Undercover Interview- DUI/Hit and Run

This Undercover Interview hits really close to home.  About a year ago two friends of mine were hit by two drunk drivers while they were standing on the street having a cigarette.  Both of the drivers were convicted of DUI, and both had to server jail time.

Its hard to get all preachy about this subject, because I’ve had a beer and driven before.  I know you have too.

What are the penalties if you get caught drinking and driving?  Fines, losing your license your a few years, jail time…you might even have to join a white supremacist gang.  For real.  Read on…

.

.

For more Undercover Interviews, Click HERE

.

.

So what happened to you?

The day leading up to the DUI was actually a pretty fun day. I worked at this restaurant that used to have these great deals on Mondays. Cheap margaritas and cheap shots and stuff like that. We were going to go for Happy Hour, because Happy Hour was cheap drinks and free food. We were in our early 20′s, so we were broke and we wanted to get drunk and we wanted to eat.

So we went out, grabbed a couple of margaritas apiece, had a shot, and I think I drank a beer. Another friend of mine had been bugging me to come play softball with him and some friends and said, “Hey, we really need somebody today. Can you sub in for this dude that’s not going to make it today? We just need somebody in the outfield and somebody to swing the bat.” And I was like, “Sure, that’s fine.”

It was an adult league softball game, so they were drinking beer and hanging out in the park. So I had a couple of “maintenance” beers there, and I was just having fun.

That got done and two of my roommates at the time wanted to go out that night, and my female roommate was kind of into this guy, so we were going to go meet up with him and have a couple of drinks at a bar, and then pick him up and go out a little bit more after that. So we piled into her car and drove over to meet up with this friend of hers.

There was more inexpensive booze and more fun, and just hanging out and grabbed a bite to eat there, and then we left from there with him.

Me, and my two roommates, jumped in her car and I drove from there to downtown to go to another bar for a few more drinks. So it was fun, you know, we were feeling pretty good. We’re having a lot of fun just hanging out.

.

.

So how long had you been drinking at this point?

A good 6-7 hours of drinking, not like back to back to back to back, but definitely like a couple here, a couple there. You know like two or three drinks at each stop. And so, we got downtown to some Irish bar, and I got a car bomb and then somebody talked me into a shot of Irish Whiskey.

They’re like “All right, let’s get out of here…let’s go back to (Name Withheld)’s house, he’s got a ping pong table, and his roommates are cool.”

We took off towards his place in (Location Withheld).  By this point I’m driving kind of on the buzzed side and wasn’t feeling any pain. When we got down there I cracked a beer open, took a few sips of it, set it down, and then passed out.

I was exhausted by this point, it had been a long day, so I passed out for what would have seem like longer but probably was only about 10 or 15 minutes. When I come to, they’re playing ping pong and my male roommate was like “Hey dude, how you feeling?”

And I’m like “Ah fuck, I feel a lot better now. I took a nap,” He said “Well, it’s kind of late and it’s like 2:30am and I kind of just want to go home, and I don’t think she wants to leave.” My other roommate, she didn’t want to leave, she wanted to hang out with this guy longer. He said “How do you feel…do you think you can drive?” I said “Yeah, I’m good now. Sure, I can drive.”

My roommate gave me the keys to her car, and we piled into it and took off down the road. You know I was heading out of (Location Withheld), we went up this street…it’s a nice long stretch with no stoplights or stop signs. It’s quieter and less police so we went up that way.

.

.

So were you thinking “I’ve got to dodge the cops…I’ve got my buzz on?”

I knew that if a cop got his hands on me that it wouldn’t have been a pretty thing. He probably would’ve just given me a ticket or a DUI if I got pulled over.

I was just thinking in high-school terms, like “stay away from the cops, stick to the side roads, try to dodge the main intersections and stay out of the way and just get home.”

The objective was to get home and get to bed.

.

.

Before that day, was it a normal thing where you drive with a little bit of a buzz?

Oh yeah…I, for whatever reason, was the guy that everybody threw the keys to.  I was always like “Oh, I can drive,” or “Oh, I’m fine.”  I was always the guy that was the go to guy to drive, it was never a big deal for me to drive when I’d been drinking.

.

.

So you wouldn’t say that you were more drunk than any other time?

Not necessarily. I definitely had been drinking for a good portion of the day, and was probably more inebriated than I realized, but I didn’t feel drunk. I walked to the car, I put the keys in the block, and then, you know, we even picked out a CD.  I thought “Lets just get home and crash out, and maybe go surf tomorrow,” it was just kind of like one of those “Wow, that was a crazy Monday night, lets get the fuck home, and get this day over with.”

So we got in the car and I started flying down the road. We got on to this road where there’s this nice long stretch of road. The road has drainage ditches at the four way stops, so it creates that hump in middle of the road through the intersection and you kind of have to slow down to not scrape the front of your car on. Well, I got the bright idea that it’d be fun to zoom through those and hop our car over those…for whatever reason that sounded fun. Guess that probably should have told me I was a little bit more drunk than thought I was.

So we’re like “All right!”…we just blew through a couple of them and hopped like one or two and it was fun, we laughed and bumped our heads on the ceiling of the car, stuff was flying around the car…we were laughing, just being stupid and drunk.

I started to go towards this four-way intersection with lights. I’m coming up on it and it’s green.  I’m getting closer and closer as it goes to yellow, and then I’m like “Crap, I don’t think I’m going to make it”, so I put a little more gas on it heading towards that intersection. I’m just thinking in my head the lights are on a timer, it’s late at night, so it’s just cycling through…I’ll just blast through it, it won’t be a big deal.

So I get to the intersection and all of a sudden the car is just up in the air, I didn’t know. It was a really weird sensation, it’s one of these sensations where you know what’s happening, but you don’t really want to know what’s happening. You know you just got into an accident but you don’t know where it came from, or why, or what…there’s no explanation.

Well apparently there was this girl that worked as a waitress at one of the strip clubs there at the (Location Withheld) and because she was coming home from work, she’d tripped the lights so she was going on the green. I plowed in the front left of her car going about 40 mph.  The front end of her car basically acted like a ramp and I launched the car up onto it’s roof and landed on the roof.  It rolled over one more time and landed on the roof again and then slid up the driveway on the other side of the intersection.  It was a violent experience.

So everything comes to a stop finally and I don’t think I blacked out, but there was a little moment there where I don’t really remember, maybe like a second where there was black and then it comes back. When I come to, I’m upside down.  I’m looking out the front of this car, and when I look up, my up is this asphalt and down is the sky. I unsnap my seat belt and fall in a crumple under the roof of this car, and I look over and my roommate is gone, and I hear flip flops…We were surfer dudes so we were always wearing flip flops, and I can hear flip flops running away from the car.

So I’m like “Oh crap, what happened.”

So I roll over and I kick the door of the car open. I get out, and for whatever stupid reason I decide to just run…I ran, towards the sound of his flip flops. Just run, run, run, run, run, run. We run on about a block and a half, full speed. Just run, run, run, run, run. And I’m like “Wait, wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, what’s going on? What’s going on?”

I thought maybe somebody was after us, I thought we hit somebody and they were pissed, and I thought we were just trying to get away, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

He said “Dude we hit somebody! We hit somebody!” I’m like “What? We hit somebody?” He’s like “Yeah, didn’t you see the other car?” I’m like “No I just ran…I don’t even know what the hell happened. I’m assuming we hit somebody, but all I know was the car was in the air.” But he was like “Oh my god, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.”

So we found a hose and I hosed my head off…I had a little cut back behind my ear, that was just bleeding a little bit, which tripped me out for a second, but as soon as I got my head rinsed off I realized I was pretty well uninjured. I was like “Wow, that’s not bad” I was expecting broken bones or something.

He said “Dude I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” I’m like “Can’t do what?” He asked me “What are we going to say happened?”

He started freaking out on me. I said “Dude, you’re fucking useless you know, if the cops do find us you’re just going to cough it up…are you going to be able to hold the story together?” And he said “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

He said “My dad’s close by, lets go to his house.” I said “I am not showing up at your dad’s house. You go to your dad’s house and you just disappear…I won’t even say you were in the car because you are obviously not going to do anything but hurt my situation.  Just go to your dad’s house, I’ll deal with this.”

So he takes off. I’m there by myself, I’m thinking “Fuck…what the fuck do I do, should I go back to the scene?”, because it’s hit and run at this point.

.

.

How long have you guys been away from the scene for?

Long enough to start hearing the sirens…not close enough to see the lights but close enough to hear it. And I can hear that something’s going on. So I take off again, away from the accident. In my stupid mind, I thought it’d be a good idea to come up with a story, like I got carjacked. Somebody stole the car, and they drove the car over there and got into that accident, and I was just an innocent bystander, right? Sounds real logical.

