Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wedding Planning, Pre-Wedding Parties, Engagment Parties, Bridal Showers, Bachelorette Party & Bridal Shower Planning
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Centrefold Strips As Seen In The Wall Street Journal
Wardrobe Malfunctions, Inc.
On Super Bowl Sunday,A Tricky Logistical Dance;150 Bookings in DetroitFebruary 2, 2007; Page W1
For Dan Capozzi, the weeks preceding the Super Bowl are an exercise in multitasking, sleep deprivation and crisis management.
Together with his office staff, he'll work 14-hour days interviewing dozens of job applicants, fielding customer calls and logging schedules on a $10,000 proprietary software system. On Sunday, his company expects to generate up to 17% of its total annual revenue in a matter of hours. Mr. Capozzi's business: providing racy entertainment for Super Bowl parties.
Since its debut in 1967 as a lopsided novelty game between rival pro football leagues, the Super Bowl has become an unofficial American holiday with its own set of rituals and its own unique economy. In recent years, companies that advertise male and female "strippers" or "exotic dancers" for private parties have joined caterers, beer vendors and pizza-delivery shops on the list of businesses that have to prepare for an onslaught of sales on game day.
Tony Hassan of Erotic Image in Detroit with dancer Andria Harrison.
Super Bowl Sunday is the industry's busiest day of the year. Not only does the money earned during the game account for as much as a quarter of a typical agency's revenue, major agencies say the number of Super Bowl orders has been growing by 15% per year. Tony Hassan, the owner of Erotic Image in Detroit, says he's booked 150 shows for Sunday and will bring in as much as $45,000 -- nine times the normal revenue for a February weekend. "It's a little like the Christmas season for retailers," he says.
For dancers and managers this growing demand, though good for the bottom line, creates a logistical puzzle sufficient for a business-school case study. Since the Super Bowl comes at a time when demand is in a deep seasonal trough, managers have to start preparing weeks in advance -- tracking down dancers they haven't seen in months, hiring and training new ones and making sure nobody is out of shape. Nearly every customer who calls wants a show at halftime, which puts the agencies in a bind: Not only is it impossible to know when halftime will begin, but the window is too short for anything but one abbreviated performance. Another challenge: As many as half the potential customers call at the last minute, forcing managers to scramble on game day.
"It's an extreme peak demand scenario," says J. Michael Harrison, a specialist in production and operations management at Stanford University's business school. "You can't shift demand to another time, it's costly to recruit and train workers, and there may be a quality degradation that will mar your reputation." Though he has never studied this particular industry, Dr. Harrison says the challenge looks daunting. "I don't see too much room for creative solutions."
Sales of $50 Million
A map of gigs at Shamrock Entertainment in Lynn, Mass.
The business of for-hire exotic dancers is a small and comparatively tame subset of the adult entertainment industry. Most companies are small local outfits licensed as theatrical booking agencies. Their dancers are independent contractors who earn most of their compensation in tips. Agency owners say total nationwide sales are probably less than $50 million.
While they run the gamut from highly organized corporate services with strict rules to cheap and disreputable outfits where dancers may dabble in drugs and prostitution, these agencies don't end up in police reports as often as some other types of adult businesses. (While widely identified as "strippers" in media reports, the alleged victims in the recent Duke University sexual assault case were dispatched by escort services.)
For years, exotic dancers did the bulk of their business during the spring wedding season at bachelor and bachelorette parties. But as a result of everything from the thriving Chippendales male review in Las Vegas to a series of striptease workout videos by Carmen Electra, business is growing. Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, combined with provocative commercials and programming on competing networks featuring lingerie models, have helped give the game an undercurrent of raunchiness. While the bulk of the customers are still young single men, agency owners say they're getting more calls from women and from people throwing co-ed parties.
Ads on Craigslist
At Mr. Capozzi's agency, Centerfold Strips in New York, the staff began preparing for the Super Bowl right after the new year. By kickoff Sunday, they will have placed dozens of ads for new dancers in places like Craigslist.org and the Village Voice, conducted interviews, hired 27 new dancers, fielded hundreds of calls and scheduled more than 100 shows. At the height of this week's madness, marketing director Marc Landau said his shaving and showering routines had fallen by the wayside and he'd traded business casual for a pair of shorts. By the time he leaves the office it's nearly midnight and his ear is sore from cradling the phone. Sometimes, he says, "I just walk outside and scream."
Portable stripper poles from California's Platinum Stages.
The pressure can take a toll on performers, too. By Sunday, most say they have already worked two nights in a row and are usually running on short sleep. And unlike bachelor parties, where guests usually know what to expect and bring lots of cash for tips, Super Bowl partygoers sometimes have a hard time tearing themselves away from the game.
In 2005, Genevieve Gray arrived to perform at a Super Bowl party in Springfield, Mass. She changed into a football jersey and started the show. The problem: The hometown New England Patriots were playing in the game.
