KUDOS TO DK

"how's your titty, honey?" says Don King, after checking the caller ID on his phone.

King, general manager of the topless bar, The Yellow Rose, is inquiring after the health of one of his friends, an exotic dancer who's just had surgery where, well, a lot of dancers have surgery. It's Sunday afternoon at P.F. Chang's, and King is enjoying a glass of red wine while he watches the Dallas Cowboys game on a small portable television. He deserves a quiet afternoon, considering that King spends at least five nights a week ensuring that The Yellow Rose continues to top the city's list of liquor sales.
It might sound like a fantasy job - working with scores of women clad in high heels and thongs - but the reality is that it's still a job. And like the women who dance in Austin's clubs, the men who run them come to their jobs through very different paths.
King is 50, but looks younger, in part due to the graying ponytail that hangs down his back. He's been managing topless clubs in Austin for over 20 years and has seen it all. King studied management at Texas State University for three years before leaving school. After working in a couple of regular bars in Austin, he started at his first strip club, Lil' Abner's, which used to be on the corner of 45th Street and Lamar Boulevard in the 1970s.
"It was all the things people envision [as] the worst things about topless clubs. Fights, banditos, thugs," he says. "Back then, you didn't see students that would dance once or twice a week. You saw single mothers with two kids, addicts supporting their habits, stuff like that. And I watched it evolve."
King helped open The Yellow Rose 23 years ago, then moved to Sugar's, another topless club in north Austin, and returned to The Yellow Rose about eight years ago. He credits The Yellow Rose with the changing landscape of the club scene in Austin.
King asks the bartender at P.F. Chang's what a good lunch shift is for her.
About $75 for a good shift - considerably less than what he says his dancers can earn.
Not your 9-to-5 kinda job
Take the worst period you've ever had and multiply it across 20 women at once, is what Art Thompson, the day-shift manager at The Landing Strip in southeast Austin, told one female friend about what it's like to work with the women.
"I try to deal with it with a sense of humor," Thompson says. "You have to make sure the girls stay in a good mood and stay happy and everything."
It's clear the dancers at The Landing Strip like their boss.
"They'll tell you how much they hate me," he jokes, while two dancers stand smiling with their arms around him.
Thompson began working in bars when he was 14 years old. He forwent higher education for a career in the business, working in his first strip club in Chicago, moving to Austin in 1990 and eventually working at Expose. He's been in his current position at The Landing Strip for four years now, and says he credits the smooth running of his club to a group of solid employees, including his wait staff, bartenders and DJs.
"Anybody in this club will do anything, and they'll do it not out of fear of losing their job, but out of the fact that I instill a certain kind of atmosphere," Thompson says. "It's not one person's job; it's everybody's job. I'll get out there and clean up puke before I'll ask someone else to do it."
For Scott Stevenson, who manages the day shift at Palazio, it's important to keep up his dancers' morale.
"Sometimes you listen to their problems," he says. "Or you buy them their lunch, or you might buy them a drink, or you know, just tell them how nice they look that day."
Stevenson is tall, blond and clean-cut, looking every bit the former rugby player that he is, instead of a manager at the city's newest topless club. He came to the club scene by accident. While studying business management at Texas State University, some of his friends who worked at the Show Palace, the nude club which previously occupied the Palazio building, encouraged him to apply for a job.
"I didn't come in with any expectations of what it might be," he says. "It was more money than I thought I would make, which was a good plus."
Stevenson says he tries to balance the needs of his customers and his dancers.
"I try to spend it 50-50," he says. "You want to spend a lot of time with the customers, but you don't want to ignore your dancers, because they're the reason the customers are here and the reason I have a job."
Thompson says he appreciates his club's regulars, comparing the daytime atmosphere at The Landing Strip to Cheers. But he has a little less tolerance for those who think they're high rollers.
"You have to know which ones you can treat like buddies and which ones you have to treat like professional customers," he says. "They are, for lack of a better word, the snotty ones."
And for customers like those, Thompson has quick comebacks.
