A clip joint or fleshpot is an establishment, usually a
strip club
A strip club is a venue where strippers provide adult entertainment, predominantly in the form of striptease or other Erotic dancing, erotic or exotic dances. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or Bar (establishment), bar style, and can also ...
or
night club
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music.
Nightclubs gener ...
(often claiming to offer
adult entertainment
The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related ...
or
bottle service
Bottle service is the sale of liquor by the bottle in mostly North American lounges and nightclubs.
The purchase of bottle service typically includes a reserved table for the patron's party and mixers of the patron's choice. Bottle service ca ...
) in which customers are tricked into paying far above
market price
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or Financial compensation, compensation given by one Party (law), party to another in return for Good (economics), goods or Service (economics), services. In some situations, the pr ...
s for low-grade goods or services—or sometimes, nothing—in return. Typically, clip joints suggest the possibility of sex, charge inflated prices for watered-down alcoholic drinks, and then throw out customers when they become unwilling or unable to spend more money. The products and services offered may be illegal, allowing the establishment to maintain the scam with little fear of punishment from law enforcement, since its victims cannot report the venue without admitting that they broke the law. Even in situations where no law was broken, victims may be too embarrassed to seek legal recourse.
In the United States, clip joints were widespread during the
national Prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933, and the practice later became outlawed. For instance, the
New York State Liquor Authority
Alcohol laws of New York (or commonly Alcohol Beverage Control Law) are a set of laws specific to manufacturing, purchasing, serving, selling, and consuming alcohol in the state of New York. Combined with federal and local laws, as well as vendor ...
imposes penalties against any licensed premises permitting such conduct. Clip joints still operate openly in some areas of the world, such as
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
,
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
,
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
and
Kabukichō
Kabukichō ( ja, 歌舞伎町, , ) is an entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Kabuki-chō is the location of many host and hostess clubs, love hotels, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, and is often called the "Sleepless Town" (, , ...
, where they prey on visiting tourists.
Description
A typical scenario involves a beautiful woman (typically either a local or claiming to be) who approaches the "mark", typically
a young adult male tourist, and recommends a "favorite local" bar or club.
Alternatively, a clip joint employee waits near a legitimate club, and invites passing pedestrians into a
VIP
A very important person or personage (VIP or V.I.P.) is a person who is accorded special privileges due to their high social status, influence or importance. The term was not common until sometime after World War 2 by RAF pilots.
Examples incl ...
area of the clip joint. The potential customers are led to believe that the person works for the nearby club, though they may not explicitly say so. The man is usually seated at a table and joined by a "hostess", who may or may not order drinks.
Whether or not any "services" are performed or drinks are ordered has little bearing on the outlandish bill received at the end of the night. Bills are commonly hundreds of, if not over a thousand, dollars, listing items like a "hostess fee" or "
service charge
A fee is the price one pays as remuneration for rights or services. Fees usually allow for overhead, wages, costs, and markup. Traditionally, professionals in the United Kingdom (and previously the Republic of Ireland) receive a fee in contra ...
" that were not originally mentioned to the customer. The arrival of the bill typically corresponds with the arrival of a few large
bouncer
A bouncer (also known as a doorman or door supervisor) is a type of security guard, employed at venues such as bars, nightclubs, cabaret clubs, stripclubs, casinos, hotels, billiard halls, restaurants, sporting events, schools, concerts, or m ...
s to ensure payment, sometimes leading the victim to an
ATM to retrieve the money.
The beautiful woman who originally lured the mark to the location often makes an excuse and leaves prior to the arrival of the bill. If confronted, the establishment claims that they have no connection with the woman and indicates that she arrived with the man, and as such the man is responsible for all of the items on the bill.
Once inside, drinks are usually non-alcoholic (as the venues usually do not have a license) or watered down and overpriced with no prices listed on the menu. Unrequested companions may also arrive at the table.
This scam is in a legal "gray area" if
extortion
Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, ...
is not explicitly involved, since there is no law against charging high prices and the customer is primarily responsible for determining the prices of services to be rendered before accepting them.
