All Clubs are Not the Same!

[JustAskJulie]

After reading the most recent review for one of the Ohio clubs - which you can read here, all it did was make me think, how much our expectations affect our enjoyment of things.

The moral of their review - always do your research and never assume that every club is like the ONE you go to regularly... or even that clubs in other parts of the country are anything like the ones (multiple) in your area. If the club doesn't have a website that details what they offer and what you should expect, call them and ask them. Ask them if they have/ don't have things that you are used to seeing.

I find this review sad in several ways... would the couple posting it have even visited this club had they known what to expect? Had they known what to expect would they have enjoyed themselves more? Have they since visited other clubs to find that the club they were basing their expectations on is the exception rather than the norm?

[Chicup]

I have never checked out the club reviews before, but one of the most positive reviews of that club, glowing in fact, only has one post on the board. Always makes me wonder

That aside, I'm not sure what you are sad about. Sad that they made the review or sad that they had a bad time?

Unless someone you know went there you won't really have a good idea. No club is going to say 'We cater to unattractive white trash' when you talk to them and a review is only as good as the reviewer. The person writing the review may well be a host, or maybe even owner of a rival club looking to get at the competition.

For example there is another club listed that we haven't been too but our friends have. They described it as full of creepy single guys that follow you around. Now reading the reviews of this club I can see that this is the case based on what they told us their experience was like but had we not talk to them prior odds are I would have looked at the reviews more positively and been disappointed when we got there.

[JustAskJulie]

I find it sad that people would visit a club and not research it first, but rather just go assuming that it's just like the other club they have visited.

And yes, you are right they may well be a host or owner of a rival club (which is a whole different issue), and that's a whole different issue. My problem isn't with the review itself but with someone basing their EXPECTATIONS of one club on a visit to a different club.

As far as the reviews being by people who don't post to the forums.... as I've posted in another thread... this site has many different sections and it's pretty typical that people who participate in one area don't necessarily participate in another. We have a chat room that very few people from the forums visit... but many others who don't use the forums are regulars there. Many people use the club reviews and listings to find clubs to visit, but they may not be involved in the forums or the chat. And a whole different contingency of people hang out in the Swinger Stories section, posting stories and/or comments to stories without ever visiting any other area of the site. This site is a LOT more than just the forums.

[SW_PA_Couple]

Sheet cake on a fold-up picnic table? People having gaps in their smiles? A 350 lb. guy? We got that one beat. How about a 350 lb guy and his 350 lb. wife both dressed in Holloween costumes? We were so spooked we left our still-full bottle of Absolute at the so-called bar and exited through the back door, which we later learned set off an alarm and called the local fire department. We are not going to identify the place. We've learned to not tell on people or places. I once told this whole story in three-part harmony at a private party. Everbody, as it turns out, was enormously amused except the hostess, who happend to be an aquaintance of the club owners. We were never invited to their house again.

Live and learn.

Michael

P.S. Don't worry about accidentally stumbling into this place. It's long ago closed.

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by JustAskJulie

And yes, you are right they may well be a host or owner of a rival club (which is a whole different issue), and that's a whole different issue. My problem isn't with the review itself but with someone basing their EXPECTATIONS of one club on a visit to a different club.

I believe you're right about the expectations being the key aspect here.

The fact is, any club owner is able to claim his club is a "swingers" one.

Where I live there are no restrictions about selling alcohol and/or in place sexual activities, so what makes a club an on-premise one is the availability of facilities, and all the clubs manage to provide them.

Even more, there are several clubs or discotheques with those facilities, where recreational public sex is allowed. I guess, that would make them non-swinger on-premise clubs, and they don't advertise themselves as a swinger's place (even when some of them host parties for the swinger's community from time to time, i.e., a swinger's printed magazine with a website holding a community renting the facilities to make a greet and meet).

What seems to make the difference between "swingers" and "non swingers" clubs would be an etiquette code devised to protect the couple's interests. Yet, it happend for a couple of clubs advertised as "swinger clubs" that they didn't have those etiquette codes, being just brothels devised to attract males (curiously, either they adopted those codes or stop advertising themselves as swinger's clubs).

