So, you want to see some breasts. Noth­ing wrong with that. Where in Welling­ton should you go to see them? For the pur­pos­es of sci­en­tif­ic research, we head­ed to Dream Girls and Mer­maids to find out what you can expect. We also had a chat to a girl who’s worked in both places for the inside goss.

First though, let’s brush up on your strip club eti­quette.

  1. When a girl fin­ish­es danc­ing on stage, she’ll come around the room to col­lect tips. She may even give you a lit­tle dance on your table. If you want to tip her, get her atten­tion polite­ly, and tuck your Mermaids/Dreamgirls dol­lars into what­ev­er she indi­cates — her g‑string or her garter. Yes, you can hold the dol­lars between your teeth and she might pick it up with her boobs. No, there is no oth­er touch­ing at this stage.
  2. If you buy a pri­vate lap­dance, there might be touch­ing, or there might not. Our dancer friend says “Places have dif­fer­ent rules, mer­maids gen­er­al­ly dur­ing VIP you can touch, and Dream­girls depends on the indi­vid­ual dancer”.  As with any oth­er human being, you want to make sure that you ask before you touch, and respect their bound­aries. But you know that, right?
  3. A lot of the dancers are stu­dents, or trav­el­ers. Some of them are pro­fes­sion­al strip­pers. Nei­ther lifestyle is more or less valid than yours.
  4. Just because a girl is danc­ing in a strip club, and there is a broth­el upstairs, does not mean that you can pay her for sex.

Mer­maids is the big shiny place on Courte­nay Place with the red car­pet out­side, and the ter­ri­ble music blar­ing out. If you’ve seen the ads on the tele­vi­sion for the Auck­land branch, you might be expect­ing there to be a tank with girls swim­ming in it. You’re going to be dis­ap­point­ed in that case. Instead, there’s a cen­tral cat­walk hous­ing a cou­ple of poles, with stools all around it, and around the edges of the room there are booths with tables with poles. Let me tell you this now: the ladies’ toi­lets are faaaaaaaan­cy. So are the back rooms where you go for the pri­vate lap dances. I’d actu­al­ly like to throw a par­ty in the back room with its star­ry-ceilinged court­yard and cur­tained-offed areas, even if there weren’t top­less women gyrat­ing on my lap. The cen­tral stage though is a bit more like a pit as it’s set down from the stools, and that didn’t sit well with the fem­i­nist in me.

Dream­girls down the road on Dixon Street is much less fan­cy with its fitout, but the stage is raised, which makes me hap­pi­er. The back­rooms are not fan­cy at all, and the women’s bath­room is pret­ty crap­py. How­ev­er, at Mer­maids, the cheap­est bot­tle of wine is $500. Yes, you heard me. Fuck­ing insane. You can buy crap­py over­ly sweet bub­bles for $50 at Dream­girls. The admis­sion price to Mer­maids is usu­al­ly $20 for guys, but entry to Dream­girls seems to be free.

As for the girls them­selves, from one vis­it to each bar, my impres­sion was the girls at Mer­maids are more “pro­fes­sion­al” — expect to see more pole tricks and less laugh­ing — but that might have been because we were at Dream­girls ear­ly on a Wednes­day, and late on a Fri­day (peak time) at Mer­maids. Also, the girls at Mer­maids don’t get ful­ly naked — g‑strings have to stay on. On the whole, I’d say Dream­girls is a more fun expe­ri­ence, pos­si­bly because it feels slight­ly seed­i­er, but the man­age­ment are nicer. Either way, I high­ly rec­om­mend you find your­self a friend who likes buy­ing you lap­dances before you vis­it either place, since they’re $180 per half hour at Dream­girls and god only knows how much they cost at Mer­maids.

[Pho­to by Eric Nopa­nen on Unsplash]

58 Responses

  1. “Just because a girl is danc­ing in a strip club, and there is a broth­el upstairs, does not mean that you can pay her for sex.”

    Yeah I don’t quite buy that argu­ment. Its a valid and legal job, but would you encour­age some­one to take up this line of work. No.

    1. Actu­al­ly, pret­ty sure Emi­ly meant that as an entire­ly val­ue-judge­ment-free obser­va­tion. There may be an over­lap in a cou­ple of the girls work­ing both upstairs and down­stairs, but the major­i­ty of them aren’t sex work­ers so it’s fac­tu­al­ly wrong to pre­sume that they are.

      1. Stu­pid me post­ed the wrong quote with­out look­ing. Quote should be:
        “A lot of the dancers are stu­dents, or trav­el­ers. Some of them are pro­fes­sion­al strip­pers. Nei­ther lifestyle is more or less valid than yours.”

