Confessions of a Strip Club Bouncer

I found this article on Maxim Online. They said it's a true confession of a bouncer who used to work for Scores, the first-class strip club in NYC. I have to admit, it's pretty fascinating!

by Steve “Sonny Coats” Hart as told to Jon Hart

I wasn’t there the night of the murders. I didn’t see the Albanian hit man reach into his jacket, draw his gun, and blow away two of my friends. But while working at Scores, I’ve seen plenty of crazy shit. I watched a magazine executive drop $27,000 in a single night trying to get some extracurricular action from two gorgeous strippers. I’ve seen big-name celebrities drool over the dancers—yeah, I’m talking about you, George Clooney. I’ve seen chair-throwing barroom brawls and mountains of silicone and a small army of well-dressed wiseguys. But the one thing that still haunts me is Ricky.

See, Ricky had a chippy. When you spend as much time in a strip club as I have, you see this all the time: It’s an addiction to a dancer. One dancer. In this case, Maria, a sloe-eyed Hispanic brunette with ready breasts and swivel hips. For 10 weeks running, Ricky, a hot shot in the clothing business, stuffed an endless stream of twenties into her garters for lap dances and whispered promises. One night Ricky came up to me, and I could tell he had something on his mind.

“You know, Sonny,” he said, “I’ve spent $40,000 on this girl, and I haven’t even gotten a fuckin’ blow job.” Now, I genuinely liked Ricky, and seeing him throw his money away made me queasy. I wanted to let him in on the truth: that the strippers were a fantasy, to be seen but not touched and never, ever to be taken home. But telling the truth wasn’t so easy. After all, I was part of the fantasy.

Since 1994, I’ve worked as a bouncer at Scores, a topless club in New York City. When I started, it wasn’t just another two-bit strip club, it was the strip club. This is where Nicolas Cage, Madonna, Ethan Hawke, Mark Wahlberg, and that cheap bastard George Clooney came to party. This is where Demi Moore researched her role for Striptease. Dennis Rodman was a regular; so were Howard Stern and Mickey Rourke.

The Wall Street guys who were pulling down $15 million a year? They were here, too, puffing Cubans on the club’s plush couches, drinking $100 shots, and throwing fistfuls of cash at the strippers for lap dances and maybe a quick peek beneath the G-string. Even the mob guys, who could go anywhere and do anything, made Scores their home.

The place was a circus: In one corner, celebrities might be trading punches; in another, a dancer could be giving a guy a hand job. You never knew what was going to happen—that’s why the customers kept coming. If you were rich and in New York, you came to Scores. You came to Scores for the privilege of having the world’s most beautiful girls take their clothes off for you. You came to Scores for the fantasy.

Welcome to the Scene
I got my job at Scores the old- fashioned way: I knew someone. I’d just gotten out of the joint for selling steroids, and I was flat fucking broke. I was concentrating on my bodybuilding and I was making a little money as a personal trainer, but I needed a job to support my six-year-old son. There was no way in hell I was going to let him down. Scores offered me a part-time gig, and I accepted it on the spot.

Scores wasn’t the first club I’d worked for. At Show World, a sex club in Times Square, I handed out coins so guys could jerk off in peep-show cubicles. For a few bucks I’d turn my back so Joe Schmo could sneak a dancer into a compartment. I also worked at Studio 54. I know what you’re thinking: Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, enough coke to build Frosty the Snowman. It wasn’t like that. During the late ’80s, Studio was on its last legs. The place was serving soda, and 15-year-olds were offering to blow me just to get in. And no, I didn’t. If they were of age, well, that was a different story. What can I say? It was a stressful job.

But Scores was something else. It had the feel of a Vegas casino: no clocks, no windows to let the early-morning sun in, and a register that never stopped ringing. Dance music pumped as beautiful women disrobed everywhere. On a Saturday night, about 125 dancers were on duty and it looked like a Roman orgy…except that all the guys had their clothes on and none of them were particularly Roman. The talent was spectacular. Some of these girls had been Baywatch extras or in Penthouse, and I was working with them, side by side—or closer. I remember taking a dinner break on one of my first nights and having this stripper’s ass come two inches from landing in my linguine. But I couldn’t let my johnson get the best of me. I had a job to do; my son was counting on me.