.

.

[laughter] OK.

[laughter] So I go to a pay phone, I get the story all straight in my head, and I call 911.  I say “I just got carjacked”, And they’re like “Oh really? Where are you?” I said “Oh I don’t know but I can hear sirens not far from here.” They said “Oh. We’ve had an accident in the area, so there’s police in the area. We’ll send one over to take a report from you.”  I start seeing the cops coming up and down the street, obviously looking for somebody. I stepped out on the street, and I waved one down. They come over, get out, and ask, “What happened?” I started trying to tell this story about how I got carjacked. I could see the cop scanning me up and down with his flashlight, looking at my eyes, looking at my head, and looking at me. Doing this whole “this guy is full of shit” thing. “Why is this guy telling me this?”

I get about a paragraph into this story, and I’m like “You know what? I’m just going to stop.” He asked, “What do you mean?” I said, “This is bullshit.” He said, “Yeah, I know. So go ahead. Continue.” I told him, “It was me. I was driving the car. I got in the accident, and I ran, and I don’t know why.” And I tried to spin this story to get away with it. I said, “I just want to know, did I kill somebody? Is somebody dead? I just need to know that I didn’t kill somebody.”

He said, “Just calm down. Just take it easy for a second here. First of all, have you had anything to drink?” I said, “You already know the answer to that question. Look at me, man. I’m a mess. I was just in a gnarly accident. I know you can smell it on me. Yes. I had a few beers today, quite a few earlier in the day. The last one was at least an hour ago. I don’t know if I’m under the influence still or not.”

He says, “All right. Let’s do a field sobriety test.” So we did a field sobriety test, which he said I passed. He said, “Well, you told me you had some drinks, so we’re going to need to take you down to the station and either draw blood, or breathalyze you, or both. With the circumstance the way they are I’m going to have to put you under arrest because you ran from the scene of an accident, and it was an injury accident.” I said, “Are you serious? How bad was the injury?”

He said, “I can’t tell you that, but just know that nobody’s dead. I’m not on the scene. I can’t tell you any more than that.” He read me my rights and put the handcuffs on me, and I sat there on the curb in handcuffs.

.

.

Are you freaking out?

I was actually calmer by that point because I was just glad to have been able to tell them that it was me, and that I knew no one was dead made me feel so much better. At this point, I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to tell my roommate that her car is in pieces, and how I’m going to avoid telling that (Name Withheld) was in the car with me. Because they starting asking, “Was there anybody else in the car with you?” I said, “No.” They said, “OK. Well there was a beer can and some stuff in the passenger side. Whose were those?” I said, “They must have been mine. I gave a guy a ride earlier in the night, but not then.” They asked, “Who was this guy?” I said, “Just some dude on the street. He needed a ride, and I gave him a ride.” They’re like, “OK. That’s beside the point. So you’re saying that you were driving the vehicle?” I said, “Yeah. I drove it, and I got into this gnarly accident. I freaked out, and I ran. I can’t explain why I did it. I’m not going to try to tell you guys why I did it. I just got really scared. I thought somebody was trying to hurt me. I don’t know…I don’t know why I did it.”

The sergeant came around and put me in his car, and drove me downtown to get blood drawn for alcohol content, and on the way, he was talking to me. He asked, “What happened? Did you see the light?” I said, “Yeah. I just didn’t think it was somebody was coming.”  I asked, “What’s going to happen?” He said, “I don’t know. This is one of those things where you’re going to have to let the lawyers deal with this one.” I was like, “Fuck, dude. Should I try and post bail, or should I just stay in?”

He says, “To be honest with you, since you tried to flee the scene and there was an injury, the judge is more than likely going to give you some time. So you’re probably better off not bailing out and staying in, because you’re gong to have to serve time anyway.” He’s giving me the breakdown. “If you stay in during the whole court proceedings, then all that time counts towards your sentence. Then that time gets taken off of the top of your sentence, so you have less time to serve once you do get sentenced.”

So I said, “OK. That makes sense.” On top of that I would have had to go to my parents to bail me out. At this point, me and my folks were not exactly seeing eye to eye on lifestyle. My parents are Christian. They didn’t really jive with my drinking and crazy lifestyle. I had nobody to go to. So I guess I’m flying this one solo. I just got to take care of this myself. It was weird, but I felt better that I was in jail, because I had hurt somebody. I felt like I almost needed to be there.

So I went in jail. They booked me in that night. I was only in there for a week or two. Actually they’re supposed to get you in front of a judge within 72 hours of you being booked. So I saw a judge for arraignment where they read off your charges. It’s just so that if you have anything else you need to say, or you want to post bail, or if you need to ask for a change in bail amount, anything like that you do it at that point. And then, from that point, they start setting court dates.

They’re like “This will be the day when they do the arraignment,” when you actually get formally charged by the district attorney’s office. The district attorney decides on the charges he or she will actually put up against you in court. Originally, it was felony DUI with great bodily injury, hit and run, and falsifying a police report.

.

.

That’s pretty heavy stuff.

Yeah, all three. The felony DUI and the hit and run are major felonies. They’re strikable felonies. And the falsifying of a police report is a heavy misdemeanor.

So I was in the district attorney’s office with my public defender, who did a pretty damn good job. They worked out a plea bargain deal where I would plead to the felony DUI with great bodily injury, and they would drop the hit and run and the other misdemeanor charges, and anything else that was pending.

I would take a strike on my record, the felony DUI with great bodily injury, and I would serve a year in county jail. I was facing originally seven years in prison, which is what all the charges maxed out would have been. So I jumped at a year in county jail. At this point, I had already been in for almost a month; that means you do two thirds of your time. So if you get sentenced to 300 days, you do 200 days and they give you good time. As long as you behave yourself and don’t get in any trouble, they let you out early, and that’s when your probation picks up.

.

.

What happened to the person you hit?

I broke her left femur. The bone popped through the skin but then popped back in, which is pretty traumatic within itself.

She ended up writing a letter to the judge, I don’t know why. But out of the kindness of her heart, she basically wrote a letter to my judge and said that she didn’t hold any ill will against me, and she hoped the judge wouldn’t sentence me to any further time than necessary. Basically, I think she was just a nice girl. But she ended up, with four days left on the statute of limitations, filing a civil suit against me years later.

There were only four or five days left on the statute of limitations, and she filed a civil suit. She ended up getting a civil settlement from the insurance company of the vehicle I was driving. So the insurance company covered that part. As for myself, and my friend whose car I was driving, there were some threats of being sued for some time. But the insurance company said don’t worry because I had permission to drive the vehicle in California. The insurance goes with the car, not with the driver. So that’s the law.

.

.

What happened with your friend that was in the car?

He came and visited me one time when I was in jail. He was all sheepish and shy. He basically just boned out. I think he felt really guilty that I took the whole brunt. I don’t hold anything against him either. It’s a bummer that he had to get involved in it.

.

.

So in the end, he never got caught?

No. It got brought up again later on by the lawyers, and I said, “There was just this homeless guy I picked up and gave a ride, and he ran from the accident. I don’t even know what happened to the guy.”

.

.

What about the girl whose car you crashed? What did she do?

She came and saw me a few times while I was in jail. She was real supportive at first. Her parents are pretty well-off. Once the lawyer started getting involved, she suddenly vanished. She had to move back in with her parents because I smashed up her car.

.

.

So that night, do you think you were lucky or unlucky?

I think I was lucky that I didn’t kill the girl. I think I was lucky that I survived that accident with no real damage other than a little scrape on the back of my head. I’m lucky because I was stupid enough to say yes to driving home, when I could have just as easily stayed at that guy’s house and crash on his couch.

.

.

So in the end, what did you learn from this experience?

Everyone drinks and drives on occasion. You go out, you have two or three beers with your friends, and you get yourself home. That’s one thing.

But when you’ve been at an all-day drinking fest like I had, there’s just no reason to be operating a motor vehicle. It’s ridiculous. You’re just putting yourself and other people at risk. If I had killed that girl, I would be a totally different person right now. I don’t even know if I’d be alive, to be honest with you

.

.

You say that everybody drinks and drives. Do you still? Would you still have a drink and then drive?

I have between then and now.

.

.

You have?

I would much rather get a cab, or just call it a night. I’ve driven people home that were way more intoxicated than me, and gotten them home to a safe spot. It’s definitely not my preferred method of drinking. I prefer to have a decent plan as to where everybody’s going to end up at least by the end of the night.

.

.

