And returning to live stripping also allowed her to reconnect with part of herself, Rain said. The reopening of clubs means she can cover rent again. Savannah Rain, a 23-year-old stripper, went on paid dates with “sugar daddy” clients and stripped online through Only Fans over the past year, but still ended up draining her savings. “At the club, people realize that I'm working, whereas with OnlyFans, a lot of people think, ‘Oh, it's just a side hustle’ or ‘I'm doing her a favor by subscribing,’” said Haze, 25, who asked to be identified by her stage name. She made $400 in her first month on the content-sharing site OnlyFans, far less than the over $700 she would make per night stripping at Cheetahs in Sunnyvale. Some strippers, including Sunnyvale, California-based April Haze, turned to online work when clubs closed. She is considering occasionally traveling to Las Vegas, where she hopes she can earn more. Strippers who have stayed put cannot fully make it work yet.īrittney, who drives to San Francisco to work from her home in Sacramento, some two hours away, is not sure it even makes financial sense for her to strip in California anymore.

It’s going to be a lot of years before we get back to that.” “I think we’re going to have to start all over from fresh,” said Tapella, whose club was closed for a year and survived partly thanks to a pandemic relief loan. Bob Tapella, the co-owner and manager of Cheetahs Gentleman’s Club in Sunnyvale, California, estimated nearly 60% of his dancers left the state to find work elsewhere. Lap dances and private “VIP” rooms, the source of the majority of a stripper’s income, are still prohibited.ĭuring the pandemic, strippers in states with stronger anti-coronavirus measures migrated to ones with laxer ones, such as Texas and Florida, according to dancers and club owners. Performances are limited to stage dances, with no physical contact with customers. Under guidelines in San Francisco, for instance, strip clubs such as Gold Club that offer food are able to reopen, but strippers and patrons must keep their masks on. Revenue in the industry is estimated to have decreased 17.4% in 2020 and is forecast to fall another 1.5% this year, according to research by IBISWorld.

As some of the United States’ estimated 3,821 strip clubs start to open up again, women who work as strippers are confronting a transformed industry.

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