The Stars Came to Party
My first assignment was to stand in the lobby and ask patrons to check their coats. Actually, it was more of an order than a request. See, anyone who doesn’t check their coat and pay the three-dollar fee is simply not admitted to Scores. Consider it an additional admission charge. Once in a while some guy started to bitch and moan, and I’d tell him to hit the street. You get the picture: Everyone had to check their coat. After about six months, management put me on full-time. I guess they liked the way I convinced patrons to check their coats.

Of course, Demi never had to check her coat. She could do anything she damn well pleased. Scores treated all its celebrity guests like royalty, and the stars liked it that way. But the celebs didn’t always return the favor. One night I did George Clooney the courtesy of telling him that a herd of paparazzi was outside. The guy practically shit a stethoscope; being seen at a strip club could ruin his pretty-boy image. So I told him I’d sneak him out the back door…and he handed me $20. Now, that’s a nice tip for a plumber from Brooklyn, but for Mr. $100,000 an Episode, it’s chump change. So I tipped off my buddy James, a newspaper photographer. He drove right over to the club and shot tightwad George with a zoom lens as he strolled casually out the back. Guess who made the paper the next day.

Clooney wasn’t the only star who wanted to keep his Scores visits a secret. “We weren’t here,” I remember two star players from the Indiana Pacers whispering to me one night. They were sitting in the President’s Club Room, a sort of club-within-the-club where, on occasion, dancers violated house rules by placing a napkin over a customer’s lap, then giving him a hand job. To avoid attention, Howard Stern and his snickering cronies came to the club during off-hours. I know a certain big-name sportscaster—no, not Marv—who spent 10 days straight getting trashed at the club in the company of a $10,000-a-week call girl.

One exception to the I-wasn’t-here rule was Dennis Rodman. Whenever he came to the club, I was assigned to sit with him as he ate dinner and make sure no one hassled him for his autograph. Of course, I was the first one to hit him up. But it was for my son. (No, really.) Dennis was always well behaved, a perfect gentleman, and he tipped me $100 just for sitting there. Of course, if he’d tipped me $150, I wouldn’t be telling you the rumor that a stripper named Peaches knew firsthand why Dennis is called the Worm.

One celebrity who wishes he’d never shown his fat Belgian face at Scores is Jean-Claude Van Damme. He was checking out the action one night, a few tables away from a guy named Chuck Zito. Zito’s a Hells Angel and a successful actor; he’s on that prison TV show Oz. He’s also a friend of the club. Everything’s cool until Van Damme tells a bouncer nicknamed Frankie Cannoli that “Zito has no heart. He’s a punk,” and Cannoli repeats the crack to Chuck. A few minutes later, when Van Damme pulls his face out of Peaches’ crotch, Chuck is standing right there and simply asks, “Did you call me a punk and say I have no heart?” Van Damme is silent, but he slowly removes his wire-rimmed glasses and slides them into his shirt pocket. If you went to Princeton, taking off your glasses means you just finished reading a book. For street guys, it means you’re ready to rumble. Chuck didn’t wait to see what would happen next: He punched Van Damme in the head so fast that the Muscles from Brussels never saw it coming. Cannoli, myself, and a few other bouncers jumped in and held Chuck back as the Hard Target cowered on the floor. Then I asked Van Damme to leave; he was most obliging.

But of all the spoiled celebrity brats who came to Scores, the biggest bonehead had to be Michael Moorer, the former heavyweight champ of the world. Late one night he strolls into the club with a few friends and demands dinner. When someone tells him the kitchen’s closed, Moorer starts raging and storms into the kitchen. To do what, I don’t know. I’m thinking about handing him a frying pan and some meat and telling him to make it himself.