You go through a crazy, life-changing experience like getting a DUI and going to jail for it. Does that ever scare you away from drinking, or do you go back to your old ways of like “Well, I’ve had two drinks or three drinks. I’m a little buzzed, but I can drive home.” Does that still go through your head?

Well, not really. Usually someone else is driving. I’ll be honest with you. Since my DUI, I’ve just completed all the requirements to get my license back. I still don’t have my license from the whole experience.

.

.

How long has it been?

Eight years.

.

.

During this time, did you ever drive when you didn’t have a license?

Yeah, I have and that was a mistake, too. I don’t do that anymore either, and I don’t drink as much as I used to, either.  I’ve definitely learned from it. It wasn’t an immediate effect, I’ll tell you that. But it definitely had an effect, and it definitely rippled through my entire life from that point forward. I’m a little worried about getting my license, to be honest with you.

.

.

How come?

I just know how easy it is to get in a car and drink and drive, obviously, even without a license.  It’s not an easy way of life to constantly worry about “Is my friend going to ask me to drive?” Constantly trying to dodge those kinds of questions is tiresome.

.

.

Right. You got called out. You got caught, and you paid the price heavily for just one mistake. I’m just wondering, in all honesty, does it teach you a lesson? Does it make you never drink and drive? It sounds like it didn’t.

No. It definitely didn’t teach me that final, final lesson. It’s sad that it didn’t because it really should have, but that’s just stubborn human nature.

.

.

How long did you end up going for?

I was in jail for just a little over seven months in one stretch.

.

.

Did you deserve your punishment?

Yeah.

.

.

It seems like you are a good guy. What was it like to be in jail with real criminals.

Well, it was interesting because there is a real big like gap in mentality in criminals.

There is just a really interesting social structure in there where you have career criminals that should probably have gone to college and been doctors but were born in the wrong neighborhood. It was interesting because I got involved in politics in there a little bit because you don’t have any choice.

Once you go into there it’s like… Because if you look like I do which I look like your average white kid, the whites approach you and say hey, what are you, and where are you from.

I ended up going to George Bailey, which is an internally segregated facility. You are black or white or if you are Hispanic, then you become either a Sureno or Norteno which is the Northerners and the Southerners.

Or you are with called Paisa which is basically born in Mexico but living in the states.

.

.

Right.

Then there are “The Others”. The Others are Asians, Middle Easterners, anybody who does not form those other categories goes to the Others. The Others hang out with the Brothers. And the Whites and the Mexicans including all three of the group of Hispanics, all hang together.

So if trouble happens you know who you are fighting against. So, if they look Mexican, they probably are on your side…if they are Black or Asians, they are probably not on your side.

When you get in there, whatever you look like, that group is going to approach you.

When you get in there, your group approaches you, usually like… “Where did you grow up…so you’re a Wood right?”

.

.

What’s a Wood?

It means you’re white.

So, you are Wood, All right, great, so you go out with these guys and they will introduce you around, this is John, he is your dorm rep. You have problems with anybody that is not of your race, you go to this guy, you don’t hit first.

You don’t say the word nigger, you don’t say the word spic, you don’t use any racial language from now on. Not allowed.

If you have a problem with somebody of another race, you go to your rep, you tell them what happened, and they’ll go to their rep and they’ll tell them what happened, and they’ll decide what’s going to happen.

You don’t just pop off and punch anybody you want unless they’re of your own race, and even then you need to make sure you know what you’re doing.

That’s just day-to-day. You get up early in the morning. They put you on buses to go to the court by six a.m., so they wake you up at four a.m. for breakfast. They feed you breakfast, and by feed you, I mean they move these big carts. It’s like the lunch-line assembly. You walk by, and somebody hands you a tray. You just go sit down and eat your food.

There’s assigned seats for the different colors. There’s the white tables, and then there are black tables, and there is the others tables, and there are the Hispanic tables. Even within those groups there are unique groups. But for white guys, it’s white guys and white guys. There’s not a big variety for white dudes.

Once you’re in a segregated facility, you don’t eat, shit or sleep with anyone that’s not of your race. And by sleep, I mean you try to choose your bunk close to somebody of your color.

You don’t sit at a table and share food with a black guy. You don’t share food with a black guy or a Mexican guy, unless that Mexican guy is cool with our group.

Some Mexican guys grew up punk rockers, and so they always hung out with white dudes. They can decide, but you have to make a decision: you can hang with the Mexicans, or you can hang with the white dudes. But if you’re going to hang with the white dudes you’ve got to stay with them. You can’t go back and forth.

There were a few guys like that, that were sleeved-up and had their ears stretched. They would talk like you and I talk, and go, “Yeah, dude, that’s awesome, man,” and talk about surfing. They were as white as you can be, but they just happened to be a slightly darker shade.

There are some Asian guys like that too. It’s harder for an Asian guy…a couple of guys that were Japanese, they were like, “Dude, I grew up in LA, and I don’t hang out with anybody that’s Asian other than my parents.”

.

.

What are some of the dumb things about jail?

One of the stupidest things that almost started a fight, and I was able to talk everybody down about was, they’d bring in mops and brooms for us to clean the dorm areas, the floors and the bathrooms every day.

It’s self-cleaned, and so there’s a little bit of organization with that. We would keep a piece of paper and write down what race was responsible on what days of the week.

.

.

So this literally would say, “Black people mop the floor, Mexicans clean the windows.”

Yeah. Woods this, Surenos that. The black guys were referred to as the Brothers. So the Brothers, the Others, the Surenos, the Paisas, and the Woods.

So, anyway… literally there is a piece of paper with the different colors or different races broken up and their assignments for that day and so everybody would clean.

.

.

Did jail change your view on race or make you more or less racist?

I think it made me definitely less racist because I got a chance to see where people were coming from. And I really got to interact with people on a deeper level than just seeing people on the streets.

.

.

Are you still friends with anybody from jail?

No, absolutely not. I didn’t want to keep in contact with anybody. They’ll give you their phone numbers, and say, “Yeah. Call me, and we’ll hang out.” I don’t want to call any of these people, or I’m going to end up going back to jail with these people

.

.

Has jail made you a better person?

Not necessarily a better person.

.

.

Has it changed you?

Yeah. I think it’s changed me in that I don’t look down on people for having done time

.

.

So in the end, was it easy or hard to do time?

It’s hard in that you don’t want to be there, and you know you’re better than that, and you want to not do it again. You just wish you could take the time that you’re wasting there and apply it to something else, but you can’t…You’ve got to do the time.

.

.

It seems like the lesson to be learned here is that if you drink and drive, you’ll end up in a racist white gang in jail.

Yeah. Basically. Yeah….Don’t drink and drive or you will end up in a gang.

.

.

In the end, that should be lesson enough for somebody who reads this interview…Taking that extra beer and then driving, it can 100% change your life to somewhere you could never even imagine it.  I doubt you could imagine that you would ever end up in a white gang in jail?

No, because I never thought of myself as a racist person. But, when you are in that situation, you don’t have a choice. Your choices get taken away. They get made for you. Somebody else tells you what to do. Somebody tells you when to eat, poop, sleep, everything. It’s the most dehumanizing experience you’ll ever have.

.

.

Undercover Interview- I’m a Card Counter

.

.

What do you do?

I work for a professional card counting team, which I am also an investor in. I go into casinos and I play Blackjack and I count cards.

.

.

How did you learn this trade?

I have got a buddy who I went to school with, and I actually met at a summer camp in high school. While we were in college, he started reading a book about how to be good at poker, and there was one chapter in the back of the book about how to beat the game of Blackjack.

And it was really intriguing to him, because poker is all about being…I don’t know. There is a lot of intuition. There are so many skills that you have to learn that aren’t very tangible in poker. There is a lot of math, but there is a lot of reading people and stuff.

With Blackjack, it is just all math. If you know how to beat the game, you can beat it if you do it correctly. He was really intrigued and he just started learning. And he came and he showed me what he was up to.  I went to a casino with him and watched him play. It was pretty fascinating. And at that point, I just thought, “Nah, well, it is not for me.” But I was really intrigued.

He kept playing for a year and a half, two years. He brought on other friends and they formed a team, and the team just started doing really well. And it just looked like a lot of fun, so I decided to jump in, and he taught me.

.

.

If you can describe it in a really simple easy to understand way, what do you guys do?

Mathematically Blackjack is created in such a way that the casino will win more than it loses. Somewhere around, 52% of the time the casino will win. 48% of the time, the casino will lose.

Counting cards is just a simple system where you keep track of which cards have been played and which cards have not been played. And so, you will know when that average, that statistic of who has the edge, flips. And when it flips, you just simply start betting more money.

