A Strip Club for Every Super Bowl

By JOSH ALPER

Updated 6:10 PM EST, Tue, Jan 27, 2009

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Whenever an event like the Super Bowl comes to a city, you hear a lot about how it will be a boon to the local economy. Hotels will be filled, restaurants will get a lot of traffic and g-strings will be positively overflowing with dollar bills. Well, that's the case in Tampa, anyway.

The Super Bowl's host city has 43 strip clubs, one for each of the Super Bowls, ready and waiting for the crush of football fans looking to burn a few hours and a few bucks before the big game. They aren't named Strip Club I and Strip Club XVI, or even XXX, despite their shared number. They carry names like Mons Venis, Diamond Dolls and 2001 Odyssey, and, based on past experience, will quadruple their earnings during Super Bowl week. Tampa's not exactly proud of their city's reputation as a strip club haven, but they aren't embarassed either. The Tampa Tribune has even put together a handy guide to the city's flesh emporiums.

One dancer said she made 6,000 in a night during the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa. If that holds up, strip clubs will have to be added to the list of recession proof industries. There's been a lot of talk about how things are being scaled down in light of the nation's economic woes for this Super Bowl, but the strip clubs will provide a pretty good indication of how tight fisted people are with their money.

Could the ease and variety of naked women actually have any impact on the game? It's doubtful, though there are precedents. The night before Super Bowl XXIII, Bengals coaches found running back Stanley Wilson in his hotel room high on cocaine, and Raiders center Barret Robbins disappeared to Mexico in the days leading up to Super Bowl XXXVII and ended up in the hospital before the game.

Those incidents are isolated, though, and it's unlikely that any member of the Steelers or Cardinals would risk their professional future and team's chances because they absolutely, positively had to go to a strip club that will be open the day after the game as well.