After Vince had finished yelling at all of us because we didn’t bring in enough money, he would ask the night manager if any “new broads” had started. If the manager said yes, Vince would go get himself a cup of coffee and stand by the bar watching each and every woman dance. If the manager hired a dancer that Vince didn’t approve of, all hell would break loose.
The first thing that he would do was to confront the manager. “Did you hire that ugly fucking horse-face up on the stage?” The poor manager couldn’t even get a word in edge wise. “I want you to fire her right now!” he demanded. If the manager didn’t respond fast enough, Vince would fire the woman himself. Sometimes he would literally pull her off the stage in the middle of her show, and he didn’t care if there were 10 or 200 people in the club when he did it. It wasn’t bad enough that he had completely humiliated the dancer in front of everyone, but to add insult to injury, he wouldn’t even allow her to change out of her costume before he threw her and all of her belongings out into the parking lot. The poor woman, who didn’t have a car or took a taxicab to the club, was forced to walk down the highway to the nearest truck stop to take refuge. Once Vince was convinced that he had successfully berated the dancer that he had just thrown out, he was as happy as a lark. This was the neurotic Vince Roth, nice one minute and completely out of control the next. But even Vince had his “pets” or favorite dancers that he never abused. Fortunately for me, I was one of those few. Vince laid off the dancers that didn’t engage in drugs, alcohol, or prostitution. He did have one complaint about me though. He absolutely couldn’t understand why I didn’t make as much money as the rest of the women who worked for him. The reason why I wasn’t as productive as some of the other dancers was because I hated having to deal with the customers.
Vince would always threaten to send me back to work at the Ruby Garter Club if I didn’t straighten out. “I don’t get it,” he would say to me, “the most beautiful broad in the whole damn place and you make the least amount of money. I’m going to make a top mixer out of you if it’s the last thing I do.” Vince did ultimately succeed in turning me into a top producer, but not while I worked for him. I didn’t utilize my hustling skills until years later.
There were several tragic events that took place at the Nite Strip Club during the time that I worked there. A young woman who had worked at the club for five years went home one evening and shot herself in the head after being abruptly fired by Vince. When he received the news of the woman’s death, he was devastated. About five months later, another woman was found dead on the dressing room floor with an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Margarita, a very pretty woman in her early twenties was found murdered in the parking lot of the apartment building that she lived in. Her murderer, as far as I know, was never apprehended.
There were also two women who died suddenly from inoperable cancer. One of the women who died was a diagnosed schizophrenic. She made between $3,000 to $4,000 a week, and saved every dime. She gave it all to her poverty-stricken siblings and parents. Callie, as I knew her, lived in her car and ate out of garbage cans. Her clothes consisted of hand me downs and rags. The only decent clothing she owned were the extravagant costumes she needed to wear on the stage. One day, Callie became seriously ill. She died from leukemia eight months later. Vince definitely had a soft spot for this woman and took it very hard when she died.
Rumor had it that he sent several thousand dollars to her family as a token of his sympathy.
Shortly after Callie died, gossip surfaced that Vince was in the process of opening up another strip club on the west coast. As time went on, we saw less and less of him. He no longer came in to deliberately torment us like he used to. A few months later, we found out that Vince was selling his half ownership of the club to his silent business partner. Vince Roth was on a new track. The Nite Strip Club wasn’t enough for him anymore. The millionaire was dead set on becoming even wealthier.
Before he left Illinois, he stopped into the club to say goodbye. He tried to coerce the dancers into working for him at his new club. Most of them declined, but a few of the very young unestablished girls jumped at his offer.
While Vince was busy saying goodbye to all his employees, I went into the dressing room to get ready to go on stage. I was up to dance next. From the stage, I could see Vince’s tall silhouette amongst all the people who were probably relieved to see him go. I remember that I was on my last song, which meant that I was practically nude. All of a sudden, I could hear the sound of Vince’s thundering voice over the loud speaker. “Hey blondie,” he yelled into the micro-phone, “get off the fucking stage and get in the dressing room.” My music was abruptly stopped. I wrapped a see thru black chiffon veil around me and immediately left the stage. A few moments later, the dressing room door flung open. It was Vince Roth. “You’re the biggest pain in my ass that ever crossed my path,” he said. I laughed and gave him a brief hug goodbye. “Make sure you save your money blondie.” The powerful man turned around to leave the dressing room.
“I’ll be back to see you someday,” he said. The dressing room door slammed closed behind him.
After Vince’s departure, things began to change rapidly at the club. The Nite Strip Lounge went from being run with an iron fist to virtually no management at all. Many of the original dancers quit and there were only a few of Vince Roth’s original employees left. Vince’s business partner didn’t make a particularly good manager. He spent very little time at the club and took no interest in how the operation was run.
Slowly, the quality of the dancers began to plummet from beautiful show girls to any average run of the mill female that was willing to take off her clothes. Because of lackadaisical management, prostitution and drugs slowly began to infiltrate the club, and nobody seemed to care as long as the cash registers kept ringing. That was the downside to the situation. The upside was that a lot of the pressure once put on the dancers to produce had stopped. This worked out well for many of us who really didn’t care about producing to begin with.
I ended up working at this club eight more years after Vince sold out, so I worked a total of eleven years at the Nite Strip Lounge. By now it was 1984 and business was booming. Credit card sales in the club had become the payment of choice for most of the male patrons that frequented the Chicagoland area strip clubs. Once in a while, a man would come in with a substantial amount of cash. One day, an old pathetic drunk wandered into the club with approximately $40,000 on him.
The man claimed that he was dying and just wanted to have one last good time.
Because the man’s appearance was offensive, none of the other dancers would talk to him. I was bored, so I decided to go over to where the old man was sitting and joined him. He bought me a dancer’s cocktail and tipped the waitress $100.
When I realized how much money he had, I immediately summoned another dancer to assist me in getting this smelly old man to spend all of his money. The other dancer and I were able to talk him into spending a huge amount of money for nothing more than conversation at the table.
The manager was getting upset because he knew the customer was spending a lot of money and not getting anything in return. He sent four other dancers to the table to join the party. These women didn’t work the same way I did. They immediately began to fondle the man and let him play with their breasts at the table. The four women ended up taking the elderly man to the secluded area in the back of the room. One of the dancers went into the dressing room and returned with a large white fur rug that she used up on the stage. She put the rug down on the floor and in no time succumbed to the old man’s every sexual desire.