So if you bet more money when you have the advantage and less money when the casino has the advantage, you win. That is the principle behind card counting, and that is essentially what card counters do.

And there are many different ways to do that…we use what is called the “high/low” system. And it is a system just to keep track of the cards so that you know when to bet more money.

The reason for a team is…It is still risky, right?  Say you took the advantage from the casino. Maybe the casino had a 52% advantage. Well now you have a 52% advantage. Well that still means that close to half the time you are losing, right? So you have to have a really big bankroll to sustain the losses, because over time you are going to win. But any given day, you could actually lose.

And the same thing for a casino, right? If you walked into a casino, the casino has the advantage over you. And you could play the slots or play craps, or whatever, but you can come away that weekend being a really big winner.

Over time, the casino can afford to do this because they will win eventually. So creating a team is, in a sense, kind of creating the anti-casino, saying, “We are going to bankroll ourselves, flip the tables, and take money back.”

.

.

So is that illegal?

No, it is not illegal at all, actually. It is completely legal. It is totally frowned upon by the casino, and they will treat you like a criminal. And it is kind of common for people to think that it is illegal, or shady, or something, because of the way that it is treated, because it is the last thing a casino needs, right? They want to make money. And if you figure out how to destroy their business model, they are not going to be very happy.

It is totally on the up and up. You couldn’t get arrested, but you could get backed off of casinos, trespassed, you can get treated really poorly. But that is kind of an exception to the rule. Usually they are pretty cool to you, even when they find out what is going on. They usually are pretty nice.

.

.

Really?

Yeah. I mean like I said, it is an exception to the rule. Like, I have been treated really, really poorly, but I would say 90% of the time, when they found out what is going on, they just kind of nicely ask you to stop playing Blackjack. They say, “Feel free to hang out in the casino. Play anything else you want. Use the comps that you have accrued. Stay in our hotel room. Enjoy the club-whatever. Just stop playing Blackjack.” And if you press your luck and you start playing more, which we usually do, then they start getting more and more pissed off, and then try to trespass you, have security escort you out; those kind of things.

.

.

Do you think what you’re doing is in any way wrong?
No. The casino is saying, “Look, we have a game and we challenge you to play this game and try to win.” That’s what they advertise. It’s no secret that they’re going to win more times than you’re going to win. But you might be that lucky person who beats the casino in any given weekend.

So do I think it’s morally wrong? No, you’re not breaking any of the rules. You’re playing by their rules, and you’re not breaking any laws. The only reason why people think it’s shady is because the casino could ask you to stop playing at any given time. The reason why they could do that is because they own the business, they own the property. They reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

So if you had a bar and someone came in, and every time they came in they didn’t help your bar, they hurt your bar, sooner or later you’re just going to ask that person, “Please stop coming to my establishment.” That’s essentially how they treat card counters. But the difference is they don’t – well, not the difference – but they just don’t know if you’re the person who’s going to actually help their business or hurt their business.

They can’t figure that out until watching you play for a couple of hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months. It depends from casino to casino, but they don’t know so they’ll tolerate you for a while. You do have to be sneaky. You have to pretend that you’re someone that you’re not. So if you think that’s morally wrong, to pretend to be someone else that you’re not.
.

.
I’m with you, I don’t see it as a moral issue… It’s gambling.  You’re taking an advantage by using your brain, you’re not using a computer…

So was this part of the MIT Blackjack team? Does your team have anything to do with MIT?

No. The MIT team were the first guys to create a team. We don’t know any of them personally, and we don’t work with any of them. We have talked with them since being a team.

We are pretty well known as a card counting team in Vegas. In a sense, it is not that hard to become if you do it right. It is surprisingly easy.

.

.

It is?

I think so. I mean yeah. It is easy…It is not simple, but it is easy. It is going to take hard work. But some misconceptions about card counting is that you have to be incredibly, incredibly smart.

.

.

I think of like Rainman.

Right, like Rainman. You don’t have to be autistic or whatever to count cards. It is a really simple method. What I usually tell people is you have to have had like a 3.0 GPA in high school. If you were able to handle that, you could figure it out. It is just discipline and just putting your mind to something and learning a system.

I have seen people fail at it, but it is usually just because they didn’t want it enough. It takes about a month, six weeks, to really figure it out. Our team has a whole testing out process where we make sure that you have got it 100% and are nailing it. And then we give you cash, and then you go into a casino. And it usually takes around six months for players to really nail it.  So it is an investment in your time to learn it, but you don’t have to be a genius.

.

.

Wow.

The MIT guys are really smart guys. But what they figured out was the system. To figure out the system took an intelligent person. To copy the system…You have to be smart. You do have to be disciplined. But you don’t have to be Rainman. [laughs]

.

.

Well that is good to know.
Yeah. I am sure you could do it.

.

.

So you work as a team, right?
Yeah.

.

.

Tell me who would be on a team with you at a table? Do you pick women? Do you pick older people so you all look different, or does it end up being all dudes?

Well, so playing as a team means a couple different things. One, it means we pool our resources and we all play with the same bankroll. So we could be at any given casino in any given city working on our own, but we are all working off the same bankroll. And what that does is it mitigates our risk and it allows for us to just get more hours on more tables, which is great.

The second thing a team means is actually playing together. And what we call that is a “team play”. We don’t always do that. In fact, sometimes it is the wrong thing to do. A casino will be pretty patient with you if they think you are a card counter if you are playing by yourself…for a while. They will kind of take their time to figure out how big of a threat you really are, if you really know your stuff or if you just kind of think you know your stuff.

If they catch you playing with other players, it is over right away. As soon as they figure that out, they have no tolerance for you at all, because at that point, they really feel like you are really trying to screw them over.

The MIT team developed a strategy called “big player” where you have a guy come in the casino. He has got all the cash on him. And he just walks up to a table and he just throws down money. And he is just playing with tons of money.

Well you have another guy in the casino and he is just playing table minimum. And he is counting cards…he is just waiting for the table to get hot.  When the table gets hot he calls over the big player. You have got some sort of signal to call the big player over. He comes over to that table, you pass the guy the count through a system, like a really simple basic system. You just say a sentence with the count in it. So it is like, “Oh, it is already six o’clock. I gotta get some dinner.” So the count is six. And that is significant to the big player, because now he knows what kind of edge he has at the table and how much he can bet. And then he can keep track of the count from there, and you can leave and go to another table and start counting again.

So that is kind of team play. Yeah, there are women on the team. There is definitely the quintessential card counter, which is the young male, early to mid 20′s male. So if you can get people on a team who are older, who are female, you can get away with it probably a little bit more.

.

.

Do you guys dress up?  Is one guy dressed up as a cowboy and another as like a nun or something? Not a nun, but…
Totally. Yeah, we have tons of examples of dressing up in costumes. And it actually helps a lot to change the way you look.  We have got guys on the team who have got this to a science.  They could walk into a casino, play, get kicked out, go and change their clothes and their persona, come back, and they could start playing again.

.

.

So just dressing up and like the cat and mouse, is that part of the fun of it? It is part of the fun of it, yeah, but it is also a little bit stressful. It kind of depends on what kind of mood you are in. I mean the dirty truth about it is that it is a job, right? You go, you sit down at the table, you count cards, and the money stops feeling like real money, and it just feels like you might as well be at your desk filing things.
.

.
What could a normal card counting day look like? How many hours do you work?
Well normally, I attack card counting in weekends because that is when the casino is busiest and you can kind of blend in the most. So Friday morning, I take off to Vegas and I come back Monday.  I tend to do that like once to twice a month.
When I go, as soon as I hit the ground, I just find a casino, find a table, start playing, and play until I’m hungry or tired. My attitude on these trips is like, “I am here to make money and the more hours I put at the table, the more money I’m going to make. When I get home I can hang out.”

I’m married. I’m doing it not because I want to explore the Vegas lifestyle, I’m doing it because I wanted to make money so that I could go home and do stuff that I was really passionate about and have the freedom and time to do those things.

.

.

Essentially it’s just a job.
It is a job.  Its fun and it had a ton of perks, but 90% of the time its just sitting at a table and just watching cards come by. At first there’s definitely a thrill of just like, “Oh I just won all this money.” But after a while you just kind of get used to the mathematics of your winning and your losing. Like, it’s not all my money, it’s the team’s money.  So it starts to feel like a job. It can get boring, but it’s what you make of it.
You’re using a mathematical system that you’re not going to deviate from at any time. You’re trying to limit your distractions so you could stay 100% focused. Your only concern is, “How long can I last here before they kick me out and I have to go to the next place? And how many next places are there in this city before I can’t play anymore and I just have to go home?”

