When it comes to business meetings, the venues of choice tend to be sedate boardrooms and offices, with any hedonism restricted to after-work hours. Even professionals prone to Executive Excess tend to keep their meetings at the office rather than just abandon all pretense of propriety. However, for an especially shady few, their business pow-wows can only take place at seedy venues in the local Red-Light District — the most common location being strip clubs and brothels.
Usually employed only by criminals, spies, undercover cops, and other shady professionals, the most common reason for this kind of venue is for the sake of concealing the participants' reasons for being there: after all, the first assumption of seeing someone walk into a strip club is that they're there for the show, not to discuss dirty deeds. And if anyone does ask about it, expect it to serve as an Embarrassing Cover-Up. For good measure, in the case of more enterprising criminals, one of the participants in the meeting might actually own the venue, making their presence there equally innocuous.
Of course, the other reason for this kind of business venue may involve management either being deeply corrupt, deeply stupid, or both.
Whatever the case, don't be surprised if the venue gives the storyteller an opportunity for some Fanservice on the side.
One very common assumption about this trope is that the delegates of this little conference are guaranteed to be male, and the dancers/prostitutes are female. It's rare for the participants of the meetings to be women, and it's rare to see male performers at the venue. After all, the world of organized crime is known to be extremely conservative, prone to both sexism and homophobia, so the gender roles of this trope are often quite rigid. However, exceptions do exist...
Subtrope of Sexposition, where information important to the audience is conveyed alongside sexual Fanservice. Compare Totally Not a Criminal Front, which can overlap if they own the place.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In the Polish Cyberpunk comic Status 7: Overload, the Big Bad Duumvirate meet up in a communism-themed strip club to talk about their evil plan.
Films — Live-Action
- The beginning of The Associate has Frank conduct an entire business meeting at a strip club; where Laurel is attempting in vain to get everyone to pay attention to her business presentation, but of course none of the men present are paying her any kind of attention.
- The Departed: Halfway through the film, Colin Sullivan calls Frank Costello to a secret meeting at a porn theatre. Costello being Costello, he goes out of his way to troll Sullivan by posing as a customer and pretending to masturbate over the action on screen, even flashing Sullivan with a rubber penis before revealing his identity. For good measure, Costello makes it clear that the only reason why he bothered to show up to this meeting is because he owns the place.
- Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels: When Barry the Baptist has to hire a pair of Stupid Crooks to steal some rare shotguns for Hatchet Harry, he meets them at a strip club, complete with a topless dancer in the background. Tellingly, Barry keeps his back to the dancer so that he's not distracted, while Dean and Gary keep their eye line firmly locked on the dancer and frequently say stupid things over the course of the meeting.
- The Resistance Banker. The Van Hall brothers have to approach a businessman in a burlesque club, seeking funding for the La Résistance. To their surprise, he quickly agrees and goes back to watching the girls.
- Spring Breakers: Big Archie, the local gangster and rival to Alien holds court at a strip club.
- Suicide Squad (2016): The Joker holds his meetings there, and one of the other local goons gets on Joker's bad side when he spends too much time admiring one of the dancers — Harley Quinn.
- W.E.I.R.D. World (1995): Bob Provost is selling W.E.I.R.D. Labs' secrets to a rival organization, and in one scene, visits an adult bookstore in the nearby town to meet his contact at the peepshow booth. Said contact spends most of this conference doing his best to make Bob feel as uncomfortable as possible by loudly moaning at the peepshow dancer, before handing over an envelope full of cash.
- X-Men: First Class: Sebastian Shaw's base of operations in Las Vegas is a gentlemen's club known as the Atomic, and early in the film, it's here he hosts a secret meeting with Colonel Hendry under the guise of a private party. Unknown to them, Agent Moira McTaggert is able to sneak in by posing as one of the dancers — which she accomplishes by stripping down to her bra and panties; as such, she not only eavesdrops on the secret deal to move US missiles into Turkey, but also witnesses Riptide, Emma Frost, and Azazel all showing off their mutant powers in order to intimidate Hendry into agreeing with Shaw's demands.
Literature
- The Belgariad: King Drosta Lek Thun often "holds court" in a brothel — he likes the company, it leads people to underestimate him, and the locale keeps away priests of the local Religion of Evil, whom he detests but can't openly oppose.
- Perdido Street Station: Halfway through the novel, David Serachin ventures deep into New Crobuzon's red light district, bypassing even the infamous xenian whorehouses in favour of visiting a Remade brothel; given that David has a fetish for the Remade, the secret meeting he holds there won't look unusual to anyone who knows him well. Said meeting is actually with a representative of the City Militia, who have blackmailed him into becoming The Stool Pigeon; for good measure, their blackmail material consists of photographs of his first visit to this brothel.
Live-Action TV
- Game of Thrones: Littlefinger owns the brothels of King's Landing and hosts his meetings there when he has the chance. In season 1, he hides Catelyn Stark in one to avoid her being seen and her presence reported to Cersei. When Littlefinger brings Ned there to meet his wife, Ned takes it as a grave insult to suggest she's inside and nearly kills Littlefinger over it.
