Yup. There are a lot strip clubs in and near Tampa. It’s like a varsity sport there.
Tampa proper is not strip-club heavy, but go up to Pasco county and the number of strip clubs boggles the mind.
I’ll never forget a buddy of mine in college driving to my home in Pinellas from Tallahassee one summer to hang out for a week. He’s from Kansas and called me from north Pasco/New Port Richey, “Dude, what’s with all the strip clubs? It’s like where strippers go to retire or something.”
He’s not far from the truth.
I guess that I’m just slow . . . I don’t get it! So Tampa has strip clubs so do most major cities like my hometown Atlanta, GA. On the other hand FL doesn’t have brothels like Dingy Harry’s home state nor is Tampa the shooting capital like Odumbo’s Chicago. So what’s the big deal Getty?
Is Tampa the ‘strip club capital of the world’?
We then turned to the business world for an answer, finding Clearwater-based E.D. Publications, a national magazine for the adult entertainment industry. (The “E.D.” stands for Exotic Dancer.) The group publishes nationwide guides to night clubs, directories of industry vendors and rosters of touring entertainers.
Associate publisher Dave Manack didn’t hesitate when asked if Tampa is the strip club capital of the world.
“No,” he said. “Not even close. Tampa might not even make the Top 20. For anyone in the industry who knows, it’s really not a top market for strip clubs.” Cities like New York, Las Vegas or Miami would have much more of a claim on the title, he said.
According to the magazine’s count, Tampa has 20 night clubs, and the entire Tampa Bay area has 30.
Meanwhile, Miami has 30 in the city and 50 in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale corridor. (City of Miami officials did not return calls.) New York City has 45, not including Long Island or New Jersey. Las Vegas has 40 clubs. (We actually tallied 34 licensed nude and topless clubs in the Las Vegas region from local officials there, so counting clubs is not an exact science.)
Manack ticked off several strikes against Tampa’s claim to the title: Tampa doesn’t have as many clubs as larger cities, and high-end national chains like Rick’s Cabaret and the Spearmint Rhino have taken a pass on Tampa. The city’s clubs are spread out, and because it has no tight-knit cluster to form a party circuit, it has trouble marketing itself as a destination for bachelor parties and conventioneers.
Pinellas County shares some of the blame, too, he said. Local rules make it difficult to open high-end clubs near the beaches where dancers can significantly disrobe. “Literally, you could see more at the beach. It does hurt the clubs there,” he said.
A spokeswoman with another industry group, the Association of Club Executives, also discounted Tampa’s place in the strip club world.
“Manhattan has many more clubs than the Tampa area,” said spokeswoman Angelina Spencer. “And if you’re going to talk about the true strip club capital of the world, it would be Las Vegas.” Her association, a political and legal advocacy group for club owners based in Washington, keeps a census that includes 3,829 clubs nationwide, but it will not release numbers by locality.
If Tampa isn’t the strip club capital of the world, we wondered if perhaps it might be No. 1 on a per capita basis. That metric would account for Tampa being a smaller city than New York or Miami. But a 2006 economic development study from the Tampa Bay Partnership found the city was merely No. 3 for strip clubs on a per capita basis, ranking behind Las Vegas, and — even more deflating — Cincinnati.
Tampa strip club king Joe Redner told us the title was actually bestowed on the city by opponents of strip clubs who were trying to stop clubs from opening. “It’s a misnomer,” he said. “That’s what people said when they wanted to get rid of the strip clubs. That’s what they labeled us.”
I think this should be reexamined. While many Republicans have moral objections to public strip clubs, they are generally legal in the US.
So who do you think goes to strip clubs?
1) White wine sipping, Democrat supporting liberals, along with scummy anarchist Occupiers?, or,
2) Hard working blue collar men, many of whom are veterans, ride motorcycles, and regularly vote for conservatives and Republicans?
In other words, while conservative Republicans and their supporters have some scruples about strip clubs, because they see some downsides to them, they are neither so prudish nor so poor as to not go to them.
Yet the MSM makes a big deal out of it, because *in their minds*, Republicans who have fun are hypocrites, because again, in the mind of the MSM, Republicans are prudes who go around damning other peoples’ fun.
In truth, Republicans generally do condemn what the MSM *thinks* is ‘fun’, because what the MSM thinks is ‘fun’ often seriously hurts people, steals from them, and is both illegal and immoral.