Because there’s always a risk. You fly somewhere – and this has happened. You go to a city that’s got four or five casinos and you want to play them all weekend and you only get in four or five hours and the whole city’s like, “You’re done.” So you can’t play anymore.
.

.
So that’s happened to you before?
Yeah, for sure. I went to Tunica, Mississippi, which has probably 10, 12 casinos. After the first evening, me and the guy I went with were what we called “flyered”. Basically flyers were sent to every casino with our pictures on it saying, “These guys are card counters, don’t let these guys play.” We couldn’t play anywhere, and we were treated so poorly.
.

.

What were some of the weird places you have been?

Some of the weird ass places, like Tunica was weird. There are like these Indian casinos in little pockets of the country that are weird.

.

.

Do you prey on Indian casinos or did you go to those more often because they weren’t as sophisticated?

Dude, one of the things I actually sort of feel bad about is there is a casino not far from here out in…out in (Location Withheld) called (Name Withheld). It is like they never heard of what card counting was. Most casinos know. Our team freaking probably took half a million dollars from them at least; somewhere in the vicinity of half a million or a million from this one casino.

The team has done really well and it has won a lot of money, but to take that much money from one casino is really, really crazy.  This is like some ho-dunk town’s Indian Reservation casino.

Do we prey on those places? Yeah, I guess we did prey on that place, and I kind of feel like that place was a casualty. They ended up hiring a consultant who ended up fixing the situation. [laughs] But it took them quite a bit of money to figure that out.

So, yeah. I guess it is fair game. That is the one thing that I wrestled with, was Indian reservations.  Here is one thing we kind of give to this population who we didn’t treat very well, and now I am just this white guy exploiting that again.

.

.

It is business, right?

Right. Sure.

.

.

So what was your biggest win for one sitting?

I think my biggest win…And this is probably not as rad as other stories on the team, but my biggest win was 60 grand at Barona in one sitting. That was in about four hours. That actually happened to be also the best I was ever treated at a casino. And I was even told after those four hours that I couldn’t play there anymore. But the guy who was kind of following me and watching me, the pit boss, came up to me afterwards and he was like, “Hey man. I just want you to know that I am really impressed. I just hope to one day be at the level that you are at. We can’t let you play anymore and I am really sorry about that, but man, good job. Well done.”

And that is the best I have ever been treated at a casino. And that is rare, because that is Barona. Barona has like a Blackjack hall of fame and they kind of celebrate, like, the heroes of Blackjack and the fact of Blackjack being beaten, and they have one of the best games in the country as far as your odds.

.

.

What about when you played as a team? What is the most you ever took?

Probably only like 100 grand in any given weekend. And that is probably as high as it normally gets with the amount of money we are playing with, and the amount of variance you usually have.  And that is a good weekend for our team, actually. It is a really good weekend for our team.

.

.

And so what would be a bad weekend?

A bad weekend would be essentially the same thing, like losing 100 grand.

What you have got to understand is you take a few percentage edge off of the casino and give it to yourself. So that means, over the long run, you are going to win, but we are talking about huge spikes of winning and losing, and it is slowly going up.  So that has happened before. We have had a team go out to Vegas and lose 100 grand.

.

.

So if you were just a player, could you make more money counting cards than working a nine to five job?

Yeah, for sure. We have got a lot of guys on the team who make decent salaries just from playing…I would say an average of people playing on the team is maybe you play two weekends a month and you make around 60 grand a year.

.

.

That’s really good!

Yeah. That is good.  That is essentially what I did so that the rest of my week was free to essentially put myself through school.  And it was the best…You know. It’s like, what do I do, work at a coffee shop, or do I go and count cards at a casino?  I go count cards at the casino.

.

.

OK, so this is the part of the interview where you tell me funny, crazy stories.

Sure.  Well, for myself personally, I have had some crazy experiences. One of which in Reno, there is this casino called Eldorado. And out of any casino still operating, it’s like the only casino where people will still kind of go, “Yeah, don’t mess with that casino.” There is some roots like the mafia in that casino. And there is urban legends of just crazy stuff that goes down.

For the most part Disney owns the casinos now, and you are not going to get your face punched in because they are going to have a lawsuit. That just doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe in the sixties, right, but not anymore. Well, this place still kind of has that feel to it a little bit. I was in Reno. I was pretty much done in Reno, like no one would let me play anymore. It was Labor Day weekend and I didn’t have any place to stay. We just showed up. It’s very rare to have not five different hotel rooms, and just have them all booked, and go from place to place.

This weekend we didn’t have anything. No one, everyone was kicking us out; no one would put us up anywhere. So we’re like, “We’re going to sleep in the car, what the heck’s going to happen?” And we’re done playing, and I’m like, “You know what, I’m just going to go across the street and I’m going to try this Eldorado one more time.” They had already kicked me out, but what do I have to lose. We have ten minutes to kill, I’ll play through a couple of hands, play a couple of shoes. So I sit down, I start playing…I’m not the kind of guy who will come and just demand attention and tell people what to do. But I am at a table and all of a sudden, the count turns and it’s really, really good. And there is only room at the table for me to play two spots, but it would be great if I could play three spots at this point, because the odds are in my favor. So I ask the guy next to me, “Do you mind sitting out. I just feel like I need to go for it.” And that is kind of something rare for me to do and he is like “Yeah, sure. Go for it.”

I put all my money out and I’m winning more than I’m losing but I’m not like taking them over. And this whole time, I’m like ” OK, any second now, I’ll get this tap on my shoulder. Any second now,” I get this tap on my shoulder. “All right, here it is.” And it’s a host, and she is like “Hey, we just want to know, do you need anything? Do you want to go up to the night club? You need a place to stay?” I said “Yes, I need a place to stay. Definitely”.

She says “Yeah OK, great, we can find a place.” So she gets me a room. I play a couple more hands, and I’m just so excited about having a room…like I get to go to bed. So I called my buddy, I’m like, “I got a room, it’s amazing.” I go up to the room and it’s really nice, and I tell him where it is and he’s coming with the suitcase. I’m laying on the bed and I turn on the TV.  I’m sitting there going “All right, this is going to be a good night.”

Knock on the door, it’s security and they are like, “Listen, we don’t know what is going on but we just have ask you to leave this room.” I’m like “Really?” They’re like, “Yeah, you have to leave this room right now.” “All right, sorry to hear that. I’ll grab my stuff.” And they’re like, “Yeah, well the casino manager is coming up right now, just to explain.” And my heart just drops because, A: I had just been kicked out of this place and told never to return, and B: This place has these urban legends of still being kind of mafia.

And the guy who did pack me up the first time seemed like he would be the kind of guy that would throw me in a river. So I’m like “Tell him not to worry, I’m leaving, so no big deal.” So I grab my stuff, I head towards the elevator and I’m pushing the elevator door button, and I’m waiting and then the elevator next to me, doors open up, casino manager comes over.

Big fat white guy comes over to me, and he goes “Mr. (Name Withheld).” And I’m like, “Shit, what is going to happen?” And I’m looking around and there is no one in the hallway except for these two security guys. It’s late at night. He just looks at me he is like, “You’re really good. But we’re really good too.” And then he shakes my hand and says “Don’t ever come back here again.” And I’m like “Thank God.”

.

.

It seems like there’s a respect, both ways.

There was a bit of respect there.

.

.

It seems like it makes their job more fun when they have to look out for these guys who are trying to cheat them.

Sure. I think for some people they feel that way. I’ve been treated much worse. I was treated badly in Lake Tahoe. I hadn’t even played in his casino yet. He knew who I was, he took my ID, wouldn’t give it back. He basically told me that I’m the scum of the earth and that he won’t tolerate people like me in his casino.

They made me go into the back room. They sat me down, interrogated me, tried to make me feel threatened as much as they can probably get away with. And the only leverage they had was they had my ID. I wanted my ID back and they wouldn’t give it back. Well finally, they set it on the table kind of next to me, but then just kept asking me questions. I was looking at my ID, I’m looking at the door to get out. And I’m like, “All right guys, I’m gonna leave.”

I grab my ID and I just start heading towards the door. The way that we’ve been trained is if you are ever in a situation where you want to leave the casino and they won’t let you leave, like this situation…what you do is you announce loudly that you want to leave. So, if there is any eyewitnesses or any audio recording, that’s very clear. You put your hands completely to your side and you just slowly walk through the people and you leave. That’s standard operating procedure.

If you do anything that makes them say “Oh, he was attacking us!” they could take you to the ground or something. So I’m in this backroom, they’ve got me kind of cornered from the entrance. I grab my ID and I’m like “OK, be cool,” hands to the side, and instead I just like book it [laughs]. I cruise right through them, I just break through.