        1. And let me then requote Tal­lu­lah’s com­ment back at you:
          “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but many sex work­ers make a lot of mon­ey, doing some­thing they love. Actu­al­ly, yes, I’d encour­age some­one into that kind of career at the drop of a hat.”

    2. “Its a valid and legal job, but would you encour­age some­one to take up this line of work. No.”

      I know what you mean: I feel the same about cor­po­rate law and tax accoun­tants. The dif­fer­ence being that the major­i­ty of peo­ple in the sex indus­try are decent and hon­est and meet a fun­da­men­tal human need.

      1. Actu­al­ly any accoun­tant not just tax. I’m one and I active­ly dis­cour­age my kids from fol­low­ing this sad, tawdry line of work.

        I just empha­sise that they will end up with bad eye­sight from squint­ing at spread­sheets, over­weight from being glued to a chair, and no inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

        Oh the shame. if only they took fat blind peo­ple in the sex indus­try.

        1. >Oh the shame. if only they took fat blind peo­ple in the sex indus­try.

          There’s a mar­ket out there for all types.

  2. This entire arti­cle would have set bet­ter with me if you did­n’t say you were a fem­i­nist. I find it dis­turb­ing that the only prob­lem you have is that the stage was low. Seri­ous­ly?

    1. Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I love see­ing a pair of naked tits bounc­ing around as much as the next guy. But con­don­ing the spe­cif­ic exploita­tion of naked women for mon­ey and argu­ing for equal­i­ty between gen­ders seem to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive view­points.

    2. That’s not the only prob­lem Emi­ly had, she also thought the drinks were expen­sive. Duh.

      You have a dis­turbing­ly nar­row def­i­n­i­tion of fem­i­nism, my anony­mous friend.

  3. “con­don­ing the spe­cif­ic exploita­tion of naked women for mon­ey and argu­ing for equal­i­ty between gen­ders seem to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive view­points.”

    Why? First of all, where do you get the idea these women are being exploit­ed? Have you asked them? Or are you assum­ing that all sex­work­ers are too stu­pid to know that some­one is putting one over on them? (So to speak.)

    I don’t know if you’ve heard, but many sex work­ers make a lot of mon­ey, doing some­thing they love. Actu­al­ly, yes, I’d encour­age some­one into that kind of career at the drop of a hat.

    And actu­al­ly, that IS pret­ty com­pat­i­ble with fem­i­nism. Allow­ing women to safe­ly do some­thing that they like, and mak­ing sure they are rea­son­ably com­pen­sat­ed for it? I don’t know where you got your fem­i­nist learnin’, but that’s pret­ty basic.

    1. Pure­ly from a work­ing con­di­tions per­spec­tive, they are hourly work­ers paid in cash, no job secu­ri­ty, no sick leave, no con­tract, no career struc­ture, no bar­gain­ing pow­er and no input into the man­age­ment of the busi­ness­es they work for. As employ­ees, they are dis­pos­able. How is that not exploita­tion?

      And that’s all before we even start dis­cussing a fem­i­nist cri­tique, or the role that cash-heavy busi­ness­es like strip clubs play in laun­der­ing drug prof­its.

      1. Pure­ly from a work­ing con­di­tions per­spec­tive, they are hourly work­ers paid in cash, no job secu­ri­ty, no sick leave, no con­tract, no career struc­ture, no bar­gain­ing pow­er and no input into the man­age­ment of the busi­ness­es they work for. As employ­ees, they are dis­pos­able. How is that not exploita­tion?

        So like many oth­er hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­ers then? Or Weta con­trac­tors? I’m not con­don­ing that kind of treat­ment of employ­ees, but I’d hard­ly say it only exists in strip clubs. And as for the “before we start the fem­i­nist cri­tique”… um, we already start­ed that. Ages ago.

        1. All true, and those kinds of work­ing con­di­tions are the root cause of the income inequal­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty that is hol­low­ing-out the mid­dle class­es. And I think the fem­i­nist cri­tique start­ed with Kate Mil­let in about 1970, and is still get­ting hung up on the dif­fer­ence between sex work­ers as vic­tims of male objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and sex work­ers as oppressed labour­ers.

          If I was to try to com­bine the labour and the fem­i­nist cri­tique, then I might say some­thing like: dancers are treat­ed as dis­pos­able short-term staff by employ­ers. What’s dif­fer­ent between sex work­ers and oth­er ser­vice indus­tries is that their work is stig­ma­tised because it is sex work, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to organ­ise to improve these con­di­tions.

          Actu­al­ly, I think my third point there is the key point in the short term — for­get all the the­o­ret­i­cal argu­ments about inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and who’s most oppressed how, and just recog­nise that the a large num­ber of peo­ple involved in the man­age­ment of strip clubs is strong­ly linked to the laun­der­ing of drug mon­ey. So send in the tax accoun­tants, send some dodgy geezers to prison, and clean up the indus­try at that lev­el, with ben­e­fits for every­one involved, includ­ing dancers.

