Toronto"s Housing Bubble Is Crushing The Strip Club Industry

Until now, Canada"s soaring housing prices were just another innocent asset bubble spawned by low interest rates and an endless supply of Chinese cash that needed to get laundered.  That said, massive bubbles are almost always followed by severe unintended consequences that can have a crippling impact on society as a whole...and in Toronto those unintended consequences are now manifesting themselves in the form of a rapidly deteriorating supply of strip clubs.

As Bloomberg points out today, the soaring value of Toronto real estate has made it all but impossible for strip club owners to turn down multi-million offers from condo developers leaving only a dozen strip clubs in a city whose purple neon lights used to be easily visible from the distant fringes of our solar system.

Condos are killing the Toronto strip club. In a city that once had more than 60 bars with nude dancers, only a dozen remain, the rest replaced by condominiums, restaurants, and housewares stores. Demand for homes downtown and for the retailers that serve them is driving land prices to records, tempting owners of the clubs, most of which are family-run, to sell at a time when business is slowing.

 

“Sometimes I feel like the last living dinosaur along Yonge Street,” says Allen Cooper, the second-generation owner of the famous—or infamous—Zanzibar Tavern. The former divorce lawyer says he has been approached by at least 30 suitors for his property in the past few years but is holding out for a “blow my socks off” offer. “I don’t know how many condos we’re going to get, but it seems like just a wall” of them, Cooper says.

Of course, with ~1-acre plots of land selling for C$225 million, it"s not difficult to understand why strip club owners are increasingly choosing to shut off their neon signs for good...even with the consolidation of market share it"s nearly impossible to make that lap dance math pencil out.

Remington’s Men of Steel, a male dance club behind a heavy door, sold to KingSett Capital Inc., which last year flipped it to Cresford Developments as part of a bigger portfolio on that block that went for about C$160 million ($125 million), according to real estate data supplier Altus Group. That club is closing next year, to be replaced by a 98-story condo.

 

The fading of the strip-club era can be seen in a five-block area along Yonge Street, near Toronto’s counterpart to Times Square, Yonge-Dundas Square. It was once dubbed Sin Strip for its neon-clad bars, sex shops, and movie theaters. Today there are about 20 development applications for condos and commercial buildings on the stretch.

 

Farther north, an entire city block is a construction site as two condo towers and some retail space replace a strip of colorful and creaky buildings that once offered body piercing and pole-dancing shoes. “We target a very specific market, mostly men. We’re not a shopping destination, so more people doesn’t mean a lot more business,” says Bill Greer, general manager and three-decade veteran of the Brass Rail Tavern, a two-story club in the area. “I don’t think we’ll be around in 10 years’ time.” Just outside the Brass Rail’s doors, a 75-story residential tower opened this year on a piece of land that cost C$53 million. An 80-story luxury tower is under construction following a C$225 million deal for less than 1 acre, according to data from Altus.

But at least one Toronto strip club owner, Spiro Koumoudouros of the House of Lancaster, has drawn a line in the sand saying he"s not going anywhere..."What am I going to do, sit at home and die?"...if only we could all exhibit such courage in times of extreme crisis. 

Finally, since we know your interest in this story was only prompted by your desire to see a larger version of the teaser pic...here you go:

"All We Want Is Respect" - NYC"s Strippers Are Going On Strike

Wealthy Wall Street finance types are going to need to find a new way to entertain their wealthy asset-management clients - at least for the time being - because the strippers are going on strike.

The source of the dispute is a simmering dispute between New York City dancers and a growing cohort of Instagram-famous “startenders” who wear outfits that are almost as revealing as the strippers" outfits, but also promote the club on social media - bringing in a loyal following of customers - while also serving drinks.

The club owners, not wanting to lose the revenue that the bartenders are bringing in, have stood idly by while the bartenders" influence inside the clubs has grown, while the strippers, who typically pay clubs a house fee to dance, are seeing their nightly earnings dwindle.

The result? One stripper who spoke to the post said she used to make $1,000 a night. But now she’s pulling in closer to $400.

“No dancer in New York City is making $1,000 a night anymore."

Of course, the strike is still in its early stages. But according to the Washington Post, it’s quickly gaining support.

Panama is a stage name and she declined to provide her real name. She is for real, though, said Mona Marie, the owner of a New York dance studio where many dancers train called Poletic Justice. And, she says, so are their mounting grievances, so much so that some of them have declared a stripper’s strike. It’s unclear how many dancers are participating and what the impact on the clubs has been. The strike is about a week old.

 

This isn’t your normal labor dispute between employees and employers. It’s between bartenders and strippers, on the one hand, and between strippers and club promoters on the other, who tend to side with the bartenders because, after all, it’s the bartenders who they believe are bringing in the customers via social media.