I break through them and then I don’t know where to go. Am I going to go back the way that they took me, back through the casino? They’re like ,”Hey, wait, ” and I stop and they’re like, “Go that way, go that way.” And I look over and there’s this door and I’m like, “Huh?” And they’re like, “Go that way!” And so I go through that door, and I’m in a stairwell. I go down these stairs, like “Holy crap, where did they just send me?” Finally I’m out in the parking lot, and I am like, “All right. Time to drive home! This is ridiculous.”

So they treated me pretty bad. But like I said, that is like 5% of the team you are treated poorly.

.

.

Any other crazy stories, stuff you have seen?

I have seen people lose a lot of money, dude. I have lost…There is one situation where I lost probably about 40 grand in a matter of like 10-15 minutes.  I had only been playing on the team for a couple of months and, man, it was crazy.

I sat down at a table. Nothing is happening. All of a sudden, the count gets high. I start throwing out money. The count stays high. I am throwing out money, just lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. I am down around 40 grand. I have more money on me, but I just feel so disheartened. I had to go up to my hotel room, just lay on the bed, and just decompress, like, “What just happened? What was I doing wrong? How did that just happen?”

.

.

I have a technical question. How much money do you go to a casino with?

It totally depends. It depends on where we are going. If you are going to Vegas, it is not uncommon to have 80 to 100 grand on you.

.

.

How do you have it, like in hundreds?

Yeah. In stacks, yeah.

.

.

How big is $100,000?

So $10,000,  if it is folded in half, which is pretty common, is about the size of maybe two decks of cards. The MIT team talks about this in their book, is going through airports to get to these cities with all this money, because you don’t want to put it in your bag. You want to keep it on your person. So you essentially have anywhere from 40 to like 80, $10,000 strapped on you. And if you won big in a city, you are taking back even more. Like $100 bills in 10 straps just all over your body.

One of the gnarliest situations I was in…You kind of get used to that after a while, which is probably bad, because it is still a lot of money, and as a player, you are responsible for the money you are holding.

I am in Vegas and a player on our team had won, I think, 45 grand at Caesar’s, and had 45 grand in brown chips, which are $5,000 chips.

Well he went home without cashing them out. So now the team has these nine brown chips and it is not worth anything to us. So I was handed these, and like, “Go try to cash these out.”

So I am in Caesar’s. I have got these nine brown chips. I go to the cage and they are like, “We have no record of you winning this. We are not going to give you the money.” And I am like, “Seriously? They are my chips. My friend game them to me. He won them. He forgot to cash them out.  I am telling them the truth.”  It sounds like complete bullshit and I am telling the truth. And they are like, “Sorry.” So I call one of our managers and I am like, “Listen. I can’t cash these out.” And he is like, “Well see what you can do. Go to a Roulette table, throw down $100 on something and just try to break it up.”

So I go to a roulette table and I give them a $5,000 chip, and I am like, “Can you break this down?” They break it down. I have got $100 on black or something, and then took that, walked to another Roulette table and did it again.

Well the second time, the guy held on to it and wouldn’t give it back. The casino manager comes down, takes the chip, starts asking me questions. Pretty much thinks that I stole this money, because they do keep track of who wins brown chips, because it is one of their biggest denomination of chips, and I have no record of having won these chips.

So they call the police. The police are there. They are questioning me about this one brown chip. Well I’ve got like eight more in my pocket, plus I’ve got about 25 grand worth of Wynn chips in my pocket, and I have got like another 60 grand worth of cash. So I probably have close to 100 grand on me in chips and cash.

And these police officers think that I might have stole money or chips, and they are interrogating me in Caesar’s, and they ask me questions. And I am just like, “Look. I am just telling the truth. It’s my friend’s chips. He forgot to cash them out. I am trying to do it for him. They won’t let me. I am just trying to get it done.”

Well they don’t have any reason to actually arrest me or anything, so they finally let me go. But it is kind of like you are in situations where you all of a sudden become very acutely aware of how much money you have on your body and how big of a deal that could be.

We have a guy who was stopped by the DEA at an airport. He maybe had 40, 50 grand on him or something. They somehow knew. They came up to him and said, “How much money do you have on you?” He tells them how much money he has on him. And they are like, “Why do you have all this money on you?” And he’s like, “I am part of a professional card counting team. Here is the number to the guy who manages the team. Here is all my paperwork.” He probably shows them charts, his hours, and everything, and he is like, “That is what I do.”

The DEA, they could take money from you for any reason, and then you basically have to wait and prove that you have it for a real reason; you are not selling drugs or something.

So he calls the manager, talks to him, and basically was like, “Listen. I don’t know what is going on here completely. But just because both of you guys have been really, really nice and haven’t given me any shit, I am going to let you go. If your friend would have given me any attitude at all, I would have taken all this money.”

So stuff like that will happen. We have had money confiscated and we have gotten it back. We had a guy who left 10, 15 grand in a hotel room on accident. He was down the road 20 miles before he realized it. Had the “Oh shit” moment, turned around, got to the hotel, and fortunately, the maid found it and turned it in. So they had it, but they are like, “We are not going to give this to you. We are going to call the police.” Like, who has 15 grand on them in a hotel room?

So they call the police. The police come and he is like, “Look. I have all this money because I was at a casino. I play Blackjack. In fact, I do it for a living. I count cards. You want to see? Watch.” And he starts teaching them how to count cards.

So there are like two or three police officers there, and he is like teaching them. And they are like, “Ah! That’s really interesting.” And like, backup is coming for some reason. It’s like a small town or something and everyone is interested. And they are like, “Hey Frank! Come in here! This guy counts cards! Hey, show him again what you do with the card counting!” And so, he is like showing all these police officers how to count cards.

.

.

I was reading there are counter measures the casinos are doing to take away the advantage, like these continuous shufflers and facial recognition. Is there any stuff that is actually working that they are doing?

Sure. Continuous shuffle machines totally shut down the possibility of counting cards.

.

.

You can’t do it with that?

You cannot count cards with that. And the only reason why not all casinos do that is because not only does it keep card counters from your tables, but people who are purists of the game know that that is a way for the casino to get more of an advantage. Not only does it randomize cards completely and make it impossible to count cards, it actually does affect your edge and makes it harder for you as just a normal player to win.

.

.

What are in the statistics there? Like, with the edge the house has?

I don’t know. Like a really good house edge…I don’t geek out on the math. But a continuous shuffle machine completely randomizes the cards and makes it impossible to count cards.  It probably gives the house somewhere around half a percent, probably more, of an edge than…

.

.

And a half a percent will change you from playing it or not playing it?

Sure.  The shoe has to get rich enough in the right cards for that to turn around. And not only do you want it to turn around, but you want it to turn around, and for you to not only have a slight advantage, you want it to turn around for you to have a substantial advantage. And that is when you start betting really big, when you have a one to two percent edge over the house, not like a half a percent edge.

So every percentage that the house takes from the beginning actually does affect whether or not it is even a valuable game. It even affects how much we pay players, how much the game is worth really.

You can look at a game and you can know mathematically, if I played 100 hands per hour sitting at that table betting this much at this time, that game is worth $1,000 an hour. You can know mathematically, over the long run, how much you expect to make. And that number is super important. That number is what we base how much we pay players off of. That number is what casinos use to know how much they comp players and how valuable the game is for them. It is the same exact number.

.

.

Anything else I’m missing?

Many people on our team use it as an opportunity to launch themselves into other things. There are like a lot of people on our team who started their own businesses, who work for nonprofits, who do stuff where they normally couldn’t do if they didn’t have the team to kind of help.

.

.

Like a bunch of Robin Hoods.

Essentially! [laughs] I mean what is unique about our team is like…I met this guy at a bible camp, and we are all people who believe in God and believe that we should be moral. And in a way, that kind of helps bring that integrity and consistency of the team that we can trust each other. And a lot of these people are like, “I want to go and I want to serve my city or I want to serve my church, and I want to use this opportunity to be a good husband and a good…like, this is a blessing. I want to do this…”

.

.

That is the most insane thing ever. You said that you met your card counting buddy at bible camp?

Yeah.

.

.

That is insane.

Yeah.  I think everyone on the team is a Christian, in the sense that we believe in God. We believe in Jesus…I am really cautious to say that means that we are more awesome and that we can trust each other because we are Christians, because Christians are screwed up. But we do have that in common.

.

.

Wow. Well, I think there is something special there that you guys share, that it is beyond just some random person. There is a common belief. That’s super unique.

Yeah. It is a really neat part of our team, for sure.

.

.

