “The smoking weed, the smacking girls, the standing up and tearing up the bar — these guys watch too many fucking gangster movies and too many rap videos,” Lawrence says. One by one troublemakers got banned and enemies were made of those who sometimes settle disputes with guns.
“A lot of guys feel that you disrespect them when you ask them to leave the club or put them outside,” he says. “So guys will run around that fence, that brick wall, and drive by and fire at the bar, and whoever’s in the way is in the way.” Customers standing in line have been shot, Lawrence says. His cousin took a bullet in the jaw while standing in the parking lot. Some people are still angry at being banned from their favorite strip club — a reason why Lawrence goes by his DJ name.
The dancers say they’re relieved the thug element has been reduced, if not entirely eliminated. “They’d come in and get dances and walk out and not pay you,” says 27-year-old Creamy, a veteran here. “They were experiencing their rough times in life and was taking it out on the girls. Nobody was making any money on the streets. Everybody was angry.” (…read more, detroitblog.org, thanks Mojo!)
