TBT: Does Portland Really Have the Most Strip Clubs?
("Dr. Know," May 2013)
I always hear that Portland has the most strip clubs of any city in the US—or at least the most per capita. Are either of these claims even slightly true?
—Statistically Curious
I don’t want to alarm you, Curious, but in the run-up to last year’s1 Republican National Convention, I saw several news stories that mentioned Tampa—yes, Tampa—as the “strip bar capital of America.”
While grizzled fixtures like myself have been hearing the “most strip bars per capita” statistic about Portland since you were just a gleam in the mailman’s eye, in all these years I have yet to see a citation. (Unless you count the one I got for indecent exposure during Fleet Week in 1994.)
Could this be one of those titles that every city claims? You know, like “worst drivers,” or “most changeable weather,” or “smuggest baristas?”
To find out, I headed to Devil’s Point, where I sat for an hour watching the show and discreetly zapping my genitals with a pocket taser. Then I went home and got on the Internet.
The good news: no lesser a light than Politifact refutes Tampa’s claim. The bad news: they put Tampa at #3, behind Las Vegas and Cincinnati.
Luckily, these rankings are for all adult businesses—and while Cincinnati may have us beat on jack shacks, according to The Ultimate Strip Club List (TUSCL) their strip club total is risible.
As a user-maintained reviews site (think Yelp for people whose pants are stuck to their leg), TUSCL may not be comprehensive. Still, they had every Portland strip club I could think of, which is a lot.
And Portland, with one strip club for every 9578 residents, is indeed the leader among the 50 largest U.S. cities, narrowly edging Tampa’s 10,813 and blowing Las Vegas’ 33,002 out of the water. Myth confirmed.
That would have been the one in 2012, back when we thought Mitt Romney would be the worst thing that could ever happen to America.