For more Undercover Interview, click HERE

Undercover Interview- I’m a Stripper

I’ve had this Undercover Interview on ice for a while…I’ve just been lazy transcribing it.  Enjoy!

.

.

What do you do?

I take my clothes off for money.

.

.

What’s the preferred term to describe what you do?

I don’t have one.  When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, “I shake it for money.” I don’t care.  I don’t like “titty dancer.”

.

.

OK. So what led you to do that?

I was at a girlfriend’s house who had been a dancer before, and it was a Friday night, nothing going on in town. I was like, “What are you doing?” She’s like, “Come over now. Let’s watch movies and drink wine.” We were drinking wine and watching bad movies, and she was like, “Yeah, I’m just going to go to (Strip club name withheld) and pay off my credit card bills, whatever,” and she has a nine-to-five. I was just drunk enough to be like, “I don’t have a lot of cash. Do you think I could do that?”

She was like, “Well, are you sure you want to do that? I got one of my other friends into it, and she totally changed. She got boobs. She went blonde, got the extensions and the nails, tans, and I would hate for you to change yourself.” I was like, “Well, I’m pretty all right with who I am. I’ve never wanted to be blonde, and I’ve got big enough boobs as it is.” So that’s kind of how it started, and a couple days later we had more wine and she dressed me up and it’s the first time I dressed up as Roxie.

.

.

Describe your first night.  Were you nervous?

Oh, it was nervous and exciting and being like, “Are people going to want to see me take my clothes off?” because that’s nervous. Like, OK, what do I… the whole point is to get people to think you’re hot and take your clothes off so they want to shove twenties down your pants. That’s what you want to have happen. That’s the goal. So I was really concerned about that. The girl who got me into this is actually probably the best dancer that I’ve seen. She’s amazing. There’s a lot that you just can’t learn, you just have it, and she’s got it…you know, manipulative type of things, so it’s kind of a little nervous.

But anyway, so on the way up she was just schooling me on what she thought I should know, how to act, what to say, what not to say. Like don’t talk about negative things, go slow, just whatever you’re doing just slow down and try to look like you’re having fun. Most of the time I am, but, you know, keep a smile on your face.

So the first night she gets me all dressed up and she lies to the club. She used to fool around with the manager, so I didn’t have to audition and that’s pretty rare. I’m the only person I know of that started on a Friday night without an audition.

I wore this black dress that looks great on me, but I didn’t think about getting it off, and it totally got stuck and there’s a couple people sitting at my rack.

.

.

And when you say “rack?”

Oh, where the guys sit, that’s the rack. Like, you put the money on the rack.

So…the girl, who goes by Victoria at work, is sitting there with her feet up on the rack and just smiling, just like “slow down, just slow down, you’re going to be fine.”

Yeah, so the dress totally got stuck, and my panties got stuck on my heels and I was just laughing at the absurdity of all of this. Like, “oh, my God, am I really doing this right now? Is this really what’s happening? Did I really just do that for four dollars?”

.

.

And how long have you been doing it since then?

About six months.

.

.

So you have another job?

I have another job.

.

.

What’s that other job?

I teach kindergarten. When I moved to (Location Withheld), my teaching credential was issued in December, and once it was issued, work was very, very slow. I was getting called maybe once every two weeks at the beginning of the school year, because no one takes days off during that time.

.

.

So do you work at night and then go to school the next morning?

No, I go to (Location Withheld) on the weekends only.

.

.

So do you drink every night when you’re dancing?

Yes.

.

.

How come?

I find I’m a lot more sociable when I’ve been drinking. I don’t ever get drunk. I’ve never been sloppy there, because that’s just not cool. But you’re sitting around and you’re just in a bar really. I’m talking to people that I don’t know, that are friendly enough, that are nice enough.  And there’s like the naked aspect to it, but for the most part it’s just sitting around getting to know people, chitchatting. I’m there for companionship is really what it boils down to. So the drinking…you’re at a bar, you have a cocktail.

.

.

What about like drugs?

I’ve never seen it, I’ve smelled drugs. There was an incident a couple months back with a girl who was smoking heroin in the bathroom, and she was promptly searched and fired. I’ve never seen drugs. I know a lot of people smoke a lot of pot that work there, big deal, but I’ve never seen any drugs. Not to say that I don’t think that there’s some chicks who are fucked up, but I’ve never seen it.

And I understand it’s a lot more at other clubs. One of the bouncers at the club is super-cool. He’s a really cool, sweet guy, and he was saying how at other clubs, they’ve had to put Vaseline on the back of the toilet seats, and how you can walk by and hear girls like, “Fuck, fuck!” while their pile of cocaine’s disappearing in the vaseline.

.

.

Would you let your boyfriend go to strip clubs?

No.

.

.

Really?

I think it’s totally lame.

.

.

I thought you were going to say, “Yeah, no big deal.”

No way.

.

.

How come?

The guys that are there, what are you doing there? You’re there for companionship?  You’re there to have some girl drive you out of your mind and just sit there and lap it up. What the fuck is that?

.

.

That’s interesting you say that, because it’s your job.

Someone’s got to do it, it might as well be me.

.

.

OK. So you see it from both peoples’ ends. Like you’re willing to do a job, but on the other end, it almost seems like you don’t respect the people who come in.

I don’t understand it…last night a married guy came in for his brother’s bachelor party and spent close to $200 on me and just sat there.  He wanted to talk to me…he was a nice enough guy.

.

.

You were telling about traveling for work. You were going to go to Alaska?

I thought about it.  The fishermen – King Salmon season ends on July 15th. I looked into it.

.

.

So, this is something that’s in your calendar?

It was in my calendar. They actually denied me. They said I did not meet their criteria. So, that’s pretty astounding. That’s terribly embarrassing.

.

.

The strip club out there?

Yeah, which doesn’t make any sense. I have my theories. My age might be part of it and when I was writing my little essay about myself, I was pretty clever and I was thinking, “Maybe I should dumb this down,” when I was writing it and I didn’t.

.

.

Wait. Hold up. You had to write an essay?

I had to write a little blurb about myself.

.

.

You had to write an essay to get a job at a strip club?

Uh-huh.

.

.

That is insane.

Yeah, totally. My pictures were great. It was ridiculous. And the girls that are on there…they’re day girls at best where I work.  Basically, the fishermen have been on their boats the whole season. They just got their 10 or 15% of the take. They have 10, 15, $20,000 cash on them. Why not go get it?

.

.

Do a lot of other girls travel from all over to go to Alaska?

I think the smart ones do.  I’m not doing this because it’s my life calling. I’m doing this because I’m an out of work teacher and I might as well do this. Really, there’s no jobs in (Location Withheld), and I hate waiting tables.

Would you rather that I sit around and pump gas for I don’t even think $10 an hour, or use my head and make – I made $700 last night.

.

.

Do you think there’s something that predisposes you do being a dancer, because I don’t think everybody could be so calm about it.

No. I was scared.

.

.

I know a lot of girls who would pump gas or would wait tables over dancing.

I’ve waited tables. It makes me miserable. It makes me hateful and awful.

.

.

I think there’s got to be something inside of you that allows you to be cool with this because it’s a weird industry for sure.

It’s a weird industry. I think that the way you handle yourself in the club has a lot to do with it. I’m not ashamed.

.

.

So, working in a strip club you see men at their worst.  You see guys in almost like a no holds barred zone where there’s no other women. They’re acting exactly like they want to. You see bachelor parties with drunk dudes.

Oh, yeah.

.

.

Do you respect men or does that change your thought on men?

No, it hasn’t.

.

.

No, it hasn’t?

Mm-mm, because the people that are conducting themselves as assholes, I’d pick up as an asshole anyways.

.

.

So, you can separate inside the club and outside the club?

I really don’t think there’s a difference. I think people act the way they act and that’s who they are. I don’t think that there’s – I see what you’re saying, letting go a little bit more.

.

.

But, what about a married man who comes in there and wants to take it too far? He’s acting one way outside the club and one way inside the club.

I don’t think he reserves that behavior to just the club.

.

.

Right. But, his wife probably doesn’t know that’s happening.

I don’t know about that.

.

.

Do you get weird offers from guys? Or, the guys, “I’ll give you more money and you can do something else?”

Oh, yeah. “Have lunch with me,” then I was like, “OK. Well, champagne room…” I’ve never done it. But, a friend of mine calls it “light hooking.”

.

.

Calls it what?

“Light hooking.”  Where someone wants to meet you for lunch, or whatever, just as friends…coffee. Not friends because you’re a stripper. It’s obvious what they’re trying to do… anyways, it’s the companionship taken to another level and a lot of girls do it and I probably would do it. It just hasn’t come up yet.  “Yeah, I’ll go have lunch with you. But, that’s all I’m going to have with you and this how much it’s going to cost.” That would be minimum $500 an hour because that’s how much a champagne room is.

