I have a side hustle as a dancer. The SL Enquirer pays just fine, I'm nowhere near poor, but I am a hardcore kind of girl and I also make sports bets that lead to arrangements where I work as a dancer. It's a long story, probably more interesting than what I am to write about today, but it is also a story for another day.
I'm not a stripper. I'm too short (I look a lot like that Boston girl from the Olympic gymnastics team a few years ago, especially if I hang around with people who are taller... a group which, at last count, includes everyone) to make a real living as a dancer, and the sim I dance at is Moderate, so no T&A from your favorite sportswriter. I wear as little as I can, but there are parts of me that I am only comfortable having seen by my doctor and my husband. "Dancer" is only part of my job duties there, which also involve Greeting, Modeling, Security, Orientation and even Scouting. Again, this would probably make a better story than what I am writing about, but it is also a story for another day.
My sister Courtney and I are under a certain obligation to a woman known as the Sea Witch, and we formerly worked as dancers at this nasty racial slavery sim where we suffered every abuse imaginable. We were quite happy to be moved by the Sea Witch to Divas, which is a professional wrestling sim. We were nude all the time at our former spot, but Divas only required that we dress like wrestlers in gear from their wrestling-themed mall. Not a bad gig, if you can get it. I refuse to wear wrestling boots- I'm short, wrestling boots tend to be large, and I look like I am wearing Daddy's boots when I wear them, which isn't often- but that is also a story for another day.
The Sea Witch just sort of gave us to Divas to serve as dancing tips jars for the sim, and they really didn't know we were coming. A stage was assembled, and dancer poles were set up. The poles were from like 2008 or so, you had to move through the dances individually, and you'd sometimes de-hover into the floor. I would often forsake the poles and just rely on my Cheerleading hud. Stacey Cardalines does not complain, but I bitched enough that the managers there eventually gave Courtney and I permission to upgrade the infrastructure.
Armed with two dancers' worth of salary, off we went to get a stripper pole. Again, we aren't allowed to strip, but a certain lingo exists among professionals, and semantics matter little in that crowd. I'm checking my pockets for the newspaper version of Payola, I don't see any, so I won't get into the names of all the stores that we visited. I don't look this goddamned good for free, children, and mesh shapes don't grow on trees. Just make the check out to Stacey Cardalines, yes Cardalines, C-A-R... ah, however you spell that.
There are several factors to consider when shopping for a dancer pole. Artistry is chief among them. You have to be doing dances that make people want to stay around and watch you, and perhaps even return again some day. Some poles are way better than others at this. You'd think it would be hard to make a dancing supermodel look stupid, but it can be done, and you can see so for yourself if you go to enough vendors. There are also some ones which are works of art. This leads into our second consideration, Cost.
You can drive a Toyota or a Tesla and still get to work at the same time. Differences exist between the two, however. Dance poles are like that. Sometimes, they cost more because they are significantly better. Some stores just hack together a dance pole that gets boring, for the dancer in ten minutes and for the audience in fifteen minutes. Some stores overpay a creator and then overcharge a consumer. Shop according to your need. If you are going to be dancing in the lobby of a popular sim, you will need a great variety of dances. If you bring a guy home and spin around on a personal dance pole as a prelude to sex... well, you really don't need 75 dances for that, at least not on the pole.
More popular brands of dance poles may be more expensive because they are better. However, the more popular they are, the more likely it is that customers will have seen some other girl do these very dances somewhere else. "Homogenous" is not how you want your dancing described. If you get a bit obscure, it may be a treat for the more veteran dancer girl fans.
There are certain features shared by several manufacturers. One is having a pole that both male and female dancers can use, either via Unisex dances or by distinct menu settings. Another is having two girls be able to share the pole at once, usually known in the trade as Dual mode. We actually ended up getting the dancer pole with male and female dances, even though we are a female wrestling sim and seeing a guy dance there would be disappointing to most of our visitors.
An important thing, and I was told this by many different dancers at many different clubs which I visited while researching this article, is to get Auto Sequence. This is a feature where the dances are cycled through automatically, thus saving the dancer from having to click a menu every 30 seconds. I found that it is ideal to have a lot of dances in the quiver if you plan to rely on auto-sequence.
Land Impact, or whatever they call that, also serves as a possible deal-breaker. Some poles have the land impact of a cat sleeping on the rug in an unused corner of a living room. Some have the land impact of a border collie chasing a butterfly through a dining room. Prims are like what Mark Twain said about land, "Buy it whenever you can, because they ain't makin' any more of it." If you don't want the sim owner to hate you, get as low-prim as you can stand.
One thing that is oh-so-important is to get out in the world and test drive the pole. Ride it for every dance it has, take note of the good ones, lose the landmarks for the bad ones. Drag a friend along for a second opinion. Establish a group of favorites, and then it is decision time. There are certain things that only the experts should buy on SL Marketplace, and a dance pole is one of them.
Take it home (or, in our case, to Divas), set it up... Voila! You have a strip club. I didn't set ours up, Courtney did, so I have no technical insight here.
Come watch Stacey dance, or have the other dancers tell you how awful she is... http://maps.secondlife.
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