Now, I know the activities deemed as illegal varies from place to place, and this legal frame forces the shape of many clubs, what can be done and how they can be advertised, but the legal frame isn't enough for us to "convalidate" a club as a "swingers" one.

As for us, before going to a club we've meet the swinger's community in the web, mostly in chat rooms, and this gave us the chance to 1) tell appart the serious players from the fakers, and 2) ask the serious players about their standars, the motivation supporting them, what to expect from a club, along with their club's reviews.

However, what's hard to find out is an set of standards devised explicitly by the swingers community. It does exist an "informal" guideline or etiquette code, but most club's just "copy and paste" them from the next one, and you don't know if they're really up to enforce them.

Without those standards, it is hard for people, moreover without a previous experience or the chance to compare places, to know what they should expect, or to make an objective review.

Perhaps it'd be nice to have a thread devoted to discuss those standards, without focusing in a particular club, and make a link to it from the Club Listing & Review section.

[JustAskJulie]

Originally Posted by sereneiders

However, what's hard to find out is an set of standards devised explicitly by the swingers community. It does exist an "informal" guideline or etiquette code, but most club's just "copy and paste" them from the next one, and you don't know if they're really up to enforce them.

Without those standards, it is hard for people, moreover without a previous experience or the chance to compare places, to know what they should expect, or to make an objective review.

Perhaps it'd be nice to have a thread devoted to discuss those standards, without focusing in a particular club, and make a link to it from the Club Listing & Review section.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you talking "standards" as in the general rules of a club (ie. No means no... which all clubs list but not all clubs enforce), or the standards as in what club should be like (clean, etc).

What we are dealing with in this review isn't a rules type thing, so much as a couple who typically goes to a club with one type of setup (very upscale, bar that keeps your liquor and serves you drinks from it, a gourmet buffet dinner provided, etc) going to another club in a different state expecting to see those same things - ONLY because it's what they were used to at the one and only club they had been to.

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by JustAskJulie

I'm not sure I follow. Are you talking "standards" as in the general rules of a club (ie. No means no... which all clubs list but not all clubs enforce), or the standards as in what club should be like (clean, etc).

What we are dealing with in this review isn't a rules type thing, so much as a couple who typically goes to a club with one type of setup (very upscale, bar that keeps your liquor and serves you drinks from it, a gourmet buffet dinner provided, etc) going to another club in a different state expecting to see those same things - ONLY because it's what they were used to at the one and only club they had been to.

Preciselly, what a club states as standards to be a "swingers" one is to stick to those rules. Beisdes telling how much the club encourages those rules, there's nothing else to review about those.

There are several possible "styles" for swinger's clubs, the first obvious devision is whether they're on or off premise, but others deppends on the facilities they had and the service they provide.

What it seems to me we lack is a guideline (or a "standard") to tell whether a service of facillity meets the requreimients, first to be able to reasure a club's claim about providing a service is the truth, and second as to measure the service quality.

For example, a club may claim they have isolated rooms to play. What does this mean? What is what we, swingers, would say meet the requirements for a room to be confortable enough to play as to support such a claim. There are hygiene concerns to take into account? It is a room with a door the same than a room isolated by a curtain? There are measures taken to prevent some unwanted witness to open the door or peek trough the curtain?

We're the ones that should devise a terminology for the clubs to adopt to describe their services and facilities, in such a way that a review could be reduced to how honest (how much they stick to the "standards") they are about their claims, and to provide a more affrodable way to define our own expectations about the clubs.

Following the example and supposing we already have such a terminology, a club would be able to claim "we have door isolated rooms that we clean after each use" or "we have curtain isolated rooms that we clean before opening". For this to happen, clubs owners should feel it's so important to meet a terminology when describing the services and to commit to what they advertise based on those terms, as it is to enforce the etiquette rules everyone already know, so becoming a de facto standard regarding the attendants behavior. The underlined words in the example would be those terms, as described and reproduced by the swinger's community in their websites and publications.