.

.

On an average night how much do you make? Because the reason I ask about that is I see on the Jerry Springer show, and they’ll be like, “I make $5,000 a night.”

She’s fucking lying.

.

.

OK. Because I always thought… there’s no way they could make that much.

There’s no way, unless she’s doing a lot more than that. Yeah, I don’t believe it.

.

.

So on an average night what can a stripper take home?

I’m pretty middle of the road, I think.  You know, it’s very quiet how much money girls are making, but you can look around the room and see what people are doing and know how much they’re making. Because if that girl’s in the dance room, and that girl’s sitting by the bar drinking by herself, you know who’s making money and who’s not.  If I don’t make $200, and that’s only happened once, and I was in a pretty pissy mood so that would be why. I just didn’t want to be there that night. I forget what I wanted to be doing, but wasn’t in a great mood. Or Sunday, that’s different.  Sundays, that’s different. But anywhere from $300 to $500 a night.

.

.

OK.

But there’s no stress.  That’s just an easy night.

.

.

I mean, you are working. I mean, if you’re making that much money you’re on your, hate to say it, but you’re on your knees.

You should see the knees. They’re nice and bruised, and the top of your feet from the poles.

.

.

What is the least amount you’ve made?

I think $180.

.

.

What’s the most you’ve made in one night?

$800.  I’m not a good dancer, like I’m not the prettiest girl there. I’m the fat stripper…seriously. There’s two girls who are just bigger girls, one is Hawaiian, you know, so she’s a bigger build, but I’m like the softest body one for sure. I’m not flexible, I can’t do sweet pole tricks. I don’t make my money by being a dancer. I make my money by what my friend calls the “voodoo mind fuck.” People like me, because I’m not a stripper. That’s who likes me. They like me because, like, ‘What are you doing here? You look like you’re supposed to be a kindergarten teacher.” I was like, “Well, actually, you’re right.” But the blonde girls with the fake boobs and the tans, they’re probably making similar to what I do. Then having regulars is where you make your money.

People who come in continually to see you, and you just know that they’re going to be there and to rely on that income. But I would say $300 to $700, $700 being the high end of good.

.

.

So, tell me what life is like as a stripper. You work totally opposite hours than everybody else. What are the other girls like?

I don’t have a lot to do with the girls that I work with, and that’s kind of on purpose. I have definitely set myself apart from them. But, it doesn’t seem like the other girls do a lot. Seems like they just go tan and go shopping, but I don’t know that for sure. Some of them are in school, some of them have other jobs, but most of them don’t. There’s one girl who’s going to school to be a dentist. One girl already has one degree and she’s going for her second bachelor’s. But, most of them, this is what they do.

.

.

Sounds like you got a few smart girls on the roster.

Some of them, yep, but some of them are just fucking dumb as rocks.

.

.

What are some of the tricks of the trade in the profession?

I saw one girl have this crazy-ass spackle that supposedly smoothed out stretch marks, that tightened your skin. I mean, it was a day girl; the difference between day girls and night girls are…

.

.

So, what is the difference between day girls and night girls?

The A team and the B team, for sure. The day girls are usually moms. Some of the night girls are, but they don’t look like they’ve had kids. The day girls seem to be a little bit harder on their luck. A lot of them are always scrambling for rides. The day girls look a little haggard.

.

.

Wow, sounds depressing.

It is.  When you think of a sad strip club, I think of the day girls.

.

.

Is there animosity between the day girls and the night girls?

Oh yeah. The day girls hate the night girls; it’s hilarious.

.

.

What was the most money you ever got from one single guy?

His name is (Name Withheld)…he was there with his friend and he actually just came in and saw me. I was like you know what we should do, we should just go ahead and split a bottle of champagne thinking we were going to do champagne room. He orders a bottle of Dom and I’m sitting there drinking, you know, there it’s a very expensive bottle of champagne, well it is anywhere but especially there. And listening to Van Halen, and it was just like, “What? How am I drinking Dom and listening to Van Halen right now?” This is just totally ridiculous.

.

.

It sounds like there’s some nights you live like a rock star.

Sometimes.

.

.

And other nights like maybe are the total opposite?

No, I get taken care of…I’ve never bought a drink there before.

.

.

I would hope so…

No, never, it’s kind of a matter of pride.

.

.

What are your typical customers like?

I have a regular who’s a young kid from Saudi Arabia. At first I felt bad about the money he was spending on me because he was buying…one night I think he bought like 15 dances from me and all the liquor I could handle and would’ve kept giving it to me but I stopped.

.

.

So that’s like one of your typical guys.

There’s one dude, it’s so funny because he comes in to see me and I don’t know what his name is. But it’s probably John because that’s what all their names are. He’s, I forget what he really does, but he’s also an umpire and he wants to have a relationship with me. Like he really wants to date me and he’s married. And I’m like “Dude, I don’t do that…I don’t do married guys.” I’m not that girl.

I wouldn’t say it’s any one type of person. A lot of them are dads and a lot of them aren’t. It seems like most of them are divorced.

.

.

Do you get a lot of talkers, guys that don’t want to see you strip, that just want to talk to you?

Occasionally.

.

.

Does that bug you?

No, it’s totally fine to have someone sit there and put 20′s under my glass. It’s frickin’ great. I’d so much rather do that. It’s just a pain in the ass to take your panties off and on.

.

.

Any guys that try and talk you out of your profession, or ask you why you’re doing it?

Oh, they all ask me. Everybody wants to know “how you got into this,” or “how long you’ve been doing this,” “what else do you do?” They all want to know.

.

.

All right, how would you react if you found out that your son’s teacher was a stripper?

I really don’t think that what somebody does in their personal time affects their teaching.

.

.

You don’t see any issue with it?

I have more of a problem with teachers who are super religious teaching my kid, than someone who’s open about their sexuality.

.

.

I think I’m pretty opened minded, but if I found that out it wouldn’t immediately be like, “oh…cool.”

No, no, I’m sure it would be a shocker.

.

.

It wouldn’t be like “oh he’s also a basketball coach,” cool. “Oh she’s also a stripper.” Maybe a red flag goes up…

Well yeah, for sure. I’m never going to be able to not be a stripper. I will always be a stripper, I’ve taken my clothes off for money, and that’s never ever going to go away and I will not know the ramifications of this for a really long time. I would hope that somebody would know, for me that I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I got into this when I was 27, not as an 18 year old with no experience. I thought about it long hard, like this wasn’t an easy decision.

.

.

How long do you think you’ll continue doing this?

If you had asked me that Friday, I probably would’ve said never again. Friday was a personal low for sure, for me. I was giving a private dance to a bachelor…we’re up in the backroom, his friend pays me to give him a dance. He had gone to my rack but I wouldn’t have gone to his table. They looked like they would be the, big truck gun shooting type of guys. That’s not who I hang out with, ever, really.

.

.

Inside or outside?

Inside and outside. But they wanted me to go over there, and they wanted me to do this. So he gave me the money to go give his friend a dance. His friend is enjoying himself so I ask, “should I continue?” He was like, “yeah.” While I’m doing this he’s looking down and I can see he’s starting to pass out. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that I was like, “maybe I can get a lot of money out of this guy.” Like that’s embarrassing horrible, horrible thing to say but that’s why I’m there.

.

.

Yep.

That’s why I’m there. Anyways he looks down and he starts puking. Fantastic I’m naked and there’s some dude puking on my legs. He’s not only puking on me, but he puked on a dress that I made. These clothes are expensive, you know, and this is a dress that I made. I’m laughing thinking it’s going to be fine.  I’m thinking, “sweet I can get a new dress”. His friends were basically like “sorry.” I was like “no, seriously your friend just puked on $60 dress and a $20 pair of panties.” They were like, “we don’t have the money, we’re broke.”

.

.

Isn’t that what the bouncers for, to like fix that problem?

Yeah, you would think, but they didn’t have any money and that was it.  So anyways I go into the back and I’m pissed and when I’m pissed I cry. Some of the other girls were like, “this has happened to me before.” One of them was like, “well you know, if you’re a stripper in your career, you’re going to get puked on.” I was just like, “fuck you, I have a career.”  It was the first time I felt bad about it.

.

.

Would you ever do porn?

One thing that has been brought up is how many people have seen me naked now. Thousands of people have seen me naked, and I don’t even know what they look like. You know, I have no idea who you are, but you’ve seen my butthole. Fantastic. Fantastic.