ABSTRACT
Kerwin Kay1 P.O. Box 424981y San Francisco, CA 94142 (kerwynk@sirius.com)
A series of dramatic changes have occurred in many of San Francisco’s strip clubs during the course of the past decade. Club management at the majority of theaters has switched from a strat egy of over-charging customers to a policy of under-paying danc ers. Simultaneously, management at several theaters has begun to build privately enclosed booths that enable dancers to perform pros titution within club premises. Faced with increasingly sexual com petition, many dancers have been forced to make tough decisions between giving up the only high-paying job available to them or making compromises-both personal and legal-they would rather
not make. Other women working at the clubs, however, have been able to earn greater amounts of money than ever before, setting the stage for intense conflict amongst the dancers. These changes have occurred only in clubs with female performers; a similar shift has not occurred in the city’s two male (primarily gay) theaters, despite the fact that these clubs are owned by the same companies respon sible for the changes at the female clubs.2
