This article was published more than 2 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current. Fluctuating commodity prices have sent workers home from the oil sands left and right. And that disposable income — the wallets opened wide to buy rounds of private dances and overpriced drinks — has all but dried up with the layoffs. The club barely survived this past winter. Bachelor-party season has provided a boost through the summer months, but Ms.
Tew is dreading the cool weather. Cotton Club manager Jacquie Tew pulls open the curtains before opening. The pared-back disposable income of blue-collar workers — and not just from the oil patch — is just one of the many broad, long-term factors contributing to the near-complete demise of the Canadian strip club.
In the face of urban gentrification, online entertainment and shifting cultural tastes, these are dying institutions. Once a staple of afterwork — and even midday — distraction, venues such as the Cotton Club have disappeared from several major cities, and even entire provinces, across Canada. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island both became strip-club free this year.
Yukon and Nunavut have no permanent strip clubs, and in Saskatchewan they have long been outright banned. But even border towns such as Windsor, Ont. John, and such big cities as Toronto and Montreal are feeling a chill. Such clubs occupy a blurry role in our modern world. In addition to the lonely and the lecherous, and even the giggly voyeurs, strip clubs have long served as go-to spots for businessmen holding lunches and client meetings, sometimes even on the company card.
In part reflecting those same shifting sensibilities, politicians at various levels have added their weight to the anti-stripping pile-on. Increasingly, city councils have been fighting what they see as a blight on the urban landscape by toughening adult-entertainment licensing rules — even as new, more controversial, forms of sexual escapism continue to pop up.