"When I hear somebody say, 'Don't you know who I am?' my favorite rebuttal is, 'No, did you forget?'"
King can open up his phone and look at the numbers of hundreds, if not thousands, of customers.
"I know every single person in here," he says, scrolling through pages of names and numbers. "I don't even consider them regulars; I consider them friends who come up to my house a lot."
King's strategy has been effective, and he's not shy about his success.
"When I ran the Rose for eight years, all the downtown club people used to go the Rose," he says. "As soon as I went to Sugar's, they all went to Sugar's. Soon as I quit Sugar's, they all came back to The Yellow Rose."
Not your typical boss
The Yellow Rose, and strip clubs in general, have seen their appeal broaden over the years, King says. Now it's not only women who work in the clubs; they also attend as patrons, and managers seem happy to welcome them. Thompson has even performed what he calls a "mock table dance" for one of his female patrons.
"We have couples that come in, and I've remembered their anniversary," he says.
Women are eager to come to clubs now, King said, though some clubs still won't allow unescorted women.
"It took women a really long time to fully appreciate how wonderful women are, and now they all love each other," he says. "They all want dances. It's fun to watch."
The atmosphere of the clubs is more welcoming to women and couples than in the past, Stevenson said, and it can provide all customers with an opportunity to relax.
"I think it gives men, even some women, a place to come and be uninhibited," he says. "You can come and have a drink, eat great food, enjoy yourself, be waited on, be treated like a king, be treated like a queen, and you don't have to worry about outside."
All of these managers acknowledge the nature of their job can be stressful for the women they work with, and they all are open for impromptu counseling sessions in their offices.
"You're their counselor and their father and their brother," Stevenson says. "All these things and their friend combined into one."
King says he feels a similar, almost familial affection for the women he's worked with.
"They become a morph of my little sister, my girlfriend, my daughter," he says. "I'm really concerned about who they're dating, if they're getting treated right."
Thompson says significant others can be a prominent problem for a lot of his employees.
And he'll hear about it all.
"Most of my girls know they can come to me with just about anything," he says.
Hard to explain to your girlfriend
But the managers admit, they've all dated dancers and co-workers at some point.
"If you're in this industry, you're bound and determined you're going to date one of them and learn your lesson," Thompson says.
For Stevenson, it worked out well. He has a child with a woman he met while working at The Show Palace, and they've been together for nearly four years. Stevenson said he was warned about dating dancers when he began working at the club.
"I ended up doing it anyway, and it's been good for me," he says. "It worked out in my case."
And it can also be difficult to date women outside the industry, Stevenson says, because many people react negatively when they hear what he does.
"I would always tell them, and they'd just kind of look at you and kind of walk away," he says. "I dated a girl who wasn't in the business for a couple of years, and it was difficult for her because of my late hours, and I'm surrounded by a bunch of women, so it ended up not working out."
King has encountered problems on both sides of the dating fence.
"I haven't had [a relationship] for a long time; my last one damn near cured me," says King. "It really got in the way of my job."
He was speaking of a girl he met at work. It gets even more difficult outside of the club, he says.
"It would be hard for somebody to date me, knowing that every night I've got 100 girls that work for me with their clothes off in the club."
But despite appearances, flirting with the employees is just part of the job, Stevenson says, something that he might do casually to compliment a dancer. Thompson relies on humor, but with the same end in mind.
"Everyone wants to feel important; everybody wants to feel special," he says. "The girl's job is, for every guy who walks in the door, to make them feel special. And my job is to make them both feel special, the customer and the dancer."
The unique challenges of working in the industry have an appeal that has kept Thompson and King in for years.
For King, it's the socialization and stimulation.
"It's just like throwing a party every night," he says. "It's good to see people all the time."
Thompson says he likes that his days are never alike, and says he can't picture himself doing anything else.
"Growing up and doing it for so long, it gets in your blood," Thompson says.