First the partygoers wanted to keep the volume up on the television, drowning out her music. After a few seconds of dancing, one onlooker glanced at the game and shouted "wait a minute, stop!" After the play was over, he said "OK, go ahead." Though the customers finally turned off the TV, Ms. Gray says she earned only $1,000 in tips from all her shows that day -- about half what she earned last year when the Patriots did not make it to the Super Bowl.
Of all the logistical challenges, the biggest is this: how to handle the inevitable crush of calls on game day. In Boston, John Galland of Shamrock Entertainment chooses to embrace the procrastinators. While he offers a 10% discount for early bookings and sends dancers to football stadium parking lots to promote the company's Super Bowl shows, he'll field 40% of his total requests at the last minute -- some of them from as far away as Maine and Vermont. "Some people think it's like ordering a pizza," he says.
Push Pins on a Map
To capture the late business on game day, he turns his two-room office into a command post with some 40 dancers and drivers on standby and a buffet stocked with cold cuts, pasta trays, cookies and soda. During Sunday's game he'll be dug in at his desk wearing gym pants and sipping bottled water. He'll be holding a phone (and sometimes two) while scribbling out work orders and plotting each new booking with color-coded push pins on a map of New England.
To make sure drivers can change course on the fly, he insists that every driver's car be equipped with a GPS system. "We're able to cover most of the requests that come in that day," he says. "A lot of places are not able to produce."
Of course, not every agency wants to. Rather than trying to accommodate stragglers, Mr. Hassan of Erotic Image in Detroit has a different approach: upselling the customers who book early. Starting in January, Mr. Hassan spends a significant portion of his advertising budget marketing a $490 Super Bowl package that includes four performers -- a pre-game hostess to greet the guests, a dancer to perform at halftime and a separate "intimate duo" to perform after the game.
This plan not only allows customers to watch the game without interruption, it creates supply-chain efficiencies. A pregame hostess will have plenty of time to travel to a second party to perform at halftime and later, to travel to a third party to participate in a postgame show. By limiting the number of dancers working, Mr. Hassan can guarantee top dancers good earnings and avoid sending out inexperienced recruits. (He often sends trainees with the veterans to observe.)
Though Mr. Hassan says he could increase bookings by 30% if he took late orders, he thinks the strain on his employees would not be worth it. On Super Bowl Sunday, he closes the office and takes the day off. "It's a big spike in business out of nowhere," he says. "But it's not a day that freaks us out."
Regional Differences
The business does have pockets of difficulty. With so many dancers on the road during the Super Bowl, blizzards and breakdowns are common worries, as are sudden cancellations. "Sometimes someone's girlfriend or wife comes in and puts a kibosh on things," says Mr. Galland.
There are regional differences, too: Jeff Cleboski of Houston Hot Bodies says the Super Bowl isn't a busy time in Texas because most people would rather concentrate on the game. "Football is like religion down here," he says.
If there's any development that could cut into this business, it's the growing number of party hosts who want to do it themselves. Platinum Stages of Newport Beach, Calif., a company that sells portable stripper poles that can be installed in living rooms, says sales in the two weeks before the Super Bowl will account for 20% of its $2 million to $3 million in annual revenue. "The people using our products are your basic housewives and moms," says Kim Homuth, the company's director of operations. "But we do get some drunk guys on there, too. People send me pictures."
Nonetheless, exotic dance companies are finding new ways to segment the market. For customers who don't want full nudity, many will send waitresses clad in bikinis or shirtless male bartenders wearing bowties and white cuffs. Some market their services to fantasy football leagues that watch the game together. They're also slowly persuading customers that it's okay to book a postgame show.
Beyond the fatigue, the intense schedule and the fact that she only gets to see a few snippets of the game, Ms. Gray, the exotic dancer from Boston, says she should make about $400 more during Sunday's game than on any other day of the year.
She says she prefers Super Bowl parties to bachelor parties because no two are alike. Crowds can be young or old, mixed or all male, wealthy or working class. "It's like going to the zoo," she says. "You're never sure what kind of animal you're going to see."
Write to Sam Walker at sam.walker@wsj.com
On Super Bowl Sunday,A Tricky Logistical Dance;150 Bookings in DetroitFebruary 2, 2007; Page W1
For Dan Capozzi, the weeks preceding the Super Bowl are an exercise in multitasking, sleep deprivation and crisis management.
Together with his office staff, he'll work 14-hour days interviewing dozens of job applicants, fielding customer calls and logging schedules on a $10,000 proprietary software system. On Sunday, his company expects to generate up to 17% of its total annual revenue in a matter of hours. Mr. Capozzi's business: providing racy entertainment for Super Bowl parties.
Since its debut in 1967 as a lopsided novelty game between rival pro football leagues, the Super Bowl has become an unofficial American holiday with its own set of rituals and its own unique economy. In recent years, companies that advertise male and female "strippers" or "exotic dancers" for private parties have joined caterers, beer vendors and pizza-delivery shops on the list of businesses that have to prepare for an onslaught of sales on game day.