- Outlander: Bonnie Prince Charlie is planning an insurrection to reclaim the British crown. He routinely holds his strategy meetings in an upscale French brothel which features nude body painting, partially nude women, and the option of going to a private room with one of the ladies. This is partly because he likes the environment, but also because, as the son of a dethroned king, he can't be seen to be holding court in his cousin's kingdom. His preferred locale comically clashes with how often he speaks loftily of his actions being ordained by God.
- The Sopranos: Mob boss Tony Soprano often hosts meetings with his criminal henchmen or other underworld figures at the strip club Bada Bing, which his closest associate Silvio owns and operates. There, Tony and others can discuss nefarious dealings in comfort, knowing that Bada Bing has no hidden microphones or other surveillance devices. When Tony is facing possible indictments, his lawyer does tell him to "get your ass out of that strip club" and spend some time at his actual cover job, namely a "consultant" for Barone Sanitation.
- Spoofed in That Mitchell and Webb Look, where the usual shady strip-club dealings between the crime boss and his numbers man are derailed because, as it turns out, such places are actually incredibly loud in reality, and so the conversation mostly consists of the two shouting "WHAT?!" at each other until they decide to pack it in and try to find a quieter venue to talk business.
- The Wire: Similarly to The Sopranos, in the first season, Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell run their operation out of the upstairs office of Orlando's "A Gentleman's Club", though business is rarely talked on the floor, though. The club plays into the plot in two ways, through proprietor Orlando trying to get into the drug game when Avon needs him to remain clean to keep the club safe, and one of the dancers, Shardene, first getting involved with D'Angelo Barksdale, and later working with the police with their investigation - after another girl from the club dies at a private party held by Barksdale underlings and her body in unceremoniously dumped in the trash.
Video Games
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Jizzy B, San Fierro pimp and minor crime boss, holds all his meetings at his club, the Pleasuredome. As such, when CJ goes undercover in the Loco Syndicate, all of the missions for Jizzy begin with an introductory briefing at the club — even the ones that don't actually involve pimping in some way. The final visit to the Pleasuredome features CJ setting out to assassinate Jizzy, resulting in the club becoming the site of a major shoot-out.
- Grand Theft Auto V: Towards the end of the game, Trevor takes over the Vanilla Unicorn strip club to use as base for planning the Union Depository heist. After the takeover, the mechanics of the club change so that Franklin and Trevor are able to touch the dancers freely during lap dances, and Trevor doesn't have to pay, and the dancers address him as "sir".
- Mass Effect
- Mass Effect 1: At the Citadel, Shepard has two separate opportunities to meet a shady character for a business meeting at Chora's Den, a gentleman's club in the Wards. In the first instance, the contact is a Dirty Cop who can direct Shepard to someone who might be able to provide them with info on Saren's illegal activities. In the second case, it's a retired turian general who's been spreading false rumors about the Consort, and Shepard has to convince him to change his ways. However, in both cases, the meeting is held there because both men have fallen so far from grace that they're not interested in budging from the club.
- Mass Effect 2: In a rare example featuring both female conspirators and female performers, Aria T'Loak rules over Omega from her club, Afterlife, and conducts regular business meetings with asari pole-dancers in the background. For good measure, Shepard's first visit to Aria's private box overlooking the dancers results in the good Commander being held at gunpoint by every thug in Aria's court while she verifies Shepard's identity.
- Mass Effect 3: Downplayed; while in exile on the Citadel, Aria has set up shop at Purgatory, an unregistered nightclub in the Presidium. However, though Purgatory has its share of asari dancing girls in the background, it's clearly more of an exuberant dance club than a sleazy strip club... one of the many reasons why Aria despises the place with a passion.
- Star Trek Online: In the mission "The Undying", the player character goes to Shangdu, a strip club/gladiator ring used as a front by the Orion Syndicate member Hassan — complete with Green-Skinned Space Babe dancers. You're hoping to get your hands on the thalaron triggers that Hassan has obtained, but it turns out that they've already been sold to the Reman Obisek; worse still, Hassan sends you and their crew into the gladiator ring... which proves to be a big mistake.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Anarch lieutenant Velvet Velour uses the strip club Vesuvius — which she both owns and occasionally performs at — as her unofficial headquarters. As such, when she wants to hire the player character for some discreet assassination/theft jobs around Hollywood, she invites you upstairs to talk things over, clearly trusting that anyone watching will just think you're there to enjoy a private show.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In "G-String Circus", Bullock is informed that the CIA's funding will be cut back if they don't prove that they can spend their current budget. Bullock takes everyone to the local strip joint and orders them to spend the CIA's funding.
- Rick and Morty: Parodied in "The Ricklantis Mixup". A Morty cop and his Rick partner meet the criminal kingpin Big Morty at a strip club called The Creepy Morty... and this being the Citadel of Ricks, everyone in the club (both the dancers and the customers) is a Morty.