Our head of security, Willie Marshall, has other ideas. Willie’s the toughest guy ever to set foot in Scores. He was a corrections officer; now he was moonlighting as a strong-arm for the mob. So Willie confronts the boxer and tells him to “get the fuck out of the kitchen.” Moorer doesn’t take kindly to those words, and the two square off. I’m standing five feet away from Willie, trying to figure out if Moorer’s buddies are carrying guns. Everyone’s on edge, but I’m a pro and I play it cool. For 30 long seconds, nobody says a word. Finally, Moorer shakes his head, as if to say “You ain’t worth it,” and leaves the club, never turning his back on Willie.

Good Times for Goodfellas
It was a Sunday night and this guy named Sammy was drinking at the bar. I’d seen Sammy at the club before, hanging with his mob buddies, dropping big bills. Tonight, though, none of his pals are around, and he’s drinking alone. He invites me to join him. We’re shooting the shit for a while—he tells me I look like Mark Messier. Fuck, I’m thinking, I must be going bald. Then, out of nowhere, he asks who I’m with. What he’s really asking me is, am I connected to the mob?

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. The wiseguys who frequented the club liked me; they knew I was committed to my son and they respected that. When I greeted them at the front door, they always shook my hand and kissed me on the cheek. They started calling me Sonny Coats, and the name stuck. To be honest with you, I liked the goodfellas. I admired their world of respect and honor, the way they kept their word and took care of business. And there was a lot to be said for their lifestyle: all that cash, all that power. Was Sammy just curious…or was he making me an offer? Either way, I had to think about it. You never want to say the wrong thing to a wiseguy. “For now,” I told him, “I’m with the club. I work under Willie.” He nodded and smiled.

Scores was crawling with mob guys. There were plenty of nights when the place looked like open casting for The Godfather. See, one of the men who owned Scores, Michael Blutrich, a fat 49-year-old lawyer and “businessman,” had an association with the infamous Gambino family from his days in the restaurant business. The way I saw it, Blutrich and the Gambinos struck a deal: The Gambinos made sure Scores wasn’t blown up by a rival family, and Blutrich gave them a cut of the door, parking, and coat check, even let them pick some of the bouncers. In short, they ran the joint. Of course, if Blutrich didn’t go along with them, they might blow the place up themselves. Yeah, I guess technically you could call it extortion, but that’s how business is done in New York City.

Like the celebs, the mob guys were treated like gold. In fact, management didn’t have metal detectors at the door, because they didn’t want to embarrass anyone. Which meant you never knew when a gun was going to be drawn. (One night after closing, Willie’s mob buddies were drinking hard, and one of the guys suddenly reaches over, yanks a lobster out of the tank, pulls out his piece, and shoots it in the freakin’ head.)

It didn’t take me long to learn to spot the wiseguys. They were the ones in the Armani suits, Rolex watches, and slicked-back hair; they always looked great, and they always carried a big roll of bills, a roll that could have paid for my son’s first year of college. It looked like quite a life. The mob guys were comped and paid for nothing. Beyond that, some of the low-level guys had a habit of pocketing cash that was left on other tables, explaining to the waiter that the customer was a friend and that “the bill was on the house.” They’d steal from wealthy assholes like Blutrich, then turn around and lay serious tips on us $500-a-week grunts.

Meet the Muscle
After a year at coat check, I was officially made a bouncer. I was moving up in the world. Scores needed a shitload of bouncers, because its patrons were rich men with massive egos who were used to getting whatever the hell they wanted. Some of my fellow bouncers, like Willie, were heavily connected to the goodfellas; others were simply dumb fellas.

Johnny Rockhead, for instance, was a little brain-dead. Many nights I’d walk through the dining room and see Rockhead engaging a dancer in a stimulating conversation about all the guys he wanted to beat up. Rockhead’s favorite sport was cruising shirtless in his Dodge Dart, drinking a stolen bottle of the club’s Cristal, and looking for hookers. He was always coming down with the clap, which is why he was always schmoozing with one of the many doctors who came to the club. (For plastic surgeons, Scores was the networking opportunity of a lifetime; they’d hand strippers business cards along with the twenties.)