Tony Hassan of Erotic Image in Detroit with dancer Andria Harrison.
Super Bowl Sunday is the industry's busiest day of the year. Not only does the money earned during the game account for as much as a quarter of a typical agency's revenue, major agencies say the number of Super Bowl orders has been growing by 15% per year. Tony Hassan, the owner of Erotic Image in Detroit, says he's booked 150 shows for Sunday and will bring in as much as $45,000 -- nine times the normal revenue for a February weekend. "It's a little like the Christmas season for retailers," he says.
For dancers and managers this growing demand, though good for the bottom line, creates a logistical puzzle sufficient for a business-school case study. Since the Super Bowl comes at a time when demand is in a deep seasonal trough, managers have to start preparing weeks in advance -- tracking down dancers they haven't seen in months, hiring and training new ones and making sure nobody is out of shape. Nearly every customer who calls wants a show at halftime, which puts the agencies in a bind: Not only is it impossible to know when halftime will begin, but the window is too short for anything but one abbreviated performance. Another challenge: As many as half the potential customers call at the last minute, forcing managers to scramble on game day.
"It's an extreme peak demand scenario," says J. Michael Harrison, a specialist in production and operations management at Stanford University's business school. "You can't shift demand to another time, it's costly to recruit and train workers, and there may be a quality degradation that will mar your reputation." Though he has never studied this particular industry, Dr. Harrison says the challenge looks daunting. "I don't see too much room for creative solutions."
Sales of $50 Million
A map of gigs at Shamrock Entertainment in Lynn, Mass.
The business of for-hire exotic dancers is a small and comparatively tame subset of the adult entertainment industry. Most companies are small local outfits licensed as theatrical booking agencies. Their dancers are independent contractors who earn most of their compensation in tips. Agency owners say total nationwide sales are probably less than $50 million.
While they run the gamut from highly organized corporate services with strict rules to cheap and disreputable outfits where dancers may dabble in drugs and prostitution, these agencies don't end up in police reports as often as some other types of adult businesses. (While widely identified as "strippers" in media reports, the alleged victims in the recent Duke University sexual assault case were dispatched by escort services.)
For years, exotic dancers did the bulk of their business during the spring wedding season at bachelor and bachelorette parties. But as a result of everything from the thriving Chippendales male review in Las Vegas to a series of striptease workout videos by Carmen Electra, business is growing. Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, combined with provocative commercials and programming on competing networks featuring lingerie models, have helped give the game an undercurrent of raunchiness. While the bulk of the customers are still young single men, agency owners say they're getting more calls from women and from people throwing co-ed parties.
Ads on Craigslist
At Mr. Capozzi's agency, Centerfold Strips in New York, the staff began preparing for the Super Bowl right after the new year. By kickoff Sunday, they will have placed dozens of ads for new dancers in places like Craigslist.org and the Village Voice, conducted interviews, hired 27 new dancers, fielded hundreds of calls and scheduled more than 100 shows. At the height of this week's madness, marketing director Marc Landau said his shaving and showering routines had fallen by the wayside and he'd traded business casual for a pair of shorts. By the time he leaves the office it's nearly midnight and his ear is sore from cradling the phone. Sometimes, he says, "I just walk outside and scream."
Portable stripper poles from California's Platinum Stages.
The pressure can take a toll on performers, too. By Sunday, most say they have already worked two nights in a row and are usually running on short sleep. And unlike bachelor parties, where guests usually know what to expect and bring lots of cash for tips, Super Bowl partygoers sometimes have a hard time tearing themselves away from the game.
In 2005, Genevieve Gray arrived to perform at a Super Bowl party in Springfield, Mass. She changed into a football jersey and started the show. The problem: The hometown New England Patriots were playing in the game.
First the partygoers wanted to keep the volume up on the television, drowning out her music. After a few seconds of dancing, one onlooker glanced at the game and shouted "wait a minute, stop!" After the play was over, he said "OK, go ahead." Though the customers finally turned off the TV, Ms. Gray says she earned only $1,000 in tips from all her shows that day -- about half what she earned last year when the Patriots did not make it to the Super Bowl.
Of all the logistical challenges, the biggest is this: how to handle the inevitable crush of calls on game day. In Boston, John Galland of Shamrock Entertainment chooses to embrace the procrastinators. While he offers a 10% discount for early bookings and sends dancers to football stadium parking lots to promote the company's Super Bowl shows, he'll field 40% of his total requests at the last minute -- some of them from as far away as Maine and Vermont. "Some people think it's like ordering a pizza," he says.
Push Pins on a Map
To capture the late business on game day, he turns his two-room office into a command post with some 40 dancers and drivers on standby and a buffet stocked with cold cuts, pasta trays, cookies and soda. During Sunday's game he'll be dug in at his desk wearing gym pants and sipping bottled water. He'll be holding a phone (and sometimes two) while scribbling out work orders and plotting each new booking with color-coded push pins on a map of New England.