          1. It’s swell of you to come to a post where a num­ber of dancers have com­ment­ed about how they enjoy the work they do, and have talked about the finan­cial free­doms it offers them, to let them know how oppressed they are.

            Yes, the sex indus­try has some unsa­vory goings on — just like any oth­er indus­try — but in New Zealand where it’s legal, to treat it any dif­fer­ent­ly, that’s where the stig­ma comes in to play, and that’s exact­ly what you’re doing.

          2. Treat­ing the sex indus­try as the same as any oth­er indus­try ignores the present state of the sex indus­try, the his­to­ry of the indus­try, the peo­ple involved in run­ning the indus­try, the organ­i­sa­tion of the indus­try, and the sta­tus of peo­ple who work in that indus­try. It would be nice if we could treat the indus­try like any oth­er, but that’s a future goal, not a cur­rent real­i­ty.

            Some­one may be choos­ing to work in an exploita­tive indus­try for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing the income. That does­n’t mean they are not oppressed, that means they are mak­ing a per­son­al choice from the options that they have in front of them. Choice always hap­pens in a con­text, both per­son­al and social. Ignor­ing that con­text and treat­ing peo­ple as entire­ly autonomous is an unre­al­is­tic and neolib­er­al approach to the world.

            For instance, Joss below talks about hav­ing “danced through med school for finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty”. Yes, that’s her per­son­al choice about how to respond to being a poor stu­dent and may be the best choice for her in that sit­u­a­tion, but why should some­one be put in that sit­u­a­tion? I’m old enough that my edu­ca­tion was paid for by the state, so I was nev­er in that sit­u­a­tion and nev­er had to even con­sid­er choice.

          3. Why should some­one be put in the posi­tion of hav­ing to write pol­i­cy advice for a gov­ern­ment that will ignore it? Why should some­one be put in the posi­tion of hav­ing to pro­vide legal advice to crim­i­nals? Or of sell­ing ugly art to peo­ple or what­ev­er oth­er jobs peo­ple do. You’re mak­ing a moral judge­ment sug­gest­ing that sex work is a less wor­thy occu­pa­tion than some­thing else, but your morals are not oth­er peo­ple’s.

      2. Though I realise this dis­cus­sion was dat­ed a few years ago and some of the respons­es may have cov­ered this, I just feel the need to point out that you are slight­ly mis­in­formed: strip­pers are not “hourly work­ers”, “paid in cash”, nor are they “employ­ees”. Most strip­pers are inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors — peo­ple who sign a con­tract stat­ing that the only earn­ings they have claim to are a com­mis­sion from the lap dances and tips, minus the night­ly shift fee and/or fines imposed by the club.

        Fair? No. Nei­ther is it fair that wait­ers in France have to pay the restau­rant a fee for the area they serve and then make their earn­ings entire­ly on tips. Like­wise, it’s not fair that hair­dressers in the US have a sim­i­lar sys­tem of pay­ing for the hair sta­tion they “rent” in a salon and have com­mis­sion and tip earn­ings.

        Exploitive? Pos­si­bly. I would ful­ly sup­port chang­ing the sys­tem in each to enable any of those con­trac­tors – exot­ic dancers, wait­ers, or hair dressers – to have guar­an­teed pay for their work, espe­cial­ly when some of those pro­fes­sions require a fair amount of train­ing or skill. In terms of exot­ic dancers, dance is dif­fi­cult to do with­out skill — and pole danc­ing impos­si­ble.

        Sug­gest­ing the exploitive design of the cur­rent sys­tem should cause one to be against the entire indus­try is faulty. A female should be con­sid­ered capa­ble of deter­min­ing what is in her best per­son­al and finan­cial inter­est. Sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise would sug­gest a female is not capa­ble of act­ing in her own agency.

  4. If Emi­ly Fatali would be so kind as to join in the con­ver­sa­tion here, I would ask her: how is it that women danc­ing on a low stage is less fem­i­nist than women danc­ing on a high stage? Sure­ly their mana would rise above the stage design.

    1. It was a (drunk­en) gut reac­tion and a throw­away line — it just did­n’t seem right to be lit­er­al­ly look­ing down on the women on stage.

  5. if a man wrote this post it would be viewed from a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent angle ? Because per­son­al­ly I think the fem­i­nist per­spec­tive around strip­ping is not a straight line.

    You can take the line that it’s empow­er­ing and a strip­per is achiev­ing eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty and set­ting her rules.

