Slideshow of  Lost Angels Chat Group  in Indiana Topless Club when digital photography was almost unknown in strip clubs

I first met Jewels, the brunette on the left in the picture at the Exotic Dancer Topless Club Owners' convention in Las Vegas at the Tropicana Casino and Hotel.  Jewels had accompanied Sam Stimmel who owned the topless club she was working at, Cruisers, which Sam later renamed as Stimmelators.  I had an exhibitor's booth at the adult entertainment trade show and that's how I met Jewels and Sam.  Having to leave one day earlier than my sidekick, Scott Wagner and I, Sam told us he still had a couple of six packs of beer in his rental car and that we could have them.  Sam and I then walked to the ground level of the Tropicana to his car where he gave me the beer he had in the trunk. 

Sam was and is a real rariety in the adult entertainment world.  He is also one of the nicest guys I have ever met.  It wasn't long after Scott and I met Sam that we drove to North Webster to visit his club.  That was around 440 miles from my farm in Illinois where Scott and I lived only three miles from each other.  Back then we were hanging out several times a week at the Dollies Playhouse Strip Club in Washington Park, Illinois (next to East St. Louis) which was 75 miles from my farm, a distance I could easily cover within an hour driving my supercharged Mazda Miata sports car.  In those days Scott was practically living at my farm where we both were putting in 12 hour days working on the alphapro web site. 

That first visit to Cruisers, both Scott and I stayed with Jewels.  After that I'd visit Sam and his Indiana Club many times, which averaged once every six to eight weeks.  But after staying with Jewels a couple of times, I'd stay with Sam rather than one of his dancers. 

The main characters in this slide show are Tornado, who met the rest of our internet group in the Lost Angels chat room who happened to live around fifty miles from the North Webster, Indiana Club, Jewels, Nipples (the blonde in the picture), Brandy who accompanied me from the Dollies Playhouse where she reluctantly stripped for a living, Doc, a friend of mine who used to room with Marriah, the Dollies Playhouse stripper who got me started off shooting pictures for Dollies, and three more Indiana dancers working for Sam:  Katt, Ruby and Marriah (not the same Marriah). 

By this time our Internet Chat Room Group had multiplied.  Brandy, the Dollies dancer, was only 18 or 19 then, but she had a huge talent with computers.  She became a great friend of mine who would accompany me to Cruisers on at least one more occasion.  There she met Heaven, Katt and Marriah.  By this time both Heaven and Katt had become regulars in the Lost Angels chats.  Heaven does not appear in this slideshow, however so she was obviously not working for Sam at this point in time.  Renee who I also call Delirious Delilah does not appear either.   It would turn out that Renee would become my dearest friend out of all the Indiana dancers.  Like Brandy, Renee was a computer whiz kid, but for reasons of her own she never got involved in the Lost Angels Chat group the way Heaven and Katt did.  But as time would go on, Rene and I would get closer and closer. 

Another one of Sam's dancers does not appear in this slide show either.  That's Angie who along with Satin, a Dollies Playhouse dancer friend of mine, would represent my booth at the 1998 Exotic Dancer convention.  Angie  only worked about twice a week for Sam but Sam used to call her the couch queen.  She'd make over $1000 a night and by doing  an awful lot of lap dancers.  I hardly knew Angie until Sam recommended her to me for my booth at the convention.  But as I got to know her at the convention I realized just how much personality Angie had and how she could use it to convince all those customers to buy lapdances from her. 

Meeting Sam Stimmel at the Exotc Dancer Convention at the Tropicana represented a huge step in my becoming national as both a writer and photographer.  I had just gotten the Dollies Playhouse online, was doing a lot of digital photography there, and it wasn't long after that when we got Cruisers online.  We got both clubs into our Lost Angels chats and we had the Indiana and Illinois strippers in our chats everyday.  Then Sam introduced me to Scarlett who owned the Nudes-A-Poppin Pageant.  It wasn't long after I met Scarlett that I convinced her to share a booth with me at the Los Vegas Exotic Dancer Expo.  It was about this time that I started writing for Xtreme Magazine and had started traveling all over the United States shooting Pure Talent's Feature Showcases and shooting digital pictures for hire for clubs across the country. 

But back in 1997-1998 alphapro.com was truly the only game in town.  Aside from Dollies and later on Cruisers, only one club that I knew of had an online presence and that was the Chez Paree in San Francisco.  I am looking at the visa bill I paid back on 3/24/1997 which includes charges in San Francisco I incurred while visiting the Chez Paree in an unsuccessful attempt to get this club onboard with us in the Lost Angels chat room.  Back in those days dancers and regulars from the Chez Paree were using an antiquated text based chat setup called IRC.  I tried to get a couple of the key players in the Chez Paree chat room to get onboard with  digital photography in the Lost Angels chatroom where we could easily put up digital pictures fresh from our digital cameras.  The Irc Chez Paree regulars scoffed at me, telling me among other things that the quality of the pictures coming from digital cameras was a joke and that our chat room had nothing to offer the Chez Paree. 

From the slideshow you will see that the quality of the pictures is less than terrific.  Back then I was using a Kodak DC-40 digital camera that topped off at a resolution of just 740 by 480 pixels.  But back in those days, instant gratification was everything.  The managers over at the Dollies Playhouse and Sam Stimmel thought I was just a wonderful photographer and so did their dancers.  This video shows you exactly what I mean.  The two dancers, Jules and Nipples in particular are having a great time cutting up.  So is the unknown male customer whose face I have masked.  It's obvious that everyone's having a great time in the club.  Digital photography, web sites, and chat rooms that can capture the moment have until now been unknown at clubs like Cruisers.  Everyone who is in this slideshow knows they are on the cutting edge and that their pictures will soon be in front of the whole world.  As for the Chez Paree and its IRC group.  I think they are all long gone.  They and a whole lot of others simply could not envision the future.  As for the past we were the only game in town.