To make sure drivers can change course on the fly, he insists that every driver's car be equipped with a GPS system. "We're able to cover most of the requests that come in that day," he says. "A lot of places are not able to produce."
Of course, not every agency wants to. Rather than trying to accommodate stragglers, Mr. Hassan of Erotic Image in Detroit has a different approach: upselling the customers who book early. Starting in January, Mr. Hassan spends a significant portion of his advertising budget marketing a $490 Super Bowl package that includes four performers -- a pre-game hostess to greet the guests, a dancer to perform at halftime and a separate "intimate duo" to perform after the game.
This plan not only allows customers to watch the game without interruption, it creates supply-chain efficiencies. A pregame hostess will have plenty of time to travel to a second party to perform at halftime and later, to travel to a third party to participate in a postgame show. By limiting the number of dancers working, Mr. Hassan can guarantee top dancers good earnings and avoid sending out inexperienced recruits. (He often sends trainees with the veterans to observe.)
Though Mr. Hassan says he could increase bookings by 30% if he took late orders, he thinks the strain on his employees would not be worth it. On Super Bowl Sunday, he closes the office and takes the day off. "It's a big spike in business out of nowhere," he says. "But it's not a day that freaks us out."
Regional Differences
The business does have pockets of difficulty. With so many dancers on the road during the Super Bowl, blizzards and breakdowns are common worries, as are sudden cancellations. "Sometimes someone's girlfriend or wife comes in and puts a kibosh on things," says Mr. Galland.
There are regional differences, too: Jeff Cleboski of Houston Hot Bodies says the Super Bowl isn't a busy time in Texas because most people would rather concentrate on the game. "Football is like religion down here," he says.
If there's any development that could cut into this business, it's the growing number of party hosts who want to do it themselves. Platinum Stages of Newport Beach, Calif., a company that sells portable stripper poles that can be installed in living rooms, says sales in the two weeks before the Super Bowl will account for 20% of its $2 million to $3 million in annual revenue. "The people using our products are your basic housewives and moms," says Kim Homuth, the company's director of operations. "But we do get some drunk guys on there, too. People send me pictures."
Nonetheless, exotic dance companies are finding new ways to segment the market. For customers who don't want full nudity, many will send waitresses clad in bikinis or shirtless male bartenders wearing bowties and white cuffs. Some market their services to fantasy football leagues that watch the game together. They're also slowly persuading customers that it's okay to book a postgame show.
Beyond the fatigue, the intense schedule and the fact that she only gets to see a few snippets of the game, Ms. Gray, the exotic dancer from Boston, says she should make about $400 more during Sunday's game than on any other day of the year.
She says she prefers Super Bowl parties to bachelor parties because no two are alike. Crowds can be young or old, mixed or all male, wealthy or working class. "It's like going to the zoo," she says. "You're never sure what kind of animal you're going to see."
Write to Sam Walker at sam.walker@wsj.com
Strippers, Exotic Dancers, Lap Dancers & Adult Entertainment Available For Your Super Bowl Party
Having A Superbowl Party??
Centerfold Strips presents the ultimate Superbowl Party show!! Party with the wet & wild strippers from Centerfold Strips. Pre-game shows, halftime shows & post-game shows are available.
Got a Cheerleader Fantasy? They are available! What's a Super
Bowl party without strippers? Besides, what will your friends think of you? So invite our hot Centerfold Strippers to party with you!
MENTION THIS EMAIL FOR A $20.00 DISCOUNT OFF ANY SHOW!
For Booking Call Our Office Toll Free At:
Office # 1-877-4-A-STRIP
(1-877-427-8747)
Centerfold Strips presents the ultimate Superbowl Party show!! Party with the wet & wild strippers from Centerfold Strips. Pre-game shows, halftime shows & post-game shows are available.
Got a Cheerleader Fantasy? They are available! What's a Super
Bowl party without strippers? Besides, what will your friends think of you? So invite our hot Centerfold Strippers to party with you!
MENTION THIS EMAIL FOR A $20.00 DISCOUNT OFF ANY SHOW!
For Booking Call Our Office Toll Free At:
Office # 1-877-4-A-STRIP
(1-877-427-8747)
Centerfold Strips Bachelor Party Strippers & Exotic Dancers Published in The Post Gazette
Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
Club Royale at 31st Street and Liberty Avenue in the Strip District is cutting entrance fees and bringing in extra dancers from Florida for the All-Star Game.
By Timothy McNultyPittsburgh Post-Gazette
Some businesses roll out the red carpet for All-Star Game visitors. Others take off their tops.
All-Star weekend is estimated to generate $52.3 million for the local economy, with some of it going right into the garter belts of the city's strip clubs. The weekend promises the strip clubs' ideal audience: guys with spending money coming into town for a few days, and nights, of fun.