In the United Kingdom
![Police clip joint warning (3046251754)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Police_clip_joint_warning_%283046251754%29.jpg)
A number of clip joints (or "
near beer
Low-alcohol beer is beer with little or no alcohol content and aims to reproduce the taste of beer while eliminating (or at least reducing) the inebriating effects of standard alcoholic brews. Most low-alcohol beers are lagers, but there are some ...
bars") still operate in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
's
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
area, alongside legitimate strip bars. Since 2007, the London Local Authorities Act reclassified clip joints as sex establishments, meaning that they required relevant licences, closing a loophole where these businesses did not need a licence to operate because they did not serve food or alcohol or provide entertainment.
In 2009, two people were jailed for 36 and 14 months respectively after threatening an undercover police officer in a Soho clip joint.
In Japan
"Bottakuri" or rip-off clubs have been a small but persistent problem in Japan, especially Tokyo's
Kabukicho district. The complaints had surged tenfold in 2015 and police have begun crack-downs.
In a mid-2015 sweep by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, six
hostess club
A hostess club is a type of night club found primarily in Japan. They employ primarily female staff and cater to men seeking drinks and attentive conversation. The modern host club is a similar type of establishment where primarily male staff atte ...
s were found to have charged as much as 2.6 Million yen (~US$26000) for one evening's visit by nine male customers.
There have been some reports of bottakuri operating in
Akihabara
is a common name for the area around Akihabara Station in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, Japan. Administratively, the area called Akihabara mainly belongs to the and Kanda-Sakumachō districts in Chiyoda. There exists an administrative district ca ...
under the guise of
maid café
are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants found predominantly in Japan. In these cafés, waitresses, dressed in maid costumes, act as servants, and treat customers as masters (and mistresses) in a private home, rather than as café patrons. The f ...
s rather than hostess bars.
Bottle service clubs
The Manhattan
bottle service
Bottle service is the sale of liquor by the bottle in mostly North American lounges and nightclubs.
The purchase of bottle service typically includes a reserved table for the patron's party and mixers of the patron's choice. Bottle service ca ...
club Arena was sued in 2007 for their version of the clip joint scam. In December 2007, a patron knowingly purchased a $350 bottle of vodka, but was not told of a three-bottle minimum. At the end of the night, he was presented with a $1050 tab that included two unordered bottles. When he refused to pay, the Arena bouncers beat him up. The patron agreed to get money from an ATM, but after the bouncers escorted him two blocks to a machine, his debit card was declined. The bouncers then dragged him back to the bar, where he was held until police arrived. He was arrested for theft of services but the charges were dismissed, and he later sued the club for $2 million.
Cultural references
The 1937
crime film
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...
''
Marked Woman
''Marked Woman'' is a 1937 American dramatic crime film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, with featured performances by Lola Lane, Isabel Jewell, Rosalind Marquis, Mayo Methot, Jane Bryan, Eduardo Ciannelli and ...
'', starring Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, portrays a clip joint. Other films featuring clip joints include ''
Manpower
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...
'', ''
Lullaby of Broadway'', ''
The Asphalt Jungle
''The Asphalt Jungle'' is a 1950 American film noir heist film directed by John Huston. Based on the 1949 novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett, it tells the story of a jewel robbery in a Midwestern city. The film stars Sterling Hayden and Lo ...
'' and ''
Porky's
''Porky's'' is a 1981 sex comedy film written and directed by Bob Clark about the escapades of teenagers in 1954 at the fictional Angel Beach High School in Florida. The film influenced many writers in the teen film genre and spawned two sequels: ...
''.
''
The Fabulous Clipjoint
''The Fabulous Clipjoint'', first published in book form in 1947 (originally published under the title ''Dead Man's Indemnity'' in Mystery Book magazine, April 1946), is the first full-length novel by writer Fredric Brown, who had honed his cr ...
'' is the first novel by science fiction and mystery writer
Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer.D. J. McReynolds, "The Short Fiction of Fredric Brown" in Frank N. Magill, (ed.) ''Survey of Science Fiction Literature'', Vol. 4 ...
.
In
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thre ...
' ''
Streetcar Named Desire
''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of person ...
'', in the opening scene, a sailor is warned against visiting the Four Deuces as it is a clip joint.
References
External links
Soho clip joints ''New York Post''
''The Guardian'', 29 February 2004, accessed 16 September 2006
Bottle Club Patron Roughed Up Gothamist
{{Scams and confidence tricks
Confidence tricks
Extortion