Confessions of a Strip Club Owner

Oh, those raucous '80s. Being able to solicit a girl, right off the street, without risking an indictment. In our state, you were forbidden to showcase any type of nudity, if you served alcohol. If one owned a "juice bar," (no booze) the girls could parade about in their birthday suits. Since we owned the former but needed the latter to survive, drastic administrative procedures were required.

Horse was assigned to work with Captain Zip. This duo was responsible for "custom blending" the booze supply, stocking three bars of this ilk. Analogous to Sunoco's custom blending at the pump, we blended our liquor supply to maximize profits and reduce overhead.

Not another tale of "watering down the booze." Of course not. Weights & Measures came in on a regular basis to test exactly that. They employed two methods, after randomly selecting bottles off the shelves. Never were we suspected, cited or charged. Liquor licenses could be sold on the open market for 25K so these operations had to be performed to perfection.

Weights and Measures would pour a shot of liquor into a rock glass (drink glass.) And a shot glass. If any of the bubbles would gravitate to the outer parts of the pool, there was water mixed in with the booze.

The first method never worked as we did not water down our stock. Their plan B was the "altimeter." A slight of hand, crude instrument, similar in design to your bulb, battery tester for five bucks at the parts store. Here, they would suck up some liquor and if the ball tetered on or near the white marker, you had water in the booze. Then they squirted it back into the glass and did the bubble check again. Passed again, so how did we do it?

It began every other Sunday morning at seven. A hung over Captain Zip stumbled into the Horsemobile, a red, Dodge Aspen station wagon. To the Rowley Tavern we went, a corner, shot & beer bar, catering to the true bottom feeders of the neighborhood. Since the entire street was passed out, stupid drunk, from the night before, we had unfettered access to their dumpster behind the bar.

Ref: associatedcontent.com