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Media Credit: Brian Ray

Art Thompson, left, works as the manager of The Landing Strip, on South U.S. Highway 183.

Media Credit: Brian Ray

Right, Don King, the owner of The Yellow Rose, poses by his Nissan 350Z.

Media Credit: Jennifer Jansons

Scott Stevenson is the daytime manager at the Palazio at 501 E. Ben White Blvd.

"how's your titty, honey?" says Don King, after checking the caller ID on his phone.

King, general manager of the topless bar, The Yellow Rose, is inquiring after the health of one of his friends, an exotic dancer who's just had surgery where, well, a lot of dancers have surgery. It's Sunday afternoon at P.F. Chang's, and King is enjoying a glass of red wine while he watches the Dallas Cowboys game on a small portable television. He deserves a quiet afternoon, considering that King spends at least five nights a week ensuring that The Yellow Rose continues to top the city's list of liquor sales.

It might sound like a fantasy job - working with scores of women clad in high heels and thongs - but the reality is that it's still a job. And like the women who dance in Austin's clubs, the men who run them come to their jobs through very different paths.

King is 50, but looks younger, in part due to the graying ponytail that hangs down his back. He's been managing topless clubs in Austin for over 20 years and has seen it all. King studied management at Texas State University for three years before leaving school. After working in a couple of regular bars in Austin, he started at his first strip club, Lil' Abner's, which used to be on the corner of 45th Street and Lamar Boulevard in the 1970s.

"It was all the things people envision [as] the worst things about topless clubs. Fights, banditos, thugs," he says. "Back then, you didn't see students that would dance once or twice a week. You saw single mothers with two kids, addicts supporting their habits, stuff like that. And I watched it evolve."

King helped open The Yellow Rose 23 years ago, then moved to Sugar's, another topless club in north Austin, and returned to The Yellow Rose about eight years ago. He credits The Yellow Rose with the changing landscape of the club scene in Austin.

King asks the bartender at P.F. Chang's what a good lunch shift is for her.

About $75 for a good shift - considerably less than what he says his dancers can earn.

Not your 9-to-5 kinda job

Take the worst period you've ever had and multiply it across 20 women at once, is what Art Thompson, the day-shift manager at The Landing Strip in southeast Austin, told one female friend about what it's like to work with the women.

"I try to deal with it with a sense of humor," Thompson says. "You have to make sure the girls stay in a good mood and stay happy and everything."

It's clear the dancers at The Landing Strip like their boss.

"They'll tell you how much they hate me," he jokes, while two dancers stand smiling with their arms around him.

Thompson began working in bars when he was 14 years old. He forwent higher education for a career in the business, working in his first strip club in Chicago, moving to Austin in 1990 and eventually working at Expose. He's been in his current position at The Landing Strip for four years now, and says he credits the smooth running of his club to a group of solid employees, including his wait staff, bartenders and DJs.

"Anybody in this club will do anything, and they'll do it not out of fear of losing their job, but out of the fact that I instill a certain kind of atmosphere," Thompson says. "It's not one person's job; it's everybody's job. I'll get out there and clean up puke before I'll ask someone else to do it."

For Scott Stevenson, who manages the day shift at Palazio, it's important to keep up his dancers' morale.

"Sometimes you listen to their problems," he says. "Or you buy them their lunch, or you might buy them a drink, or you know, just tell them how nice they look that day."

Stevenson is tall, blond and clean-cut, looking every bit the former rugby player that he is, instead of a manager at the city's newest topless club. He came to the club scene by accident. While studying business management at Texas State University, some of his friends who worked at the Show Palace, the nude club which previously occupied the Palazio building, encouraged him to apply for a job.

"I didn't come in with any expectations of what it might be," he says. "It was more money than I thought I would make, which was a good plus."

Stevenson says he tries to balance the needs of his customers and his dancers.

"I try to spend it 50-50," he says. "You want to spend a lot of time with the customers, but you don't want to ignore your dancers, because they're the reason the customers are here and the reason I have a job."

Thompson says he appreciates his club's regulars, comparing the daytime atmosphere at The Landing Strip to Cheers. But he has a little less tolerance for those who think they're high rollers.