    The oth­er per­spec­tive is that women who strip, per­form for most­ly men in pub­lic & thus rein­force gen­der stereo­types.

    Add to that — Who is actu­al­ly prof­it­ing from a strip­per?
    The per­son who makes the most mon­ey out of it all is the own­er of the club, then the man­ag­er, then the strip­per. 9 times out of 10 those own­ers are men. So until women are own­ing clubs, run­ning clubs and per­form­ing clubs i think the issue is real­ly fuzzy.

    1. Sure­ly no fuzzi­er than any *oth­er* job where the lion’s share of work­ers’ pro­duc­tion is snaf­fled by their employ­ers? Paul Reynolds is cer­tain­ly doing well out of the labour of Tele­com con­tact cen­tre oper­a­tives but that hard­ly means we should save them from phone-answer­ing exploita­tion for their own good.

        1. … Or you know, it could be a handy exam­ple of a cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion run for prof­it off the labour of its employ­ees which one could assume read­ers of Welling­ton­ista are famil­iar with, but go right ahead and try to accuse me of demo­niz­ing a cor­po­ra­tion (is it like a meta-God­win to accuse some­one of a God­win when they haven’t even hint­ed at it?) while you’re busy try­ing to pre­tend that the prof­it-exploita­tion of strip­pers is a phe­nom­e­non unique to sex/­sex-relat­ed work.

          1. well i’ll bow out here, becuase i don’t real­ly think an argu­ment serves any­one, and my apolo­gies if if cre­at­ed one.

          2. I’m a bit con­fused, sue — what were you try­ing to do, if not “cre­ate an argu­ment”, by imply­ing that the poster’s fem­i­nist per­spec­tive on strip­ping is wrong, stat­ing that the prof­it going to strip club own­ers some­how makes strip­ping more exploita­tive than any oth­er work, and then try­ing to throw down a nice “ooh, God­win!” silenc­ing tac­tic to a per­son dis­agree­ing with you?

          3. I’m pret­ty sure that Sue was being cheeky about the Telecom/Godwin thing, QoT, not try­ing to silence you. And she was absolute­ly right about fem­i­nism around strip­ping (or fem­i­nism in gen­er­al) not being a straight line.

      1. I don’t under­stand this anal­o­gy. Are you talk­ing about the Tele­com call-cen­tres in the Philip­ines? Have they been shown to be exploita­tive / uneth­i­cal?

        1. No more so than any oth­er low-lev­el posi­tion in a big com­pa­ny, nec­es­sar­i­ly. And that, I think, was QoT’s point.

  6. I cer­tain­ly would­n’t want to sug­gest that there isn’t prob­lem­at­ic aspects to the sex indus­try. Of _course_ there is. It can be exploita­tive, dan­ger­ous and vio­lent. How­ev­er, that does­n’t mean we get to dis­miss it out of hand — it means we have to work hard­er to make it bet­ter for the peo­ple involved.

    My objec­tion to the com­ments above was the dis­mis­sive tone of the actu­al women involved. It behooves us to con­sid­er them before mak­ing blan­ket state­ments about the sex indus­try.

  7. I’ve always found it odd that strip-clubs cater­ing for a female audi­ence — ie hav­ing main­ly male strip­pers — seem to have a great time. Lots of laugh­ing, teas­ing, gig­gling, dar­ing etc. And I’d have to say, from those that I’ve been to, a fair bit of touch­ing is encour­aged.
    But the strip clubs not­ed here — Mer­maids and Dream­girls — cater­ing for a male audi­ence with female strip­pers, are a hor­ri­ble, sad, tawdry expe­ri­ence. There should be noth­ing wrong with observ­ing a body in peak con­di­tion (let’s face it — the pole-dancers are ath­letes of sorts, if not exact­ly com­pet­i­tive) and cel­e­brat­ing the won­der that is a beau­ti­ful­ly sculpt­ed pair of breasts or but­tocks.
    Instead how­ev­er, the prospect of a bunch of men sul­len­ly ogling the sump­tu­ous boun­ty of female form on view, whilst sip­ping a beer, talk­ing about rug­by, and pre­tend­ing not to notice that there is a naked being cavort­ing a foot away from their face — well it all seems more than a lit­tle sad and pathet­ic to me.
    The men con­cerned seem to be exploit­ing their own stu­pid­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty, let alone being exploit­ed by the club own­ers with their ridicu­lous prices.

    1. “But the strip clubs not­ed here – Mer­maids and Dream­girls – cater­ing for a male audi­ence with female strip­pers, are a hor­ri­ble, sad, tawdry expe­ri­ence.”

