Scores

  “Listen, this is all my fault. Tonight is our third wedding anniversary and I’ve always had this fantasy of Karen dancing for me nude in a big, crowded strip club. I talk about it all the time.”

  “So tonight,” she interjected, “my anniversary present was to fulfill Terry’s fantasy. It was dumb.”

  I really couldn’t think of a single appropriate response. I just looked at the two as they continued to mumble apologies. “Let me tell you guys something, ‘dumb’ isn’t the right word. Do you know I’m required by state law to call the police and have you arrested? You’ve not only violated criminal statutes, you’ve broken about ten different liquor laws that could cost me my license.”

  The woman started to cry and her husband asserted in desperate tones, “It can’t be that serious. Maybe we’re guilty of being idiots, but the club didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I made them wait several moments as I cradled my head in my hands. I finally looked up and said, “I want three things. One, you two are never to come back here. Two, you are never to tell anyone what you did here tonight.” After a long pause, I concluded, “And third, happy anniversary. Next time, please pick on some other club owner; I have quite enough on my plate.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Can Scores Be Rescued from Financial Ruin?

  1993

  As Scores moved into its second year of business, we were in deep financial trouble and I couldn’t put my finger on why. The club was always crowded, the entertainers were pleased with their earnings, and the bar was in constant high gear. Yet at the end of each month, there was barely enough to pay the bills. I was now the proud father of New York’s hottest new form of entertainment, the club was demanding an ever-growing amount of my time and effort, and I wasn’t making a thin dime. At least John Gotti was making his thousand each week.

  At the same time, Bildstein was going through a difficult period of personal disillusionment. He was pocketing only a small weekly salary, but his power over dancers’ earning abilities made him a target of their attention, which had gone to his head and compromised his otherwise good judgment. He’d violated his own rules of conduct and fallen in love with one of our entertainers. He was searching for some way to exit—with his new lady on his arm and a large wad of cash in his pocket.

  As a result, aggressive management of the club had begun to seriously slip, and no one seemed capable of or interested in taking charge of operations. And now, long-postponed architectural and construction bills could no longer be avoided; new carpeting, repainting, and replacement glass and tableware were badly needed; the air conditioning system slid into the crapper; and we weren’t doing the kind of advertising required for growth. Even Yackow’s ever-patient investor group was grumbling for at least “some return” on their loans. No doubt about it, Scores was teetering on the brink of collapse.

  Just when the bottom was poised to fall out, Andrew Pearlstein, who’d become my partner in other matters related to the insurance mess in Florida, began an urgent personal campaign to become one of Scores’ principals. Once I agreed to allow him into Scores as my partner, we feverishly began investigating steps to rescue the venture.

  Since Bildstein was seeking a personal exit strategy anyway, he feigned instant dislike for Pearlstein and demanded to be bought out. After a round of difficult negotiations, we reached an arrangement for the purchase of his minority interest.

  At the same time, Davies declared he was on the brink of being sent off to jail for nonpayment of child support, and demanded his share of the venture be bought out as well. A lump-sum down payment and an extended monthly schedule of additional payments was successfully negotiated.

  With the buyouts finalized, Jay and David were instantly gone from the scene; the corporate shares and licenses remained in my nominee’s name, and underlying control was shared between Andrew and myself, with Yackow’s interests piggybacking along.

  After all was signed and sealed, Andrew and I sat down in the law firm’s library, rolled up our sleeves, and created a new agenda. Our first step was to take a quick tour of strip clubs to observe and learn from the competition. According to common wisdom, Scores was operating in the most profitable business imaginable, and yet, with an incomparable location, magnificent premises, an unmatchable available clientele of wealthy businessmen and professionals, and gorgeous entertainers, it was headed to the poorhouse via the express lane. We were obviously doing something inherently out of step with the rest of the industry.

  Success can sometimes be a strange and inexplicable stepchild. It seems certain undertakings are ordained to succeed, against all odds and despite common sense. Consider Scores. A gay lawyer, specializing in commercial arbitration and politics, with less than zero interest in operating a lap dance club, finds himself inheriting the dreams of others who later abandon the venture. Moving forward with his banker (who thinks the club will be a sports bar) and his collaborator in an insurance fraud as fellow owners, he sets himself on an utterly foreign path for which experience has ill equipped him. What odds for success would you assign to this mish-mash? One hundred to one? Ten thousand to one?

  And what was the result of this untenable collection of miscreants? Magic: pure, unadulterated, and unstoppable. From the moment we assumed total control, we could do no wrong. Every move was the “right” move, every decision retrospectively correct and perfectly timed. It was as if the powers that control lives and fortunes insisted without reason upon having Manhattan serve as home to an environment “where sports and pleasure come together” and nothing we could do, no stumbling over one another, could in any way derail the oncoming train of unprecedented achievement. The “wheelbarrows of cash” were finally about to arrive and no amount of inexperience or negligence could slow the train’s momentum.

  Drawing upon our collective knowledge, investigations, and instincts, Scores was subjected to a series of transformations that forever changed its character and standing.

