$60 never went so far

First of all, I should point out that posting might be a little bit half-assed this week. But this time I have an excuse! I'm down in the ATL eating crab meats and putting chicks through college. I got here yesterday afternoon, and I'll be here for the rest of the week.

I already paid for about $60 worth of higher education last night. Er, maybe more like $45 worth of fancy book-learning and $15 worth of drinks. Which might not seem like a lot, but I'm down here all week, and it's not like I'm made out of money. I work in hip-hop journalism, fer chrissakes. I don't want to end up having to rub one out in my actually-kinda-decent hotel room by the end of the week. I get Showtime here in HD, so that's a distinct possibility, I just don't want it to be my only option.

Anyway, these chicks didn't seem to be worth much more than $45 over the course of about two and a half hours. Hardly any of them seemed young enough or smart enough to pretend to be college students. The only one I actually talked to (some of these girls' English wasn't the best in the world) didn't even pretend as if there was anything else she might be doing. Our conversation centered on the fact that the recession has been particularly hard on strippers down in Atlanta.

I was surprised, since the ATL has the reputation of being a lot more baller and a lot more strip club-oriented than, say, my native St. Louis. Even though I do seem to recall reading a story, maybe via Sandra Rose, about the weird effect that the economy has had on the strip clubs down here. You'd think that ridonkulously high unemployment would lead to better-looking and, erm, friendlier strippers, but it's actually had the effect of attracting a lot of women who don't have any business working in a strip clubs: a lot of older women who got laid off from professional jobs, women with hella kids they can't afford to feed, so on and so forth. You get a lot more applicants, but they aren't necessarily worth a shit.

I can only imagine what it would be like to be the guy whose job it is to decide which girls get to do something strange for some change and which ones have to march themselves downtown to "the welfare," like Gabba Ray Sebadoh in Precious, but (presumably) with a much nicer body. I've worked in places where part of my job involved fielding applications from a seemingly endless stream of meth heads clad in their Sunday best, and smoking hot teenage girls. I notice we seemed to draw equally from either category, based on reliable transportation (which is why a lot of black people stay losing) and availability. Except for this one period, for about a year, where the manager was this guy who was my age; he hired nothing but smoking hot teenage girls. It was fucking sweet. The store didn't seem to do any worse. It's not like that job required any real skill. But I guess there was the possibility someone would have complained about discrimination. The BGM is not like a strip club, where you go to stare at girls' cans. Well, you're not supposed to.

Were the girls I met last night overcompensating for the effects of the recession? It's hard to say, since this was my first time going to a strip club down here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. For $45, I got quite a bit, and it was suggested that for $100 I could have gotten quite a bit more. Neither of the two girls I talked to about this would say what exactly I'd receive, but one of them assured me that no guy has ever left the club's back room area unsatisfied. I don't know if I'll investigate that any further, but I might be back there this week, if I can. I'll have to see what else is going on. I'm supposed to meet up with my esteemed colleague Mike Bigga, but apparently he can't drive anymore, because he got caught riding around smoking a joint or some shit. What a fuckup.