"You have to know which ones you can treat like buddies and which ones you have to treat like professional customers," he says. "They are, for lack of a better word, the snotty ones."

And for customers like those, Thompson has quick comebacks.

"When I hear somebody say, 'Don't you know who I am?' my favorite rebuttal is, 'No, did you forget?'"

King can open up his phone and look at the numbers of hundreds, if not thousands, of customers.

"I know every single person in here," he says, scrolling through pages of names and numbers. "I don't even consider them regulars; I consider them friends who come up to my house a lot."

King's strategy has been effective, and he's not shy about his success.

"When I ran the Rose for eight years, all the downtown club people used to go the Rose," he says. "As soon as I went to Sugar's, they all went to Sugar's. Soon as I quit Sugar's, they all came back to The Yellow Rose."

Not your typical boss

The Yellow Rose, and strip clubs in general, have seen their appeal broaden over the years, King says. Now it's not only women who work in the clubs; they also attend as patrons, and managers seem happy to welcome them. Thompson has even performed what he calls a "mock table dance" for one of his female patrons.

"We have couples that come in, and I've remembered their anniversary," he says.

Women are eager to come to clubs now, King said, though some clubs still won't allow unescorted women.

"It took women a really long time to fully appreciate how wonderful women are, and now they all love each other," he says. "They all want dances. It's fun to watch."

The atmosphere of the clubs is more welcoming to women and couples than in the past, Stevenson said, and it can provide all customers with an opportunity to relax.

"I think it gives men, even some women, a place to come and be uninhibited," he says. "You can come and have a drink, eat great food, enjoy yourself, be waited on, be treated like a king, be treated like a queen, and you don't have to worry about outside."

All of these managers acknowledge the nature of their job can be stressful for the women they work with, and they all are open for impromptu counseling sessions in their offices.

"You're their counselor and their father and their brother," Stevenson says. "All these things and their friend combined into one."

King says he feels a similar, almost familial affection for the women he's worked with.

"They become a morph of my little sister, my girlfriend, my daughter," he says. "I'm really concerned about who they're dating, if they're getting treated right."

Thompson says significant others can be a prominent problem for a lot of his employees.

And he'll hear about it all.

"Most of my girls know they can come to me with just about anything," he says.

Hard to explain to your girlfriend

But the managers admit, they've all dated dancers and co-workers at some point.

"If you're in this industry, you're bound and determined you're going to date one of them and learn your lesson," Thompson says.

For Stevenson, it worked out well. He has a child with a woman he met while working at The Show Palace, and they've been together for nearly four years. Stevenson said he was warned about dating dancers when he began working at the club.

"I ended up doing it anyway, and it's been good for me," he says. "It worked out in my case."

And it can also be difficult to date women outside the industry, Stevenson says, because many people react negatively when they hear what he does.

"I would always tell them, and they'd just kind of look at you and kind of walk away," he says. "I dated a girl who wasn't in the business for a couple of years, and it was difficult for her because of my late hours, and I'm surrounded by a bunch of women, so it ended up not working out."

King has encountered problems on both sides of the dating fence.

"I haven't had [a relationship] for a long time; my last one damn near cured me," says King. "It really got in the way of my job."

He was speaking of a girl he met at work. It gets even more difficult outside of the club, he says.

"It would be hard for somebody to date me, knowing that every night I've got 100 girls that work for me with their clothes off in the club."

But despite appearances, flirting with the employees is just part of the job, Stevenson says, something that he might do casually to compliment a dancer. Thompson relies on humor, but with the same end in mind.

"Everyone wants to feel important; everybody wants to feel special," he says. "The girl's job is, for every guy who walks in the door, to make them feel special. And my job is to make them both feel special, the customer and the dancer."

The unique challenges of working in the industry have an appeal that has kept Thompson and King in for years.

For King, it's the socialization and stimulation.

"It's just like throwing a party every night," he says. "It's good to see people all the time."

Thompson says he likes that his days are never alike, and says he can't picture himself doing anything else.

"Growing up and doing it for so long, it gets in your blood," Thompson says.