"It's going to be a huge weekend -- absolutely," says Jim, the manager of Club Royale, formerly Bare Elegance, in the Strip District.
"If you're going to an All-Star Game, you're going to be spending some money, more so than a local customer. If people are coming in with their families, I wish them a great time in the city -- if they're single, we'll be here for them," says Jim, who asked that his last name not be used.
Albert Bortz, the owner of Blush, Downtown's oldest and only strip club, lets out a long, seen-it-all (and we do mean all) sigh when asked how he knows the game will drive up business.
"What do I base it on? The fact that there's gonna be 100,000 people in the city," he says.
Bortz has run Blush -- formerly Club Elite and the Edison Hotel -- for 36 years, just as his father, uncle and great-uncle ran the entertainment spot before him. Big sporting events historically drive the business.
"You live and die with the sports in this city. It makes a big difference. Even when the Steelers are playing, you've got a bump on a Saturday night because there are so many people in from out of town," Bortz says.
Other businesses -- such as limo services -- catering to the good-time tourist crowd are also gearing for extra business. Professional Limousine in the Strip District is running bus trips to local golf courses and taking calls from geographically challenged ticket-holders who don't know their Downtown hotels are just across the river from PNC Park.
"We have people calling from out of town, staying at the Renaissance, wanting a bus to the ballpark," says dispatcher Bob Dowds.
Dowds also expects other, last-moment calls for limos during the weekend nights.
"They want to go where the action is," he says.
City hotels and restaurants are bringing in extra staff, sprucing up and doing extra promotions to reel in All-Star guests. The city's strip clubs are doing the same.
Blush is bringing in an extra featured dancer (model Brandy Lynn Banks) for the Monday and Tuesday of All-Star week -- such dancers are normally booked only on weekends -- and extending its Sunday hours.
Club Royale is cutting entrance fees in half, printing All-Star-themed admission tickets and planning to bring in extra dancers from Florida. The club also pays cab drivers to bring tourists to the doors.
"We've got the cabbies locked and loaded" for the weekend, says Jim.
As great as things should be for the clubs, there are challenges.
Exotic dancing being what it is -- a business dependent on women stripping down to G-strings and pasties for money -- it is difficult to know how many employees will show up for work on a given day, even on a surefire payday.
Jim, dressed in polo shirt and jeans, with a mouthful of braces, thinks he'll have about 30 dancers over the weekend but can only guesstimate.
"These are dancers. They have dancer time and dancer hours," he says. "It's an 80/20 business: If 80 percent show up, we'll do fine. If we have extra girls, believe me, we'll keep them busy."
The dancers will mostly be busy with regular clientele -- while the city will swell with millionaire ballplayers and a few celebrities, the smart ones will probably steer clear of public clubs, says Dan Capozzi of Centerfold Strips in New York, a national exotic dancer agency.
No one wants publicity similar to Braves outfielder Andruw Jones, who admitted to receiving sexual favors at Atlanta's Gold Club in 2001, in the presence of other famous athletes.
"In this day and age professional athletes have been low-profile about using adult entertainment. ... [The Gold Club] became a turning point, I think, as far as professional athletes as well as celebrities in general, to be very careful when they use adult entertainment services," Capozzi says.
More than 50 police agencies are cooperating on law enforcement over the weekend, but the focus is on antiterrorism efforts -- as long as they behave themselves, All-Star visitors should be able to whoop it up at all the city's bars and clubs until the 2 a.m. closing time.
Pittsburgh Police will do their regular vice patrols, in common prostitution spots such as Downtown, the North Side and Lawrenceville, but have not planned additional vice details, according to Chief Dom Costa.
Bortz's family has owned the Edison Hotel and related clubs for decades, through all five All-Star Games in Pittsburgh. Only lately have they turned into five-day events, and Bortz -- like other Downtown business owners -- could not be happier.
"It's really well promoted by Major League Baseball. They've done a terrific job with it," he says.
First published on July 5, 2006 at 12:00 amTim McNulty can be reached at tmcnulty@post-gazette.com or
Club Royale at 31st Street and Liberty Avenue in the Strip District is cutting entrance fees and bringing in extra dancers from Florida for the All-Star Game.
By Timothy McNultyPittsburgh Post-Gazette
Some businesses roll out the red carpet for All-Star Game visitors. Others take off their tops.
All-Star weekend is estimated to generate $52.3 million for the local economy, with some of it going right into the garter belts of the city's strip clubs. The weekend promises the strip clubs' ideal audience: guys with spending money coming into town for a few days, and nights, of fun.
"It's going to be a huge weekend -- absolutely," says Jim, the manager of Club Royale, formerly Bare Elegance, in the Strip District.
"If you're going to an All-Star Game, you're going to be spending some money, more so than a local customer. If people are coming in with their families, I wish them a great time in the city -- if they're single, we'll be here for them," says Jim, who asked that his last name not be used.
