Two dollars per dance add up over the course of a night, especially when the DJ blends several songs together in a matter of minutes. However, as long as customers have the cash on hand to pay, a house of 20 to 30 women — nearly all South American and Caribbean — awaits them at The Flamingo Club in Jackson Heights.
The dressed-up women greet familiar patrons with a kiss on the cheek expecting they’ll ask them to dance or sit and chat, which costs an extra $40 dollars per hour.
The men, mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants from in their early 20s to late 60s, fill the house by ten o’clock on most nights. Under the club’s eight-foot ceilings, music takes the place of any substantial lighting, and mutual eagerness takes the place of discomfort.
Even a flag with the Virgin Mary, a red light pulsating from beneath her breast, feels like a quick moment’s thought to add additional warmth to the space.
The house plays only Latin music, but the songs range from slow and sentimental to fast and up-tempo. Accordingly, the style of dance bounces from Spanish Bolero to Salsa to bumping and grinding. However, that also depends on how far each dancer is willing to let her partner go for the moment.
Jose and Carlos, two cousins from El Salvador, have been coming to The Flamingo for years. Several of the house dancers warmly approached Carlos as he leaned against the bar with a $3 Corona on a recent Saturday night. Jose, the older of the two, stayed over to the side and closer to the bartenders.
“A lot of people come here for different reasons,” said Jose, a superintendent for an office building in Manhattan.
“Some like to dance, some like to watch, and some just want to relax. That guy with the suit and the ponytail is always standing in the middle of the dance floor every time I come. He won’t dance with any of the girls, but he wants them to think he’s important, so he sips his beer out of a whiskey glass.”
“The girls aren’t stupid. They know how the customers think and they pick up on things like that,” said Carlos. “There aren’t too many tricks they haven’t seen by now.”
As one of the dancers explained, the price of $2 a dance fills a large gap for the men who left their families back in their home countries. For others, she admitted, it’s simply a matter
of readily accessible skin and eye candy.
“It’s not quite as risque as a strip club,” said Ruby, a 22-year-old from Jamaica, one of the few non-Latinas, “but I wouldn’t say it’s far below one either. Usually, it never goes past a hand
on one of the girls’ behinds during a dance, especially with the bouncers around. But then, of course, some of the girls end up going home with customers at the end of the night, so that
adds a whole different twist.”
The Flamingo stays open seven days a week from 5 in the evening to 4 in the morning with roughly between 80 and 90 dancers. On busy nights, the price at the door is $5 after 10 and
on other nights there’s no cover at all.
The dancers, however, are employed as independent agents and earn all of their money in hard cash from customers on the spot. Minus a $10 house fee charged at the beginning of the night and a penalty of $10 for every half hour late to work, those working full-time — about fifty hours a week — can make up to $2,000.
In return, The Flamingo’s management enforces a strict dress code for each night.
“On Mondays, the dancers dress up as cowgirls with hats and boots, Tuesdays in lacy pajamas, Wednesdays in bikinis, Thursdays as police women, Fridays in mini skirts, Saturdays in dresses, and Sundays as Catholic schoolgirls,” said Carlos.
“And for all the fun, it’s a lot less stressful than trying to pick up strangers at a regular nightclub. As long as you treat the girls with respect, they’ll treat you the same, and as long as
you have enough money, you’re guaranteed companionship.”
“He likes to dance with a few of them,” added Jose. “Me, I have my family in Queens, so I just come to drink a few beers, look around for an hour or so, and then I go home.”
Most of the dancers are in their 20s and 30s, according to Ruby, but many of them have their own families as well. A few, now in their 40s, have relied on regular customers for income long enough to find comfort in an unpredictable business.
“It’s a fairly easy way to make over $1,000 a week,” said Ruby, who sports relatively plain clothes and no makeup on her nights off. “I have a bachelor’s in Chemistry, but I’ve
already been through that whole cycle of no experience equals no job and no job equals no experience, and it’s really discouraging.
“I only plan to work as a dancer until I can do better on my GREs and get into graduate school for medical research. But I have to admit for the time being, it’s pretty comfortable considering what else is out there.”
