May I have this $2 Dance?
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NEW YORK, NY Whether the bar is in Corona or Sunset Park, the price is always the same: $2 a dance. Nightspots where men pay to dance are exploding in Central American and Mexican enclaves throughout the city. The dancers, many of whom are single mothers, enter into simple business arrangements with the bars. They take home the dance profits, often more than $100 a night, and the bar owners get more customers through the doors. "Five years ago, there had only been a few places and so the girls charged $5," Brenda, a Mexican immigrant friendly with dancers and waiters, said in Spanish. "Now there are lots of places, muchisimas, in every part of the city. And now they all charge $2." Dancers, aged anywhere between 15 and 50, by day are often students, stay-at-home mothers, and even government employees. But beginning at around 11p.m.they transform into partners-for-hire. Rosa Maria Telles, who is interviewing women working at $2 bars for the Mexican advocacy group Asociacion Tepeyac, estimates there are more than 80 such sites in Queens alone. While the clientele at the bars Ms. Telles has been observing are primarily Mexican, the dancers come from countries all over Latin America. It's all a standard dance club scene, until a song ends. By 11p.m. on Saturday night scores of Hispanic men dressed in T-shirts and jeans were beginning to get drunk at a hazily lit bar in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. About a half dozen women, a full spectrum from ordinary to sexy, sat scattered at tables talking among themselves. The men drank a beer or two before courteously asking a woman to dance. But when the music - mostly bachata and nortena tunes - dimmed, instead of exchanging phone numbers, the men deftly placed two $1 bills into their partners' palms. Ms. Telles blames the spread of the $2 bars on the decline of factory jobs for Hispanic women over the past decade and the challenges facing small businesses after September 11. Others familiar with the bars said their growth has been fueled by an increase in immigrant Latin American men, often with low-levels of education and overwhelmed by new cultural norms. Working long hours at labor jobs, $2 bars provide an easy entrance to socialize with women. Alfredo, an undocumented immigrant working construction, said when he left Mexico City nine months ago he had a girlfriend. Here, he shares a room in Sunset Park with three other young men and suspects his girlfriend has long since forgotten him. Dancing fills the void. Alfredo said he knew of one couple that started at the price of $2 a dance, but he does not expect to find a new girlfriend there. Rather, he is simply willing to spend a good chunk of his week's earnings for a chance to hold a woman in his arms and dance familiar melodies for a night. "Some of the [women] are little like a psychologist," Ms. Telles said, "because many men arrive sad and lonely and then they dance with the women who help just by listening." Rosio, a 21-year-old Mexican immigrant, is one of these women Alfredo dances with at the Sunset Park bar. As Saturday night wore on and the men got drunker, Rosio, dressed demurely in a red sleeveless blouse, silver necklace, and jean shorts with ribbon trimming, continued her easy rhythm on the dance floor. "You set your own limits," she said, flashing a bubbly smile. "I have never had a problem." On a weeknight she said she makes between $30 and $40, on a weekend $60 and $70 - more than the $300 a week she makes at the factory job she does during the day. Others said Rosio's income is suspiciously low. A waiter at a $2 bar in New Rochelle said dancers there will often make more than $100 a night, with women sometimes getting tips of $200 from a customer. Despite the large sums of money, particularly for the more attractive women, he said people respect "house rules." "Sometimes they touch the legs, but generally they only dance," he said in Spanish. "These things are very different, waitress, dancer, and prostitute," Ms. Telles said. But she said with the spread of $2 dancing, the boundaries are increasingly blurred. "It's like a labyrinth," she said, with some immigrant women finding good work and education, "but others ending up in a bar working as a waitress and later as a dancer." |
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