Albert Bortz, the owner of Blush, Downtown's oldest and only strip club, lets out a long, seen-it-all (and we do mean all) sigh when asked how he knows the game will drive up business.
"What do I base it on? The fact that there's gonna be 100,000 people in the city," he says.
Bortz has run Blush -- formerly Club Elite and the Edison Hotel -- for 36 years, just as his father, uncle and great-uncle ran the entertainment spot before him. Big sporting events historically drive the business.
"You live and die with the sports in this city. It makes a big difference. Even when the Steelers are playing, you've got a bump on a Saturday night because there are so many people in from out of town," Bortz says.
Other businesses -- such as limo services -- catering to the good-time tourist crowd are also gearing for extra business. Professional Limousine in the Strip District is running bus trips to local golf courses and taking calls from geographically challenged ticket-holders who don't know their Downtown hotels are just across the river from PNC Park.
"We have people calling from out of town, staying at the Renaissance, wanting a bus to the ballpark," says dispatcher Bob Dowds.
Dowds also expects other, last-moment calls for limos during the weekend nights.
"They want to go where the action is," he says.
City hotels and restaurants are bringing in extra staff, sprucing up and doing extra promotions to reel in All-Star guests. The city's strip clubs are doing the same.
Blush is bringing in an extra featured dancer (model Brandy Lynn Banks) for the Monday and Tuesday of All-Star week -- such dancers are normally booked only on weekends -- and extending its Sunday hours.
Club Royale is cutting entrance fees in half, printing All-Star-themed admission tickets and planning to bring in extra dancers from Florida. The club also pays cab drivers to bring tourists to the doors.
"We've got the cabbies locked and loaded" for the weekend, says Jim.
As great as things should be for the clubs, there are challenges.
Exotic dancing being what it is -- a business dependent on women stripping down to G-strings and pasties for money -- it is difficult to know how many employees will show up for work on a given day, even on a surefire payday.
Jim, dressed in polo shirt and jeans, with a mouthful of braces, thinks he'll have about 30 dancers over the weekend but can only guesstimate.
"These are dancers. They have dancer time and dancer hours," he says. "It's an 80/20 business: If 80 percent show up, we'll do fine. If we have extra girls, believe me, we'll keep them busy."
The dancers will mostly be busy with regular clientele -- while the city will swell with millionaire ballplayers and a few celebrities, the smart ones will probably steer clear of public clubs, says Dan Capozzi of Centerfold Strips in New York, a national exotic dancer agency.
No one wants publicity similar to Braves outfielder Andruw Jones, who admitted to receiving sexual favors at Atlanta's Gold Club in 2001, in the presence of other famous athletes.
"In this day and age professional athletes have been low-profile about using adult entertainment. ... [The Gold Club] became a turning point, I think, as far as professional athletes as well as celebrities in general, to be very careful when they use adult entertainment services," Capozzi says.
More than 50 police agencies are cooperating on law enforcement over the weekend, but the focus is on antiterrorism efforts -- as long as they behave themselves, All-Star visitors should be able to whoop it up at all the city's bars and clubs until the 2 a.m. closing time.
Pittsburgh Police will do their regular vice patrols, in common prostitution spots such as Downtown, the North Side and Lawrenceville, but have not planned additional vice details, according to Chief Dom Costa.
Bortz's family has owned the Edison Hotel and related clubs for decades, through all five All-Star Games in Pittsburgh. Only lately have they turned into five-day events, and Bortz -- like other Downtown business owners -- could not be happier.
"It's really well promoted by Major League Baseball. They've done a terrific job with it," he says.