      Not always, and in fact I’d have to say that that’s often far from the truth. Dream­girls tends to feel the more relaxed, but in both it often depends upon your own atti­tude. Most of the dancers seem to respond well if you treat it as a fun, flir­ty night out, rather than a des­per­ate excuse to gawp. It also helps if you’re in a good-natured group, espe­cial­ly a mixed one. And if you engage with the dancers with good grace and humour (as well as tips, of course — it is their job after all) then it need­n’t be sad or tawdry at all.

  8. actu­al­ly Max, you’re right — it can be a fun, flir­ty night out, and I’d nev­er treat it as a des­per­ate excuse to gawp — main­ly because I’m not that des­per­ate. Although, oth­ers are — or per­haps they get weed­ed out by the door staff or the price tag. I do have to lament the loss of the “pool” although that is too opti­mistic a word to describe the tiny fish tank that the swim­mers used to cavort in. There’s some­thing quite mes­meris­ing about the sight of fish swim­ming around, and a larg­er, pink­ish fish would also be inter­est­ing, in an aes­thet­ic man­ner. Or per­haps they should just have a cou­ple of large cray­fish, in a pot.

  9. I am a Dream­girl, not gonna dis­close my danc­ing name here.
    And yes, i would have been there on the night you vis­it­ed the club.
    Here’s some inside info, at Dream­girls, the house takes 40% of your earn­ings. There is no shift fee, unlike The Mer­maid and there is no hourly wage at either club.
    On a bad night, you can earn $40.
    As a Dream­girl, you hold all the pow­er when it comes to men. Secu­ri­ty can be there in sec­onds, if he tries to touch you sex­u­al­ly, you’re basi­cal­ly allowed to hit them.
    VIP dances are the only instance where a man is alowed to touch, and nowhere near your pri­vates.
    We have a rule where your g‑string must be off before the end of your last song, but depend­ing on per­son­al pref­er­ence, you can choose how long you would like to be naked, 5 sec­onds even.
    I’m study­ing, and I am not a sex­work­er.
    Even though the drinks are expen­sive, we aren’t paid a cent out of the over­pric­ing.

    Any­way, enough inside infor­ma­tion. Decid­ed to share because peo­ple have so many mis­con­strued ideas of strip­pers and work­ing girls.

  10. All I want to know is…when will some­one open a male strip club? ‘m sick of the guys get­ting to have all the fun.

  11. Aware this is a real­ly old thread but I only just found it.
    I am a dancer from Show­girls in Auckland…I just wish that every guy that came into the club could read this arti­cle (as well as every oth­er per­son who holds mis­con­cep­tions about dancers).
    The point Emi­ly made about touch­ing espe­cial­ly: guys often book a dance then adopt the notion that they should see how much they can ‘get away with’ i.e. touch­ing pussy. Why should I, in my job (not a career btw — I study Vet­eri­nary Sci­ence in Palmer­ston North atm) be sub­ject­ed to sex­u­al abuse on a night­ly basis? Just because I tease you and strip you of your mon­ey all night long does not mean that I want you/want you to touch me. There are even signs say­ing so.
    Also, I’m so sick of peo­ple who come in and say things like that they _feel sor­ry for us dancers_…I love my job; danc­ing keeps me fit, gives me con­fi­dence and the self assur­ance to stand up for myself and a large income for a 20 year old — Sat­ur­day nights I aver­age $1200 a night. Not to men­tion the amaz­ing girls at the club who have devel­oped into life­long friends of mine.
    Final­ly, we are hard­ly exploit­ed by the club (at Show­girls, any­way). There is no ‘club fee’, and we keep _all_ of our tips. A small per­cent­age of our earn­ings is tak­en from the mon­ey we make in lap­dances but it’s not unrea­son­able. The club also owns an apart­ment which they allow the dancers to live in for free and pro­vides free dance lessons for the girls should they want them (I realise the dance lessons are in the clubs best inter­ests, but at some clubs you have to pay for com­pul­so­ry lessons).

    Hmm. Quite a rant. And I did­n’t even cov­er half the things that guys mis­con­ceive regard­ing dancers. Maybe one day, peo­ple will stop hold­ing dancers in such a stereo­typ­i­cal view and that would be nice.
    Maybe one day pigs will fly, too.