Another bouncer, Cue Ball, aspired to nothing more in life than to sleep with a Scores stripper. The girls knew this and told him that they might screw him if his bald spot wasn’t so big. So for months Cue Ball tried Rogaine, herbs, any fucking thing to grow some hair.

With the hair not growing and the girls not cooperating, Rockhead and Cue Ball turned their efforts to scamming the club. The brain trust decided to print up about $100,000 in Diamond Dollars, funny money that could only be used at Scores. If you were out of cash, the club would take your credit card and sell you scrip at a 20 percent markup. Yeah, that’s a ripoff, but when a blonde is shaking her tits in your face and you’re plastered, it’s not like you wanna walk around the corner to go to the ATM. I’ve seen bigger scams, but for these two it was comparable to the Lufthansa hijacking. Rockhead and Cue Ball were actually able to print the money, but on some of the bills they forgot to duplicate the backs; the plan was foiled in less than 24 hours. Management was pissed, but the wiseguys were absolutely furious. They couldn’t believe they hadn’t been let in on the scam.

They Took It Off
A lot of guys I know tell me they work with beautiful women, but I can say to you with absolute certainty that during the club’s heyday, my coworkers were some of the best-looking women in the world. Because a good dancer could pull down $2,000 a night, the hottest girls from Florida, Las Vegas, L.A., and every Bumfucktown, U.S.A., flocked to Scores.

I’d watch customers happily drop 20, 40, 50 bucks for a three-minute lap dance. They’d sit there trying to look cool, but you could tell that they were fantasizing about living the rest of their lives with Susie or Dallas or Mahogany. Working with the girls, I knew the reality. And 11 times out of 10, it wasn’t pretty. All the girls had phony names—who the hell names their kid Mahogany?—and all of them had the same story: They were supporting a Nintendo-playing deadbeat boyfriend and had come to the club with noble intentions of working for a year, making some quick dough, and buying a home for themselves and their kid. But years later they’d still be taking it off. It was a broken record.

Like everyone else at Scores, they became addicted to the money and the fantasy. It was satisfying to have a powerful Wall Street V.P. drooling over them, dreaming about them; the dancers loved that power. In the dressing room, they were always raggin’ on the guys that were paying them, calling them cheap losers. That pissed me off: I mean, if you hate stripping so much, why don’t you learn to type?

To get through a night of dancing, they often loaded up on booze, maybe did a bump of coke. Once, a former call girl was so fucked up that she got on the stage wearing two different shoes; another time she passed out and pissed on herself. Management didn’t mind that the girls were a little looped. They knew that booze loosened the girls up: Maybe it would allow them to brush their nipple against some guy’s forehead and he’d blow another 100 bucks on two rounds of drinks.

When I started working at Scores, I pledged to myself that I’d never get involved with a Scores girl—but that was before I was sucked into the party atmosphere. Her name was Milena. She had beautiful olive skin, thick black hair, a rock-hard ass, and drugstore tits, and most important, she needed to get off work early one night. The two of us made an agreement: I’d talk to the manager on her behalf, and she’d spend a little time with me in the employees’ bathroom. Her leg was propped up on the sink, my tuxedo pants kept falling to the urine-soaked floor, and we both could hear the guys in the kitchen cursing in Spanish. Not one of my most romantic moments, but fuck it. I can say I screwed a Scores girl and you can’t.

When Shots Rang Out
The fun and games ended on June 21, 1996. Thursday nights were always crowded, because that’s when the Wall Street guys cut loose, but this evening was especially packed. Things didn’t feel right: Maybe the mood was a little too rowdy, maybe the wannabes were drinking more than usual.

Or maybe it was just me. I’d been fasting to prepare for a bodybuilding competition, and I was starting to cramp, so I asked to go home. Jon, a waiter who graduated from a fancy college in Pennsylvania, and Mike, who’d grown up in the Bronx, covered the door. It would be tough to find two guys with more different backgrounds, but they were both good kids.