First published on July 5, 2006 at 12:00 amTim McNulty can be reached at tmcnulty@post-gazette.com or
Centerfold Strips Adult Entertainment Agency As Seen In Maxim Magazine
The Bachelor Party Bible Book 4: New York The dirtiest party of a man’s life meets the city that never sleeps…alone. Maxim, December 2003 By Jon Wilde This is insane. Why am I on my hands and knees, pants down, in front of 30 friends and coworkers? And why is a 200-pound stripper tongue-tickling my tail feather? Journalism, friends. This humiliation is all part of my new job.Just four months ago, I was a lowly intern from Connecticut, preparing for college final exams. Now I’m Maxim’s full-time (if not fully paid) editorial assistant. And while I love the idea of playing the bachelor for three days of Big Apple debauchery, this wasn’t exactly the payoff I’d been expecting.Crazy trainNew York, I’m learning, is a hard-partying, hottie-drenched beast of a city that’ll eat you up and puke you out faster than Lara Flynn Boyle at a buffet. And as with the first three stops in this five-part bachelor party thrillogy (Sin City, N’awlins, Vancouver), we’re riding her for all she’s worth. My job? To torture-test Gotham City so that when the time comes, you can throw a perverted, mistake-free stag party of your own. This gig rocks!It’s barely 10 A.M., and our 48-hour bash is already in full screech through the tunnels of Manhattan. In recognition of an old-school N.Y.C. tradition, we’ve turned the last car of the Coney Island–bound W train into an underground rave: ghetto blaster in the corner, booze disguised as vitamin water, and enough girls dirty-dancing on subway poles to start charging a cover. Adding to the excitement is the fact that this entire party has been outlawed by the mayor himself—but, as the bum wailing on a busted trumpet with an I’LL STOP PLAYING FOR MONEY! sign points out, it’s only illegal if you get caught.Fifteen stops later, we hit New York’s finest: the infamous Coney Island amusement parks, a festive combination of fireworks, drunk women, and simmering urban violence—just be sure to leave before dark. Ignoring hunger pains, we barhop to KeySpan Park, home of the Crooklyn (as they’re known to all who’ve been mugged in Brooklyn) Cyclones, the Mets’ minor league squad and the only team named after a dilapidated, rickety disaster of a roller coaster—which we ride three times, of course. Because if there’s one thing that’ll prepare a man for marriage, it’s the anticipation of quick death.But before I can start having fun, the whispers start:“Save your strength, kid.”“Enjoy your dignity while it lasts, slugger.” I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I intend to get obliterated before it’s too late.Pistol-whippedThere’s nothing liberating about celebrating your buddy’s last hours of carnal freedom in a buttoned-up W Hotel or some barnyard Marriott. Your groom-to-be deserves a stay at Debauchery Central: the Chelsea Hotel, where Sex Pistol Sid Vicious stabbed the love of his life, Nancy Spungen, to death. Clearly, the brakes are off tonight…Serendipitously, the good folks at the Chelsea have locked us out of our original suite (Room 710) because some celebrity couple is finding out that reality really does bite. Reportedly, a certain sword-swinging actress booted her cheating dead poet husband out of their apartment, and the birdman is hiding in our crib. But it’s no skin off our sparkling backsides—there are more working women in this town than we can shake our sticks at, and time is ticking. Here, stripper, stripper…Times Square has been on a disappointing uphill slope for years. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani’s antiporn crusade pushed the last remnants of the low-rent slime factories into Queens…and we’re right behind ’em. But not on the subway. The precious moments of a bachelor party can’t be wasted on transportation. For $200 per hour, Centerfold Strips has provided us a stretch Hummer with built-in hotties (an extra $700 per hour, but with included girl-on-girl action, it’s worth it) so we don’t miss a single dance en route. And for anyone who’s yet to receive a lap dance at 50 mph, let’s just say it’s a bump-and-grindy ride. If I knew pretending to get married was this much fun, I’d have faked it years ago.The minute we step inside Wiggles, an all-nude, no-booze fleshfest of the lowest order, it’s clear we’ve come to the right place. For $20 these girls will grind a hole straight into your Wranglers. And there’s no telling what they do in the private Champagne Room (sorry, we really can’t tell). But as we settle in, we hear that Giuliani’s sexless policies are being relaxed, opening the doors for highbrow joints like Manhattan Gentlemen’s Club. To the strippermobile!This brand-new upscale“club” in a former bank makes Queens a distant memory. Before I can order a $13 drink, three“law school students” are grinding all over my gavel. As the clock strikes 4 A.M., we stumble into our waiting Hummer, surrounded by Nelly’s“Hot in Herre” and the sight of half-naked Alexia and Mandy pouring drinks for the road. Ah, the joys of marriage!Fourteen shots and untold sexual indiscretions later, we look like Nick Nolte after a train wreck but somehow make our way to the Hudson River by 10 A.M. If you’re a hung-over tourist looking to obliterate all aquatic serenity on your way to peeking up Lady Liberty’s frock, you’ve got one choice: the Beast. For $16 this Day-Glo speedboat is the best way to enjoy an hourlong, 55 mph tour of the planet’s greatest skyline. Too bad some of us (Todd) are missing the entire thing, busily unloading the contents of last night’s beerfest over the Beast’s railing.Batter upSince New York is high culture, we can’t avoid hitting the big spots: the Museum of Modern Art, the Empire State Building, the U.N., etc. But who said we had to leave the strippers at home? (Actually, Kofi Annan did; we learned that U.N. security guards frown on public displays of erotic affection.) Let us be the first to say that every man should get a lap dance on top of New York’s tallest building.We were still too tired and hung over to do our own planning for night two…Luckily, in New York there’s always another option. We call Eat, Drink & Be Merry (212-585-2371; from $40 to $150 per head, depending on sex-travagance). This one-stop shop for all your twisted bachelor party needs has private party rooms from the West Village to the Upper East Side. One phone call and we have at our disposal limousines, girls who get naked in limousines, food, booze, more girls who get naked in limousines, and girls who get naked for the sole purpose of embarrassing your bachelor to the brink of suicide (or marriage, whichever comes first).So that’s how I ended up here at a bar called Jake’s Dilemma, with two strippers dressed like schoolgirls (and drunk on Jell-O shots like schoolgirls) beating me with my own belt in front of my coworkers. Sounds like fun, right? Until a third girl cracks a long leather whip against my butt cheeks.In seconds the room has gone from dive bar to XXX torture chamber, with lap dances in one corner, body shots in another, and one of our guys…uh, let’s say he’s being sized for a toe ring. Maybe I’m getting off easy. And maybe not. I can’t tell you all the gory details, but soon I’m defending myself with a Wiffle Ball bat as one stripper hurls eggs at me—without using her hands or feet. Such a talented gal. And all I can think about are the photos of all this mess that will without a doubt get e-mailed to the entire company on Monday morning. Ah, well, in this economy I’ll find a new job in no time.Right now we’re still on the company dime and leaving no penny unspent. Across town is another Eat, Drink & Be Merry spot that’s hosting an all-night beer-pong competition. And I just happen to be my college’s reigning beer-pong champion—or so I unfortunately stated on my résumé. Seven rimmers later I’m 300 sheets to the wind and yelling things about my soon-to-be former boss’ mother that would make Traci Lords blush. Hopefully, they’ll let me tag along for the final stop on this bachelor party parade: Miami, home of the world’s smallest bikinis.See y’all in paradise.