  First, we quickly closed the troublesome basketball court. “What the fuck was in your minds?” one of our consultants scoffed. “If customers are playing basketball, they’re not drinking or buying dances, and that means you’re not making money!” The court was dismantled and the area replaced with a second and profitable service bar for waitresses.

  In the same week, we removed the sports arcade, as it had continued to be nothing more than wasted space. “You’re running New York’s hottest adult sports bar with table dancing, not a Chuck E. Cheese for pimply teens,” was the remark that won the day. And once the golf, free-throw shooting, and arcade game machines were unceremoniously hauled out, we were able to vastly enlarge the main stage, giving it greater prominence in the showroom. The new stage permitted presentation of popular simulated lesbian dance exhibitions, and accommodated “beauty pageant-style” parades, providing customers with repeated nightly views of every available entertainer for lap dance selections.

  The restaurant was originally constructed as a closed-in section of the club, standing wholly separate and apart. It was suggested this had been a major design flaw and we ordered removal of the separating wall behind the main bar. The result was overwhelming to the senses, a “new” club emerging from the change. The club’s glitter and light shows were magnified and now permeated everywhere, and what had been two standing bars—one in the showroom and one in the restaurant—were joined as one massive and impressive oval structure. With the wall torn down, the club evolved into a breathtaking spectacle of movement and light, creating new vantage points for viewing everywhere.

  We next trashed every table and chair in the place. Out went the luxurious and spacious furniture, replaced by tiny tables and small, constricting chairs. No doubt about it, much of our rich ambiance was forever lost, but we could seat almost twice as many customers and the resultant feeling of being “crowded in” only served to enhance the already hypercharged mood—not to mention the vastly increased number of lap dances sold.

  In order to set ou
r initial drink prices, Bildstein toured local watering holes for comparison pricing. Our charges had ended up mirroring the neighborhood bars and restaurants. “Wrong, wrong,” was the reaction from our experts. “Your prices are insanely low. You’re catering to the richest and most status-conscious men in the biggest city in the world. Do you think they give a shit what they pay for a beer? Do you think they even look? Your bar needs to make much more moolah.”

  Effective immediately, the price of a bottle of water or glass of soda escalated from $2.00 to $12.00, beer from $3.50 to $15.00, and bottles of champagne from $80 to $500. We also introduced specialty drinks such as Louis XIII cognac at $150 per shot (a favorite of NBA players).

  We received nary a complaint about the new prices, and those patrons who expressed outrage were the ones we didn’t want anyway. Bottom line, it became a whole lot more expensive to nurse a couple of beers for an entire night while watching free stage shows.

  There was uniform agreement that we’d also been failing to take full advantage of our most important resource—the dancers. According to our house mom and staff, “Strippers travel from city to city in packs like mongrel dogs, and we’re not tapped into the best packs. That needs to change.”

  It soon became evident that dancers did indeed travel together for safety and support, touring all the major cities. Before Scores, New York hadn’t been on the travel roster, but after a few carefully placed phone calls with invitations to the Big Apple, several units were deployed in our direction. Suddenly, fifteen girls were arriving from the South, and we needed to reserve twenty spots the next week for a group from the Southwest. Not only were the new dancers more captivating and savvy than our original troop, who tended to be slightly older and definitely local, but the constant turnover of blonde, blue-eyed new talent kept our customers both contented and constantly returning for more. For some, it became an addiction with an accompanying fear of missing that “special one.” To my glee, my condo and law firm were now filled to overflowing with increased daily deliveries of floral arrangements.

  We also imposed an industry-standard “house fee” on the dancers who, for tax purposes, were treated as independent contractors—not employees. As we were supplying our “contractors” with a safe workplace and a means of making extraordinary incomes, word went forth we would henceforth require a lease payment of $100 per dancer per night. In other words, the house would be collecting an average of $10,000 each night in house fees alone—before the first nickel of customer money hit our registers. Anybody still wondering why we hadn’t been making money? Anybody wondering how this major income stream had been missed by our original partners?

  Scores also dove headfirst into the souvenir business. Until that time, we’d been haphazardly selling T-shirts and other memorabilia at the front door. The result had been no pressure, no reward, no sales. Now, our dancers were recruited to become a nightly sales force for shirts, hats, and sweat-soaked towels. Here’s how it worked: Three times each night, every dancer was required to offer “Two for One” Specials—the customer received two lap dances and a souvenir item for twenty dollars—the usual cost of one dance alone. The only difference was the income from the specials went to the house, not the dancer; and if the lady failed to sell her specials, she was required to buy the souvenirs herself.

  Using towels as our example, instead of selling a handful of towels during an entire week, we started systematically selling 300 towels each night (100 dancers x 3 specials per night). That’s approximately 2,100 towels sold each week, 8,400 a month, and over 100,000 a year. With each towel selling for $20, and supplied at no cost by Budweiser, you do the math. There are seven figures a year at the end of that particular rainbow—a business within a business, a cottage industry.

  While these sweeping changes clearly aided in the transformation of Scores from a dying albatross into a frantic profit machine, they collectively paled in comparison to the concept that forever solved our customers’ nightly cash-shortage squeeze. The answer came in two glorious, gold-leafed words: Diamond Dollars.