At 4 a.m. the club closes. Willie and his girlfriend, Lori, are hanging out, having a few drinks before locking up. Jon, Mike, a few of the dancers, and three Albanians reputed to be hit men are there, too. Everything’s pretty low-key until Jon and one of the Albanians start arm wrestling. Jon beats the guy…and then starts laughing. Big mistake. The Albanian lifts Jon up by his shirt. Lori screams, and the Albanian tells her to shut the fuck up. Nobody talks to Willie’s girlfriend like that, and Willie instructs Jon and Mike to show the Albanians the door. As Jon’s unlocking it, according to my friends, one of the Albanians slips his gun from his jacket and, pulls the trigger four times. Jon goes down. Dead. Mike turns to run, but before he can get away, he takes a bullet, too.

Mike’s casket was covered by a Miami Dolphins flower arrangement. His head had been blown off. I was the only club employee to go to the burial. After the service, I returned to Scores. It was 15 minutes after my shift started, and one of the owners, a slimeball prick named Lyle Pfeffer, had the nerve to ask why I was late. That night everyone pretended like nothing had happened.

But it was the beginning of the end. Five months later, federal and state investigators raided the club, looking for evidence against the Gambino crime family. I found out later that the FBI had been onto Scores for months and had even bugged the main office with cameras and mikes. See, in 1994, Blutrich and Pfeffer were caught in an insurance scam; the pair had bilked a Florida insurance company out of about $13 million. Let me spell it out: These greedy ass-wipes stole retirement money from a bunch of old people. Trying to finagle a lighter sentence, they agreed to work under cover for the FBI and help it get indictments against the Gambinos, who were considered bigger fish.

It was January 1998 when the wiseguys started getting pinched. Willie was one of the first; all of Blutrich’s and Pfeffer’s undercover work had nailed him to the wall. And guess what? Willie flipped. Nobody could believe he was a rat. But it was true: Willie was admitting to every misdeed he’d committed since grade school. The cops picked up Johnny Rockhead, too. They found him with a list of the club management and figured it for a hit list.

Suddenly all the goodfellas were staying away; so were the bull-market guys (the accountants were beginning to question the five-figure charges popping up on their corporate credit cards). More and more of the Hard Rock Cafe crowd were filling the club—you know, jokers who hear about it on Howard Stern and come down with 20 friends and about $30 in their pockets. With the big spenders dwindling, many of the hottest girls migrated to other strip joints. And then New York’s mayor went on a maniacal campaign against strip clubs, and new laws meant that strippers had to wear bikinis—tops as well as bottoms—or move shop. You could see more nudity on American Bandstand. Scores found a loophole in the law, thank God, and walled off a topless section with rented theater curtains. Some nights, when I push the curtain back to admit patrons, I feel like I’m working a freak show.

It was about this time that I ran into Sammy again. He hadn’t been at the club for months, but now he was back at the bar, quietly slugging a scotch. He beckoned me over and bought me a drink. “Anyone claimed you yet?” he asked me. When a mob guy “claims” you, that means he’s willing to vouch for you: Essentially, he’s willing to let you into the family. I told him no. And then he put his arm around my shoulders and told me he was willing to claim me. This, of course, is a huge honor. And I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t flattered. I sat there for a minute, thinking about the mob guys I’d seen at the club: all that cash, all the girls, the nice threads, the respect. I took a sip of my drink and I found myself thinking about my son, his favorite video game and the basketball I’d just bought him. Yeah, I liked the wiseguys, and I enjoyed serving them at the club, but at the end of the night, I wasn’t one of them; I went home to my kid. So I set down my drink and turned to Sammy. “I take responsibility for myself,” I said. “And for my son.” He nodded and looked into his scotch. I left Sammy alone at the bar and went to go watch the door.

Editor’s note: Some names have been changed. Michael Blutrich, Lyle Pfeffer, and Willie Marshall are in the federal Witness Protection Program; Scores filed for bankruptcy on October 30, 1998, but remains open and popular.