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This show is the ultimate ladies night out! The revue attracts a large selection of women from your immediate area for the show, and after gentlemen are admitted keeping the crowd levels high. Some clubs use our review to attract the female client segment early in the evening (9:00 PM – 10:30 PM). This strategy works well since it generally fills the club before the typical club traffic starts at 11:00 PM. The show is at least an hour and a half of non-stop entertainment. Special touches like the banana contest; oil rubdown, giveaways and a boxer raffle keep things hopping. Your customers can take home autographed Polaroid’s of the dancers. We have the largest staff of dependable professional dancers. We routinely rotate the dancers lineup to insure repeat traffic. We are the private party leader and have a huge customer following.
Marketing & Promotions
We will supply you with all of the promotional materials to make this event a success! We provide a mailing list service (the ladies fill out a free raffle card) for your club. We use direct mail to advertise your club and promote special events. All revues will also receive their own Internet web page on our extremely high traffic website http://www.centerfoldstrips.com. Other marketing materials such as videos, posters and flyers are available. If promoted properly, this will be a lucrative recurring engagement.
Mission Statement
Our management and staff are committed to providing superior service through quick response, organization and follow through. We pride ourselves on excellence achieved through integrity and ethical business practice. We are the most reliable, efficient & experienced male revue available. Wherever and whatever your promotion might be, we have the resources you need.
We also cater to:
Bachelorette Parties
Birthday Parties
Bridal Showers
Retirement Parties
Girl’s Night Out
Any Occasion
The Men OF Centerfold Strips Male Revue is available for nightclub engagements, fund-raisers as well as entertainment for large groups and functions. We can custom tailor a show for any budget, and be assured, we provide the very best male revue in existence. Let us show you how to maximize your club’s profit potential, and start increasing your revenue today!
Awesome fantasy routines, excellent promotions, and of course, our hot centerfold guys and will pack the house. We provide all the necessary ingredients to make this promotion a big success. With the Men Of Centerfold Strips Male Revue, you are guaranteed a world class, fully choreographed show, featuring only the best built, best looking, and most personable entertainers in the business.
The Show
This show is the ultimate ladies night out! The revue attracts a large selection of women from your immediate area for the show, and after gentlemen are admitted keeping the crowd levels high. Some clubs use our review to attract the female client segment early in the evening (9:00 PM – 10:30 PM). This strategy works well since it generally fills the club before the typical club traffic starts at 11:00 PM. The show is at least an hour and a half of non-stop entertainment. Special touches like the banana contest; oil rubdown, giveaways and a boxer raffle keep things hopping. Your customers can take home autographed Polaroid’s of the dancers. We have the largest staff of dependable professional dancers. We routinely rotate the dancers lineup to insure repeat traffic. We are the private party leader and have a huge customer following.
Marketing & Promotions
We will supply you with all of the promotional materials to make this event a success! We provide a mailing list service (the ladies fill out a free raffle card) for your club. We use direct mail to advertise your club and promote special events. All revues will also receive their own Internet web page on our extremely high traffic website http://www.centerfoldstrips.com. Other marketing materials such as videos, posters and flyers are available. If promoted properly, this will be a lucrative recurring engagement.
Mission Statement
Our management and staff are committed to providing superior service through quick response, organization and follow through. We pride ourselves on excellence achieved through integrity and ethical business practice. We are the most reliable, efficient & experienced male revue available. Wherever and whatever your promotion might be, we have the resources you need.
We also cater to:
Bachelorette Parties
Birthday Parties
Bridal Showers
Retirement Parties
Girl’s Night Out
Any Occasion
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