    1. you are right , but lets talk about this mis­con­cep­tion which seems to the top­ic.
      TEASING! STRIPING! , LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH!
      what’s the point? sure the val­i­dat­ed argu­ment is, if you can’t han­dle just look­ing, then don’t come.
      but in my opin­ion it’s not a form of enter­tain­ment, it’s a form of trick­ery and rob­bery
      180 dol­lars for 30minutes? a pri­vate lap dance? look but don’t touch!
      why!? what does that do for the man? noth­ing, but does more for the girls.
      180 dol­lars.. GET OFF IT.. you are not worth that amount of money..sorry.
      500 dol­lars for a bot­tle of wine? 20 dol­lar drinks, etc etc etc
      sor­ry, but this is not adult enter­tain­ment. it’s extor­tion.
      go to thai­land, philip­ines and see how adult enter­tain­ment is real­ly done!
      a man pays for enter­tain­ment, a man pays a girl for drinks or a pri­vate lap dance, the pay should be allowed to touch what he is pay­ing for.
      you are in the sex indus­try! and you are in the indus­try of teas­ing men, and show­ing off your body, so mon­ey is exchanged, the man should have the right to touch what he is pay­ing for.. if you don’t like that part of the jobs! seek employ­ment else­where!

      adult enter­tain­ment LOL what a joke!

      1. Actu­al­ly, in NZ the norm in the strip­ping indus­try is that though you can look gen­er­al­ly (pri­vate dances per­haps exclud­ed) you CANNOT touch. If YOU don’t like that part of the enter­tain­ment then don’t come! Don’t sug­gest that it isn’t valid and that if the girls don’t want to be touched they should find work else­where. It’s an indus­try where touch­ing is NOT the norm, like food ser­vice for exam­ple. If I work at a restau­rant do you think that I should be sex­u­al­ly assault­ed because a man feels teased by me, or unsat­is­fied by my ser­vice? In both indus­tries touch­ing is not the norm and cer­tain­ly not with­out con­sent, if you’re unsat­is­fied then per­haps you should go else­where.
        Your ref­er­ence to Thai­land is not tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic strength or the high­er pro­por­tion of sex traf­fick­ing that goes on there than in NZ.
        The strip­ping indus­try in NZ is upfront about the fact that you can’t touch and it’s gen­er­al­ly known to be expen­sive (it’s a busi­ness after all!). What you are sug­gest­ing is that these girls some­how deserve sex­u­al assault. If you want to touch, hire a pros­ti­tute — a pro­fes­sion where touch­ing IS a part of the deal. That said, it’s still sex­u­al assault/rape if they don’t con­sent as a recent court case held.
        I think you need to recon­sid­er your views about this issue before you end up in court. You don’t have a RIGHT to touch and you don’t have a healthy atti­tude at all.

  12. i have worked at mer­maids in welling­ton and i have to say after work­ing in over 2o dif­fer­ent strip clubs in aus­tralia, uk and nz they treat the girls like shit!

  13. @Miss G: Have you worked in Dream­girls? I’m think­ing of get­ting a job there, and I’m try­ing to ask around and find out whether it’s a good envi­ron­ment to work in.

    1. Hey Beat­rice

      I know your com­ment was from a month ago so might not be per­ti­nent any more, but just FYI I have known a cou­ple of peo­ple who have joined Dream­girls and have been VERY hap­py with both the work envi­ron­ment and man­age­ment.

      Anec­do­tal­ly it sounds as if you gen­er­al­ly get treat­ed bet­ter at Dream­girls (at least by your employ­er) than Mer­maids.

      Now that Cal­en­dar Girls is open­ing, who knows what dif­fer­ence this will make.

    2. hey in response to your com­ment above.. i just spent my 1st week­end at dream­girls and i loved it.! iv danced at nemer­ous clubs over nz and out of them all dream­girls is my favourite.. the man­age­ment and every­one who works there are abso­lut­ly amaz­ing..!!!! i had the time of my life 🙂 and yes even with 40% tax it was pret­ty good mon­ey wise 2.. i give them a 8/10..!! and a 10/10 for hos­pi­tal­it­ly.. every­one was so amaz­ing and friend­ly and not 1 drop of dra­ma..!!!!! worth it .. hope that helps your deci­sion.. ill be defi­nat­ly going back..

  14. All i can add is gooo dream­girls ive been there 2 and a half years one of the longest time dancers and i love it i could­nt be any­more hap­pi­er in a job that I love man­age­ment are great and we have fun may not make as much as mer­maids but at least were smil­ing and hav­ing fun in our job 🙂

  15. I worked at Mer­maids as a wait­ress for six months and hat­ed it. I did one stage spot there and three lap dances (we could do lap dances at our dis­cre­tion, I nev­er told any­one I did them but if a guy asked and was will­ing to pay for it, I was okay with it). I made a lot of mon­ey as a wait­ress but the atti­tudes from man­age­ment and some of the dancers made it awful. The last night that I worked, I left in tears.
    I’ve been into Dream­girls and Liks a few times, it seems like the girls at both are treat­ed so much bet­ter by man­age­ment and are much hap­pi­er than the ones at Mer­maids.

  16. As a strip club patron I much pre­fer Dream­girls over Mer­maids. The atmos­phere is much bet­ter at Dream­girls, the ladies are good val­ue as well as being sexy as f@*k. I was there for my stag night a few months back and had a wicked night, I was in again last night and had yet anoth­er wicked night!