  Scores retained a private mint and began printing its own currency in twenty-dollar denominations, featuring the picture of an attractive dancer in lieu of an American president. The private currency became informally known as “funny money.”

  Funny money worked simply: A customer presents a credit card and charges, for example, $1,200. After the charge is processed, the patron receives $1,000 in Diamond Dollars, which could only be used for lap dance payments. Having just made $200 from the customer’s side of the transaction, when the dancer presents her Diamond Dollars at the end of each night for exchange into cash, the club pays her $800 in greenbacks for every $1,000 in Diamondbacks. Cha-ching! The club just made $200 from the dancer’s side of the very same transaction. So let’s review: on the customer charge of $1,200, the club grabbed $400, or 33 percent, and all from a previously untapped income source.

  And it gets better, as each funny money bill expired in thirty days. Some customers would inadvertently take a few bills home and then destroy them to avoid marital detection, and still others would take a bill or two back to Kansas as souvenirs to brag about. In our experience, the club would rack up another 10 to 15 percent in profits from never-cashed expired bills.

  It was funny money that finally ensured Scores’ success forever. Not only could customers now dip into their corporate entertainment accounts via credit card, no night would ever again be spoiled by a lack of cash ammunition to keep the dancers dancing. Thinking funny money transactions through, we brainstormed and decided to bill the funny money charges to a separate corporation without “Scores” in its name. That way, when the credit card statement arrived at home or office, the night at the club was indistinguishable from a charge at any expensive restaurant or executive retreat.

  We began earning upwards of forty cents on every dollar charged for lap dances, and it was the norm to sell hundreds of thousands of Diamond Dollars or more each week. When certain Middle Eastern or Japanese clients arrived, we could sell more than six figures in funny money in an hour.

  This simple solution was the key to the golden door. The club’s income soared, the income for entertainers exploded—with some dancers bringing down $5,000 per night—and we made the eventual decision to allow Diamond Dollars to be redeemable for all gratuities in the club, including the newly-introduced (and wildly popular) massages performed by scantily-clad entertainers, so that every employee could get rich. We found that customers treated funny money like casino chips, or Monopoly money—the bills had no value when spent; the damage was only realized when the credit card bill arrived.

  Scores was now a happy place indeed. We still had problems—there was the possibility that lap dancing would be declared illegal, and the mafia’s greed was perking up—but it was nothing we thought we couldn’t handle. Yet, popular and profitable as it was, Scores was still only a local phenomenon. It would take one more piece of the puzzle to make it an urban legend.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Howard Stern and Scores: A Love Affair for the Ages

  1994–1996

  The rich and famous began trickling into Scores. In its early stages, celebrity nurturing was a slow and tedious task. As lap dance parlors had just entered the city’s nightlife, there was an understandable reticence on the part of celebrities to publicly experience the phenomenon; an evening at Scores might serve to diminish their images and careers in the eyes of America’s heartland.

  All that, however, was about to radically change.

  Our public relations expert had a personal relationship with one of radio shock-jock Howard Stern’s posse of oddball characters. At our invitation, the entire Stern on-air cast and production group, with the exception of Howard and his cohost, Robin Quivers, began regularly patronizing the club. As we dazzled and impressed them with our entertainment and ambiance, the posse started recounting tales of their adventures to Stern—both off and on the radio.

  First curiou
s and then actively engaged, Howard ultimately became obsessed with the new Manhattan club providing a home to thousands of young and beautiful topless dancers from around the world. Seizing an opportunity for unprecedented publicity, we arranged, to Howard’s glee, for Scores dancers in thongs and bikini tops (or less), to be interviewed, hawked, and coddled on his radio and TV shows several days a week.

  Before long, Scores was a daily topic on the Stern programs. The cast constantly related their remarkable times at the club, and Howard interviewed fawning dancers by the dozen about their lives, their work, their problems, their sexual fantasies, and their lesbian inclinations. All of America soon came to know and to laugh along with Howard’s compulsion to talk about Scores, making the club comfortably familiar to millions of fans. Hardly a night would pass without a customer arriving at the door and inquiring, “Is this the ‘Scores’ Howard Stern talks about all the time?” The Stern tentacles became so pervasive that strangers in airports would stop me and offer to buy my Scores T-shirt right off my back.

  At first, I believed the Stern phenomenon would ebb; Howard would surely grow bored with the club and move on to other comic pursuits. But the contrary became the reality, and Stern’s compulsion with strippers and our lesbians only fueled more frequent and detailed segments about the madness and glory of the club. Thanks to the self-proclaimed “King of All Media,” and without purchasing a single commercial, Scores became the willing and appreciative beneficiary of profound and tantalizing public attention.

  As time went on, the relationship between the club and Stern strengthened. With Howard’s support, a video series titled The Women of Scores, featuring scenes of lesbian love performed at famous city landmarks, was produced and later offered in a joint venture as a cable pay-per-view event. When Stern wrote the sequel to his book Private Parts, its dedication was to the “Women of Scores.”