For something like this to be achievable, we need to start discussing the subject and proposing definitions for such a terminology.

[JustAskJulie]

Originally Posted by sereneiders

For something like this to be achievable, we need to start discussing the subject and proposing definitions for such a terminology.

It would take a lot more than just a discussion on our part. That requires a lot from the clubs themselves. It's hard enough to get the clubs to provide their club info to begin with. Most of the information you are talking about the clubs don't even provide on their own website let alone would they provide it here. The only way to make that happen would be to make the club submission process so laborious that clubs would be even less likely to take the time to list their clubs.

I agree with what you are saying (as that was really my point) that reviews should be based on what the clubs promise not on how they necessarily compare to another club (that may or may not even be of a similar style).

[good times]

We have been to a half dozen clubs or so and I have come to the opinion that reviews, while they might give you some idea of what to expect aren't really worth very much when trying to decide whether to go there or not. Even first hand accounts from friends can often be misleading.

A good example is our recent visit to Menages in Nashville at the meet up. We actually liked the club and thought it was a good mix of people and amenities. About a month prior to us going there though, some friends of ours attended the club and didn't like it at all. If we had taken their account of what the club was like as the last word, we probably would have declined to go. Fortunately, we have found this to be the case before, so we always go to the clubs to see for ourselves before we write one off as not our type of place. After having visited the club ourselves, I have no doubt that if we lived close enough, it would probably be our regular club.

Another thing that makes reviews less useful is that most clubs we have attended vary a quite a bit, night to night. You might attend one night and be disappointed, then go another night and have a great time. So unless a number of reviews detail experiences we would find horrible if we experienced them ourselves, we always take them with a grain of salt and give the club the benefit of the doubt.

Personally, I don't think I could, in good conscience, give a club a bad review based on only one visit. If we were to go to a club and not have a good time but otherwise it was a decent enough club, we would probably go again before making a judgment. Even then, we always realize that just because a club isn't our cup of tea, others may find it just what they were looking for.

[celtic239]

We have visited a clothing optional resort twice (Desire in Mexico) but have not jumped into the Lifestyle as of yet. There are no clubs in our immediate vicinity but I have been researching two clubs (one is on and the other is off premise) that we could drive to in a few hours and stay over that night in a local motel in Pennslyvania. The question that I have is when you go to visit the clubs the policy apprears to be that you have to pay a yearly fee up front and then pay a per event fee. How do you get to check the place out without having to pay the upfront membership fee?

[JustAskJulie]

I would call them and ask them if they have any shorter term memberships than 1 year (granted if it's like some off-premise clubs the annual fee may only be $10 in which case I wouldn't worry about it). The club we visit most often has annual, 6 month and 1 week memberships. They require that those attending for the first time only purchase the 1 week membership. Keep in mind that the membership fee is what makes the club a private club and protects you as well as allowing everyone to enjoy the club without the fear of just anyone walking in.

[BiloxiCouple]

Also, since alot of clubs are BYOB because of legal reasons with serving alcohol. Any door charges and memberships is the only way they pay the bills to keep them open and you cumming back.

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by JustAskJulie

I agree with what you are saying (as that was really my point) that reviews should be based on what the clubs promise not on how they necessarily compare to another club (that may or may not even be of a similar style).

Well, when you take a look at the quality assurance standards and norms (e.g. ISO 9000/14000 series) they start by defining quality as "what meets the expectations". This is the same, the review as a quality measure comes after the reviewer previous expectations. And here we're talking about the review quality, since we expect the reviewer expectations to come from the club's promises.

This is much like giving stars to restaurants. If you forget about the promise, every McDonald's ends up with zero stars next to the author-kitchen fashion place charging you $250 a dinner.

Perhaps it could be helpfull to provide a set of guidelines to the reviewers, for them to try to follow. Something like:

1) Describe your expectations before going to this club.
2) From where those expectations came from (i.e., club advertising, other
people referral and so).
3) Make the review, trying to compare the outcome against the expectations.
4) Make additional comments and comparisons against other clubs.