  17. Elab­o­rat­ing on Wan­da’s com­ment:

    ” We have a rule where your g‑string must be off before the end of your last song, but depend­ing on per­son­al pref­er­ence, you can choose how long you would like to be naked, 5 sec­onds even. ”

    Most girls take their G‑string off dur­ing the last few sec­onds only — mak­ing sure to cover/hide their bits with their hands/lingerie as they bend to col­lect the last tip­ping dol­lars before quick­ly rush­ing back­stage.

  18. I AM a sex work­er, and I CHOSE to get into the indus­try in my 30’s and I LOVE it!..I am my own boss..I work when I want and I trav­el and make 2–3 thou­sand PART TIME a week when I can be both­ered to work..I OWN my own home freehold..I HATE drugs and do NOT tol­er­ate my clients turn­ing up high..I have ser­viced High Pro­file clients and I am NOT small..I am 88kgs and 5.7 in height…I DONT smoke..I RARELY drink and I use my mon­ey to put my daugh­ter through PRIVATE edu­ca­tion and she is look­ing at becom­ing a PERSONAL TRAINER as she GRADUATES col­lege end of this year…do NOT assume it is a sad life for us and that we are exploited..we are NOT all junkies and crack­whores with Pimps etc…the women that are exploit­ed are infact the ones that go to the local pub…ALLOW dick­head losers to shout them 20 bucks ( if they lucky ) worth of booze…tell them what they want to hear and that they are beautiful..the women believe them…they take them home…the man gets what he wants and in the morn­ing walks out say­ing ” I will flick you a text or ring you through the week ” and she NEVER hears from him…truth of the mat­ter is?…she just gave HER body to a ran­dom stranger for FREE from the pub ( and prob­a­bly unpro­tect­ed ) and he EXPLOITED that…then she runs to her mates com­plain­ing yet does the sane thing the fol­low­ing week…in my world?…NO ONE exploits me..if a man wants me?..he will be paying…and out­side of work?…same goes…just on a dif­fer­ent level..respect and trust is EARNED…not hand­ed out willy nil­ly ( excuse the pun ) 😀

  19. Miss X i love your refer­ral to the boozey one night stand. I feel the same being a dancer, work­ing is a night out but i get paid for hav­ing fun and get away with being cheeki­er than i’d ever dare to be out­side of the club. Girls need to remem­ber to keep the fan­ta­sy alive and keep bound­aries strong for a win win expe­ri­ence.
    Thank you for this blog emi­ly, i start at mer­maids next week. If the clubs reviews from the above posts even­tu­ate at least i know dream­girls is an option also.. i’ve danced for 5yrs. I danced through med school for finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and as a release from the pres­sures from study­ing med­i­cine. I found that girls have much influ­ence as to the respect they recieve from pun­ters. They also have a choice to react or just let the dick­heads be dick­heads. The con­tra­ver­sial world of strip­ping breeds con­fi­dence and suc­cess if the the woman allows her­self to feel empow­ered and is head strong. I hope that sex work­ers would feel the same. In some ways i wish i could push my bound­aries to have done sex work ‑u dont have to lis­ten to their boun­ti­ful chat.. ;-).

    1. Hi Joss, I am think­ing about apply­ing at Mer­maids. I am trav­el­ing and I am tired of the crap­py bor­ing jobs for a ridicu­lous pay. I have danced in music-halls but no pole danc­ing. How were your first weeks there? Is the work­ing envi­ron­ment good? I like danc­ing and strip­ping but I would­n’t stand being touched. What are the rules? How much do you earn ? Thank you 🙂

  20. Just incase you were won­der­ing — i did­n’t see any oth­er com­ments. Mer­maids in Auck­land costs 50 for a 10 min lap dance per per­son. (my man and i went for one and costs dou­ble)

    I’m too shy to go in welling­ton cause we live around here though and it’s still frowned upon for women to go into strip clubs. But lets be real. Peo­ple swing both ways.

  21. Hiya. I’m a trav­eller who’s con­sid­er­ing strip­ping. Can any­one tell me which is the best club to work at in terms of staff and also in terms of the way the girls get treat­ed? What’s the pay rate like? And how much dance expe­ri­ence do you need? Thanks for any answers =)

    1. If you are con­sid­er­ing strip­ping I would rec­om­mend cal­nder girls mel the man­ag­er is a great guy and girls get treat­ed bet­ter there than oth­er clubs main­ly bea­cuse there is no broth­el upstairs

  22. The West­ern strip club busi­ness ben­e­fits the own­ers, and the girls, but not the cus­tomers., it’s a rip off busi­ness which extorts mon­ey for teas­ing cus­tomers.
    exot­ic danc­ing? erot­ic danc­ing , is this what we are call­ing it now?
    for those prices?

