Chris Lund, owner of Centerfold Stars of New York City, disagrees with some of the views aired by Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof on yesterday's site. Particularly Hof's contention that legalized prostitution has the big bucks potential of luring a lot of women away from the dance circuit.
For want of a better way of putting it, Lund's business is kind of a Domino's of exotics. Strippers-to-go. Centerfold Stars, stripteasetogo.com, has been in operation since 1988. Lund has been talking in colorful soundbites a lot longer, but what-the-hey.
Lund: "I think there's some weight to what he's [Hof] saying. Let me preface this. I'm firm anti-prostitution. I think dancing and erotic entertainment is completely within moral limits. I think pimping women and women pimping themselves is degrading and immoral and stupid. But that's my bias. I'm never going to be a pimp. I'm never going to be selling girls. I'm never going to be telling them to sell themselves.
"Entertainment is one thing; pimping is something else. My feeling is that, at the same time in today's very loosely, quasi-moral Jerry Springer/Rikki Lake world, many of the younger girls entering the business see the lines blurred. A lot of them come from dysfunctional homes and don't have much of a moral upbringing. They don't see the difference between sucking a guy's dick for money or being a groupie and sucking a rock star's dick in a niteclub. They're beginning to see everything sexy is all blurred together and not seeing distinctions. I think in that climate, a lot of girls are turning into hookers thinking it's no big thing. I personally think it's a big thing. I wouldn't mind my daughter being a dancer, but I would certainly be depressed if she became a hooker. But I think in this climate more dancers are crossing over to being hookers or part-time hookers, or occasionally doing tricks. [Lund cites the example of Bionca Trump.]
"Over the years, many porn stars would occasionally go for a weekend for money with some guy. But that doesn't mean that they were full-time hookers. Hooker-huckstering, I think, is a temporary phenomenon. I don't think, ultimately, all girls want to be hookers. The happy hooker is a rare commodity. I think most girls would find hooking self-degrading and against their own emotions. Dancers are exhibitionists. That's something sexy and quite different. I think what he's saying is that there will a trend for that to some degree, but I don't think hooking will extinguish dancing. Dancing is entertainment. A hooker is basically a girl who wants to perform a quick biological act, jack you off, take your money and run away. She's not an entertainer. And I don't think The Bunny Ranch is the answer to entertainment."
Lund describes Centerfold Stars as an "eclectic private party-thing." "This has become a very big thing," says Lund. "We're going national and international in selective markets." About 20 U.S. markets and select cities outside the U.S. According to Lund, there's been "too much corrupting of the table-dancer clubs."
"They're literally turning into whorehouses and tricks going on in the back rooms," he says. "They've changed the laws and they're shutting down these clubs and zoning them out of existence. Like New York has zoning codes now that are pretty much almost going to abolish the table dancer industry in Manhattan. They've had changes in the zoning laws in the Miami-Metro market, and Texas, too. So what's going to happen is you've had people getting used to having strippers in their face all over the place, and now it's only going to be available to go.
Lund: "We're moving on that in a national way. Like Domino's, but only a little tastier treat. We have an extremely clean and well-established reputation and regimen. You really got to know a lot to run this right. It's not something you can start up tomorrow and have a learning curve on in 90 days. It's very hard to do. After 11 years we know how to bake the cake. We're having fun with it. We're doing tremendously well in the New York tri-state area, and we're opening up other markets. Obviously the Internet is helping us. The Internet has facilitated marketing expansion. In the old days I'd have to buy a lot of local print. Now I can have a mega-website and let people log on and find the market they want.
"Basically it's a champagne lounge-to-go, with a more exciting show," says Lund, quite lyrically. "The girls are naked, they do naked lap dancing and girl-girl lesbian action. The reason you can do that is, it's not a regulated licensed club. It's not intruding on anyone's laws." Centerfold Stars currently makes about 200 girls available coast-to-coast.
