Results tagged “stripper”

A discerning dancer at a Times Square peep show nailed an ex-con earlier this month for trying to pay her with phony $10 bills. The unidentified stripper was plying her trade at Gotham City on Eighth Ave, where women perform private dances from behind a glass partition. It was around 2:20 a.m. on May 5th when she noticed that the two ten dollar bills handed to her by customer Michael Harris seemed to be fakes made with an Ink Jet printer. After calling the manager, he confronted Harris, who has done time on a drug conviction. According to court documents obtained by the Post, Harris proceeded to freak out and spilled 21 more bills into the aisle, later telling cops, "I panicked so I dumped them." He was subdued until the arrival of the NYPD and the US Secret Service, which has exclusive jurisdiction in counterfeiting investigations. Apparently, counterfeit money is often passed at peep shows and strip clubs; one employee tells the Post, "It happens all the time." And Gotham City isn't safe from this joker yet—he's currently walking the streets on $2,500 bail.

The recession is making the adult entertainment industry increasingly competitive, and many employers in the field say they're flooded with applications from college-educated women who, until recently, held down white-collar jobs. Gus Poulos, the manager of Sin City gentleman's club in midtown, recently received 85 responses to a Craigslist job posting in just one day; he tells the AP, "You're seeing a lot more beautiful women who are eligible to do so many other things." A spokesperson for Rick's Caberet notes that 20 to 30 women a week are applying for jobs at the New York club, twice as many as last year's average. And Rebecca Brown, a new stripper in Chicago, says she earns more in one night than she used to make in a week as a trainer and bartender. The new job just took a little getting used to: "It is like giving a speech, but instead of imagining everyone naked, you're the one who's naked."

State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Brooklyn Democrat, is still pushing hard for a special tax on strip clubs, which he says would raise money to help victims of human trafficking. When Ortiz first proposed the tax last year, he also floated the idea of requiring strippers to purchase licenses before they could legally dance erotically. There's no mention of licensing in today's AP article, which reports only that Ortiz would like to levy a statewide, $10 tax on patrons of nude and seminude dance clubs and strip bars. Ortiz argues that the tax would generate plenty of desperately-needed dollar bills for sex trafficking victims at a time when there's no money in the budget to assist them. The bill doesn't have a Senate sponsor yet, but if it passes, strip club owners will probably just dodge the tax by moving their operations to bicycles.

The east side Scores will pick up its crumpled dollar bills and jiggle into history by the end of the year, the Daily News reports. It's not quite clear if this means the entire Scores chain, which includes clubs outside of New York, is going down, but a lawyer for the owners says, "It's over; it is what it is."

Charges related to a conspiracy to kill a man's business partner have been upped to first degree murder against the group accused after the Queens stripper that was hired to carry out the killing copped a plea with authorities. When Ronald Thornton of Commack wanted his neighbor and business partner James DiMartino dead, he turned to none other than his local stripper, Monique Randall of Queens. She then employed boyfriend Donovan Raysor and their friend, aspiring rapper Darnell Festus. The group then allegedly conceived the plot to kill DiMartino at Shady Al's Lounge on Jericho Turnpike--just near where his body was found. Randall has now agreed to testify against the gang after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Festus's lawyer defended his client to reporters, "I guess she first told a story about a robbery, then it's a murder-for-hire. What's next? She seems to be finally giving a story the district attorney's office is happy with."

For exotic dancers tired of the boring brick and mortar confines of traditional strip clubs, here comes PoleRiders, a new rolling stage with the power to turn every intersection into your own personal Bada Bing. Yours for $300.00 for the first hour and $200.00 for each additional hour, the stripper rickshaw comes fully equipped with pole, music, neon-lit platform, one driver, and one professional pole dance instructor. But it's not all fun and games; the team behind the contraption also has a mission: "To unite two great things that are even better together: bicycles and pole dancers!" And while the price may sound steep, you'll easily earn back your investment in crumpled dollar bills tossed by passing Suburbans. [Via Thrillist.]

Like other classy gentlemen, 39-year-old Luis Lora-Martinez liked to impress the erotic dancers at AJ's Lounge in Secaucus by tipping them with 20 dollar bills. But Lora-Martinez's tips were actually forgeries, according to Secret Service agents who arrested him after employees at the strip club called the police. It seems Lora-Martinez never watched a little movie called To Live and Die in L.A.—which shows how labor-intensive the counterfeiting process actually is—because his fake bills were produced on a computer printer on regular paper. But according to The Jersey Journal, his funny money was good enough to fool the dancers for a little while, at least. When they wised up, they directed investigators to his motel room, where they found $5,000 in fake $20s and $50s stashed away. He now faces up to ten years in prison, and will only be released on bail if he can prove he has $60,000 in non-computer printer bills.

After a ten month investigation, cops have busted a Suffolk County mail courier who they say forged dozens of realistic-looking deputy sheriff's badges and gave them out to acquaintances. But 54-year-old Peter Mistretta says it's all a big misunderstanding because he runs a male stripper business on the side and the badges were simply part of his employees' costumes. According to police—the real kind you generally don't want to see in G-strings—five shields and ID cards had the shield numbers of active-duty officers. And in July a driver pulled over in Vermont showed the trooper a fake Suffolk sheriff's ID, which was traced to Mistretta. Newsday reports that Mistretta is also in trouble over the five grams of cocaine in his possession when he was arrested—but surely that was just a prop for the Scarface stripper routine.

When we decided to check in on the status of the proposed bill to regulate New York’s exotic dancers, it was partially in the interest of pleasuring ourselves with some droll double entendres. But it seems you’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to beat Daily News Bronx Borough Chief Bob Kappstatter to the pun:

A bill that would license exotic dancers has been bumping and grinding its way ever so slowly through the legislative hopper in Albany - but the "sin-tax" in the measure may leave legislators poles apart.