    I’m sor­ry I don’t go to those clubs for those rea­sons is insane to over pay.
    the prices are more than pay­ing for STING or The Rolling stones con­cert.

    you got­ta be bloody man to think these girls are worth even remote­ly close to that.

    I tell all my friends who are inter­est­ed to save their mon­ey and book a flight to Bangkok or manil­la where the indus­try is geared towards cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.
    sure the girls milk you there too, but at least you touch them, play with them, and have fun..
    in the west it’s a BIG NO NO to touch a girl LOL get off it..
    what a scam…

    1. I’m assum­ing you also get angry with your plumber for not let­ting you touch them when you pay them too, or your den­tist or any­one else who is pro­vid­ing a ser­vice to you that is not explic­it­ly “you may touch me in exchange for mon­ey”?

    2. Your so right Chris, I’m sick of these uppi­ty West­ern bitch­es that steal our mon­ey, I booked 15 min­utes with the chick last week and she was all over me, touch­ing my chest and breath­ing in my ear and bend­ing over with her ass in my face so I fig­ured what the hell, I payed this bitch $150 for 15 min­utes and I’m gana get my mon­ey’s worth, so I gave her ass a good smack, love­ly ass it was too, not a hard smack you know just a play­ful one, and this bitch went psy­cho, start­ed scream­ing at me and called secu­ri­ty, I tried to explain to them like “hey guys I payed $150 for her sure­ly I can give her a love tap” but she was­n’t hav­ing it, it was total­ly over the top the man­age­ment came over and was act­ing like I’d sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her for gods sake, I was humil­i­at­ed so fi said to the man­ag­er “well 150 bucks down the drain then what the hell am I get­ting for my mon­ey at your shit­ty estab­lish­ment ” and he said “your pay­ing to see the car­di­ol­o­gist and if you had­n’t assult­ed her she would have mea­sured your car­diac out­put when the hal­ter she was hook­ing up to your chest was fin­ished reset­ting itself and I don’t know where you think you are young lady but in NZ it’s illi­gal to sex­u­al­ly assult doc­tors.
      Hon­est­ly what a rip, I’m nev­er going there again those guys had no sense of humour and that bitch was ask­ing for it by being so close and touch­ing me and shit, if she did­n’t want it to get sex­u­al then she should­n’t have asked me to take my fuck­ing shirt off, so I’m with you Chris, these bitch­es that tease us then get all frosty as soon as we make a move are exploit­ing us! Who the hell do these bitch­es think they are trick­ing us like that.
      I cant go back there now because the police tres­passed me but I would­n’t waste my time and mon­ey on those ice queens any­way, I found that doc­tors linke­den and wrote a ter­ri­ble review about the ser­vice and now I go to a witch doc­tor in hua­pai that is good val­ue, she gives me crazy drinks and does bondage shit to me with knives and pins and if I grab her ass she says some­thing cute in chi­nese and push­es me away I don’t know what she’s say­ing but I know she is just play­ing hard to get, so your right the west is a rip off I’ll always get my fun from asian ladies now, they know what we deserve and they don’t com­plain like these uppi­ty euro girls, I’m sure thats what your talk­ing about in Thai­land too, much bet­ter when they let us have a good grope with­out mak­ing a fuss, let’s hope the wom­an’s rights and sex­u­al harass­ment laws in Asia don’t go the way of the west or we’ll both be in trou­ble and might actu­al­ly learnt to talk to women and respect them like they are human beings, the worlds going to shit tho so I would­n’t be sur­prised if this hap­pens soon, God help us aye Chris, we may nev­er get any pussy again.

      1. I can quite hap­pi­ly pay $150 for a lap dance and not feel enti­tled to need to grab what I should­n’t.

        Some­thing is worth what some­one is going to pay for it. Peo­ple waste mon­ey on all sorts of things. Booze, cig­a­rettes, can­dy, over­priced food. Not going to judge, but for me the exhil­a­ra­tion of an incred­i­bly attrac­tive woman gyrat­ing naked cen­time­tres from my face every once in a while is worth the price and they gen­er­al­ly get a gen­er­ous tip.

        Peo­ple should know what they’re get­ting into, but just because it’s not for every­one does­n’t mean it’s bad.

  23. Love work­ing at mer­maids. Its empow­er­ing and some­times I earn heaps. So many ppl have their heads filled with untruths and mis­con­cep­tions and big­ot­ted ideals. I meet love­ly men and women every night and I love all my col­leagues. I love it when ppl express their mis­con­cep­tions cos then I can set them straight!