Z Bone's $5,000 Strip-Off - Behind The Scenes

January 6, 2007

Contestant #1 Siena wearing street clothes and no underwear, showing off her legs. All photos by Paul Hart.

Once again, I decided to do a "Behind the scenes" diary entry for the contest. I wasn't happy with the way things went in the last contest so I decided to be more hands on for this contest.

In case you don't know about the contest, first read the "published" version of the event and come back and read this last.

The 2 main things I decided to change was the emphasis of the contest, and the method of judging.  I've grown very tired of the same old "dance contest" where basically dancers do their regular set, but with a little more enthusiasm, and some pole tricks.  Frankly, that's about all you see the features do as well.

What I'm longing for is the old school strip tease.  I don't think many dancers these days even know how to do a strip tease anymore.  In fact, some of you reading this may not even know what I'm talking about.  A strip tease requires the dancer to do two things.  Strip and tease.  Talking off your bikini bottom in one swift move seems to be the trend these days, but that does not qualify as a strip tease in my book.  It certainly does not qualify as a tease.

Contestant #17 Romy took 3rd place but did the sexiest strip tease in the contest, IMO.

The second change was in the judging.  For many years, I've used the selected judges scoring 1-10 method, which requires a computer with a spreadsheet to compute the results.  This time around, I decided to go to old school judging by using old fashioned election style voting.  Every customer got a ballot and they voted for just one contestant.  At the end, I just counted the number of votes each contestant got, and the most votes won.  Simple and clean.

Originally, there was going to be a preliminary contest at the Rhino but that idea was canned, and I'm glad.  As with previous contests, I got a trophy made, but I screwed up and put 2006 on it by mistake and had to rush a new one at the last minute.  And this time, I had to make small ballots and a vote collection box.  Unlike previous events, I had the cashier give every single paying customer a ballot and a pen.

Also, this time around, I was hands on in organizing and running the contest so no lap dances or talking with friends.  It was like real work. Well, okay, maybe not like real work since I was watching naked girls all night.

We were running late as per usual, but I had all the contestants go into the VIP room for a pre-contest meeting and to select numbers to determine the order to go onto the stage.  It was a nice setup to have the entire huge VIP room for photo shoots and the meetings with the contestants.

Here are my notes and my perception of the entire contest. The votes are the final tally from the ballot count of the votes from the audience.
 

#	Stage Name	VOTES	Comments
1	Siena	4	Wore street clothes and hoodie, jean mini-skirt with no underwear.  Although she didn't do much of a strip tease, I loved her "costume". She's the only one in the contest using street clothes. I think going 1st hurt her score.  If this was for most creative costume, I would have vote for her.
2	Nadia	1	Wore a hat and danced to the Stones. She's tall and looks like a European model. She told me she used to work at Scores in NY. No strip tease.
4	Monroe	6	Won the last contest and wore a cheerleader type outfit and danced to "Mickey." She deep throated a bottle on stage which was one of the few sexy things during the entire contest.
5	Mya	0	Her outfit reminded me of a number from the musical "Chicago" and she danced to "Me So Horny" for her second song. Personally, she has the body type that I tend to like with a very cute face, but not much strip tease going on.  If it was for looks only, I would vote for her.
6	Madeline	17	1st place winner.  If you consider that she was #6, it's pretty amazing that she was able to come in 1st.  She's very athletic, and teaches pole work.  Her winning move was an upside down super fast slide (some might say almost a free fall) to the floor, just stopping before her head required a cast and a trip to the ER. I've seen a lot of cool moves (including the upside down worm move that she did) but this drop was so fast, it did shock me.  That move plus some other super athletic pole moves, made her pole moves in the contest, the best by far.  It must have been what did it for her with many of the judges.  However, I didn't think she did much of a strip tease.
7	Mariah	0	Mariah also has the kind of face I like and wore a sexy black outfit, but not much strip teasing going on.
8	Skylar	3	I'm not sure what her costume was, maybe a Nascar girl. In any case, she has a great tight bod with petite top, and very cute face. For normal people, she probably would be judged to be the best looking in the contest, but not much strip teasing.
9	Vanity	2	Just a regular white bikini outfit but the only one with a boa. Her tease wasn't what I wanted to see but at least she had the right idea with the boa.
10	Erica	5	Another good looking dancer and she did have layers to take off, which many of the other contestants did not have.  Good pole work, good slow music selection, and moderate tease.
11	Bonnie	0	She wore a cute pink outfit. Not much teasing.
12	Synthia Slave	4	Came on stage with a full-on costume with a cape and hood. By far, the most elaborate costume of the contest. If this was for best costume probably should win. Some pole work, danced to very sexy slow music and moderate teasing.
14	Nikki Smith	0	The only dancer to wear glasses on stage and some poke work.
16	Sky	0	Did some floor work.
17	Romy	7	3rd place winner.  She did a lot of pole work, wore a sexy outfit, with collar and dog leash, and the only contestant that I felt did the type of tease I was looking for. If I was voting, she would be the winner.
18	Alexis	12	2nd place winner. Previous dancer of the month, with a nice sexy lingerie with plenty of pole work. Not much teasing.
19	Ariel	5	Another pretty good costume in black, and danced to Akon's "I Wanna Love You" and TLC's "Creep."  Not much teasing.
20	Coco Shanelle	0	White and red outfit, with plenty of pole work.

All contestants back on stage at the end, pretty much in order from right to left.

After all the contestants did their performances, I had everyone go back on stage at the same time.  I did this for two reasons. The first was to try to even the playing field a little for the contestants who had to go early in the contest and the customers may have forgotten.  The second reason was so that the customers could compare side by side their favorites to make their final decisions.

Lastly, I had all the contestants go back to the VIP room and I counted the ballots in front of them.  Nobody asked for a recount, but there were 2 disqualified ballots, but no pregnant chads.  Unlike most contests, the winners already knew who they were before the audience. Aaron (the GM from Rouge) gave out the awards to the winners on stage.

All in all, I think the contest went fairly smoothly except for a few glitches, many of which were my fault and I'll tweak for next time.  One change I would make would be to try to make the contest shorter than it turned out to be.  Maybe with fewer contestants, or shorter sets, or both.  I'd like to thank Aaron and Jerry for their cooperation and help in organizing this contest.

My only disappointment was the lack of sexy strip teases by the contestants. Using my definition, most of them didn't even do a strip tease.  None did a traditional old school burlesque type strip tease, but I didn't really expect that. Maybe it's too much to expect from the current batch of dancers who never had to learn how to do a traditional strip tease. In fact, except for us old school customers, there's probably very few people who except or want a strip tease at a strip club.

Oh well. One day, I vow to bring sexy back to the strip clubs.