Tales From The DJ Booth: How To (Not) Do Drugs In The Strip Club

I get it. If you work security at, own, serve at or dance at a club within eye-shot of this magazine, you’re wondering what the fuck I’m thinking by deciding to write this column. Fear not, door person of the year, this is actually a warning against bringing drugs into a strip club, whether through ingestion or for purposes of distribution.

Now, on to our loyal readers. Let’s be frank. No, don’t say "I know Frank," because that gets you nowhere. Who’s Frank? Doesn’t matter. No, loyal reader, your focus here is on you and you alone. Admit it—you (or people you know) have been on drugs in a strip club, at some point in time. That’s kind of a given (albeit the type of "given" that club owners and bar staff don’t want to risk associating with, but accept, like a free Bible or a sample from the Chinese food place in the mall food court). But, how one composes themselves while on drugs is the true test of whether or not a taxi—or, the cops—will be called after they leave the club. Should you decide to endanger the livelihoods and liquor licenses of the strip clubs, please follow these simple rules to avoid ending up in jail or worse.

Okay, so you did a few key bumps at the Wilco show and suddenly you’re giving your friends a tour of the Portland scene. Of course, you head to one of the cooler clubs in town, where you meet a dancer who fucked two members of Wilco last summer at Whateverfest. This is your opportunity to either play it cool, or pretend like you’ve fucked three members of Wilco before following this up with a coke-fueled rant about all the douchebags you know from various bands, while customers stare at you and the DJ makes offensive comments about hipsters over the microphone, simply to see if you’re listening (you’re not). Look here, pseudo-logger Pabst-man; smiling and nodding is the correct choice. If you want to talk to a dancer while you’re coked out and feeling yourself, do so over a private dance—the time is limited and the dancer is making money. Plus, more time for you means more money for her. As a bonus, customers (and, to an extent, security guards) aren’t going to be eavesdropping on your this-guy-is-high-on-blow conversation. But, the bouncer is watching you, so that brings me to our next rule...

If you’re selling drugs, you should already know this. If you’re new to selling drugs and don’t know this, you deserve to be robbed or arrested. But, if you’re not a dealer, you may think that having a few pills in your pocket won’t hurt anyone. Well, depending on what part of town you try to smuggle drugs into, you may either get robbed, ratted out or, most likely, 86’d from the establishment. There is no reason to bring drugs into a strip club. Sure, in a complete and hypothetical alternate universe, dancers may do drugs...BUT, they keep them as hidden as tampon strings and wedding rings. Hypothetically. In theory. Customers, on the other hand, aren’t given such passive permissions, even in bizarro worlds. If you want to enjoy a live show while under the influence, that’s doable. Just leave your stash in the car. Oh, and don’t forget...

It is illegal to serve someone who is visibly intoxicated. If a bartender is only serving a customer alcohol, conversation and cleavage, then they can easily notice changes in a customer’s behavior over time. But, if someone comes in on drugs, drinks one beer and then goes apeshit on the Megatouch machine because it looked at them funny, leaves and then gets arrested (or into an accident), the bartender that served them one beer is now liable for whatever damage they racked up in their bender. People ask me all the time if I’m on coke, because I’m loud and have bug eyes (spoiler: I’m not). On the same token, I worked two weeks at a club in Salem while high on acid the entire time and I don’t even think the strippers knew (even when I forced them to dance to Ween). The point here is that bartenders are not drug counselors and, although street smart, many aren’t trained to spot signs of "intoxication" aside from what the liquor commission teaches about alcohol. Don’t assume that staff are idiots, though—we’ve been around. Just know that being on drugs in the club is the same as using a fake I.D. and definitely not worth risking your ass and ours.

On the rare occasion that you do find yourself in a location that features a stripper pole, alcohol, a DJ and openly-consumed substances (and it’s not a biker clubhouse or a speakeasy after-hours spot), you’re only gonna be able to come back to the club for as long as the authorities are kept in the dark (which is usually about a month or so). It takes a lot of balls to license a business, put it on Google Maps and then break out the shitty Oregon cocaine on the tables. But, you’d be surprised how often this goes down. If you happen to be one of the lucky patrons or employees affiliated with clubs like this, good luck ever being allowed into another, more upstanding strip joint, after yours gets shut down. If, on the other hand, Rick’s Booze ’N’ Blow happens to stay open, rest assured that, as a coke-dealing regular, you will be stabbed a few times over the course of the summer, stolen from by a girl named Ratchet Sawzz and run out of the area by the local drug dealers.