As it turns out, the advent of photo-sharing apps like Instagram and Snapchat has violently disrupted the business of being an exotic dancer. To compensate for the drop in their nightly take at NYC clubs, the dancers now travel more because they can earn more money at clubs down South, or clubs in smaller towns where girls from fresh faces can earn more money.

Because of the club owners’ indifference, many of the best dancers to skip NYC altogether, one stripper said.

A dancer named Gizelle Marie is one of the strike organizers. “The [New York City] bartenders tell the customers not to tip us. They block us from the customers while we dance or they are sweeping our money off the stage while we dance,” she told The Post. Several videos taken from inside different clubs posted on Instagram appear to support her claim.

 

Gizelle Marie says most customers can’t tell bartenders apart from strippers anymore because they all basically dress the same and “the club promoters and owners encourage the behavior."

 

Gizelle Marie got the idea to mobilize the NYC Strippers Strike after she traveled to Washington last month to dance at a club during Howard University’s homecoming.

 

“I made a lot of money. It made me think to myself that a lot of the great dancers aren’t dancing in New York anymore. They moved away to other cities to work or they just completely stopped,” Gizelle said.

 

Within a couple days, she posted the word on Instagram and 30 strippers gathered last week at Poletic Justice in the Bronx for a meeting.

 

Panama said, “The dancers used to be the most respected in the club, and now it’s like the dancers are at the bottom of the barrel. And the dark-skinned dancers are all the way at the bottom of the barrel."

Among other considerations, the striking strippers are demanding a reduction in house fees and that black dancers also have the opportunity to be hired as bartenders.

In the past, the dancers have mostly been silent about their issues out of fear, she said. “People were in fear of losing their jobs if they spoke out. A lot of these women have other careers, are parents, are putting themselves through school so that fear factor absolutely played a part in it."

 

They want their house fees reduced. They want bartenders to pay house fees, too. The black dancers want the opportunity to be hired as bartenders. And they want the bartenders to stop stealing their money.

 

They wish as well that management would stop pitting the strippers and bartenders against each other. The dancers believe everyone can work together harmoniously if rules are established.

 

“All we want is respect at the end of the day,” Gizelle Marie said. “If it doesn’t change by us going to the owners we’ll take further matters legally."

However, the nascent strike is facing one major obstacle: Club promoters’ reaction to the strike ranges from  indifferent to downright hostile.

Club promoters are not sympathetic to the strippers’ demands. Sean Simmons, promotional director for Aces New York, said the strike is “nonsense.” He said there is no racism in the nightclubs and that he employed “all ethnicities” as dancers and bartenders at his club before it was shut down a couple months ago.

 

“The whole industry itself has changed,” Simmons told The Post in a brief phone interview. “Some clubs are bartender-driven, but that’s just because the bartenders are beautiful women.” Simmons said that there should be rules and regulations between dancers and bartenders, but said, “Nothing will come from the strike."

Still, the women plan to keep fighting.

“No matter how people perceive your work environment, a work environment is a work environment and everybody needs to be respected and treated equally. If there’s something you can do to help or change your establishment, you should do it.”

Guess What Term Is Suddenly Surging On Pornhub

While politics & porn often go hand in hand, the latest "fake news" allegations from Buzzfeed, which revolved around a supposed urine-soaked revenge at Moscow’s Ritz Carlton Hotel, have sparked a "golden showers" spike among porn sites.

As we have detailed previously, the bizarre story, which emerged in a dossier reportedly compiled by a “former British intelligence official” and was published by BuzzFeed as supposed proof of Trump’s “deep ties” to Russia, claims Trump hired several prostitutes to “perform a ‘golden showers’ show in front of him” on a bed in the hotel’s presidential suite. Trump did so, the unverified report explains, because he knew outgoing President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, “whom he hated,” had slept in said bed during one of their official trips to Russia.

The dossier’s contents were either widely discredited or flat-out disproved, with many publications raising questions as to why BuzzFeed would chose to publish the unfounded claims. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and within 24 hours of the tale’s viral debut, online porn giant PornHub reported a 289 percent increase in “golden shower” searches, while #WaterSportsGate and similar hashtags started trending on Twitter.

By January 11th, Pornhub reports that searches containing “Golden Shower” increased by 289% compared to the usual daily average. Our statisticians also found that “watersports” searches increased by 215% along with other related terms like “pissing”. Searches for “Donald Trump” were up by 273% on January 11.

As Pornhub also notes, across the United States, golden showers seem to be more popular in Northern States — perhaps as a way to keep warm in the winter? Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts proportionately search more often, while popularity is much lower down south in Hawaii, Mississippi, Texas and California.