Naked Capitalism

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Dallas

JACK RUBY’S fabled Carousel Club may be long gone, but the business of stripping is alive and well in Dallas, as a highly unscientific sampling of area clubs recently showed. While their alcohol sales remain 10 percent to 12 percent below the pre-recession peak, the clubs seem to have fared better in the recession than any other sector of the local economy, a commentary on human nature with implications too profound to be exhausted in a short Op-Ed article.

Dallas clubs run the gamut, from parolee and sailors-on-leave sorts of dives where a mild-mannered writer has no business being, to the high-end establishments with their slathers of French Quarter swank, heavy on gilt and red-velvet. At the Lodge, Dallas’s most upscale club, alcohol sales are up more than 11 percent from last year. “We’re doing better than real estate,” is how Michael Precker, the co-manager, put it.
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But what, a neophyte might wonder, made Dallas a mecca for strip clubs?

“Because we’re in the Bible Belt,” said Ms. Rizos. “There’s a church on every block, and men just like to sneak around. Most of our customers are married men. They get a little bored with their wives, they can come in here and get some flirtation, our girls make them feel good and special, then they go home and feel so guilty about it that they treat their wives really nicely.”

“It’s very Baptist,” she continued. “If you’re going to give up sin, you got to sin.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/opinion/09fountain.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212