1. Come to a strip club with cash in your pocket and only the amount you intend to spend.
2. Never, under any circumstances, should you use an ATM machine in a strip club. The “processing fee” may be as high as 20%. (That is not a typo.) If you need cash, stop at a bank ATM before you go to the club.
3. Never pull out a credit card in a strip club to pay for drinks before you know exactly what those drinks will cost. Strip club drink prices—especially in the VIP rooms—are not reality-based. And even if you know the price of the drinks on the floor, the prices for the same drinks in the VIP will often be much higher. Men have been known to sue when they see their bill for drinks in the VIP. But failure to ask the price will not get you off from paying the bill.
4. If you’re on any kind of a limited budget, do what the locals do. Get lap dances out in the main room and avoid the VIP rooms. That’s because three dances in the main room will cost you $60, as opposed to $100 in the VIP or $140 if there’s a required extra bar tab. At the high mileage lap dance clubs, three dances on the floor is a lot of lap dance.
5. If a dancer is hyper-aggressive, never tell her “maybe later.” This is a polite way of telling a non-aggressive dancer “no,” and a non-aggressive dancer will take off and won’t come around again until quite a bit later, if ever. But an aggressive dancer will only hear the word “maybe” and she won’t leave. Ever. You will literally have to plan an escape. And if she does leave, you won’t be free of her for more than 5-10 minutes. You have to tell her “no.”
6. Never allow yourself to be bulldozed into the VIP. If you’re not interested in a dancer, don’t buy her a drink, don’t get a mercy lap dance from her. Tell her you just want to watch the stage show. I’ve never yet found it necessary to insult a dancer to get rid of her, or threaten to report her to management, or take any such drastic measure. Once a dancer knows you’re not budging, she’ll leave you alone.
7. If you go into the VIP with a dancer, watch the time. Depending on how much you’ve had to drink, this may not be easy. But do not overstay the time limit, or you may find yourself being charged. If you’ve been drinking and you don’t trust yourself to pay attention to the time, then tell the VIP host or bouncer as well as the dancer to let you know when your 30 minutes (or whatever) is up.
8. Take your wife or girlfriend to the club with you. There is a major reduction in the hustle factor when you have a woman at your side, and every major strip club in Las Vegas is not only allowing, but encouraging couples.
9. If your budget is tight and you don’t want to be asked every couple of minutes if you want a dance, go to the lowest-hustle strip clubs. Most of the smaller Vegas clubs have a low hustle factor, but a few of the major Vegas strip clubs also qualify. Here’s a list of Vegas strip clubs, including major clubs, where the hustle factor is lowest (and why).