NOT PENNIES
& NOT QUITE FROM HEAVEN
The forecast is in for Super Bowl weekend, and once again,
IT LOOKS LIKE RAIN.
At least that’s the word from Dallas, where news reports surfaced this week that Hines Ward and other members of the Pittsburgh Steelers huddled at the Dallas Gentlemen’s Club one night, with some of them indulging in a strip-club ritual known as...
“MAKING IT RAIN” i.e., showering dancers with fistfuls of cash.
“BUSINESS” “None of your business,” he added, with a laugh.
“At one point near midnight, the Steelers, including huge linemen, appeared on the main stage,” wrote Gromer Jeffers Jr., a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, in that newspaper’s Super Bowl blog. “There they posed and danced with an assortment of strippers. It was ‘Make It Rain Monday’ at the club. And some of the players made it rain with their dollar bills.” (Mr. Ward later denied the story — sort of — to reporters. “None of your business,” he added, with a laugh).
Soon, the phrase was ricocheting around the Internet, and popping up on “Morning Joe,” where Willie Geist had to patiently explain to his fellow hosts, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, what it meant.
Anyone with a few gigs of hip-hop in their iTunes knows the term, which can have multiple meanings. It has become a staple in strip-club anthems like “Make It Rain,” by Fat Joe, featuring Lil Wayne (“Gotta handful of stacks, better grab an umbrella”).
In clubs, the ritual reached a new pop-culture apex (or nadir) a few years ago, when Adam Jones, then a safety for the Tennessee Titans and previously known as Pacman, climbed onstage at a Las Vegas strip club alongside the rapper Nelly and unleashed plumes from a Louis Vuitton backpack- filled with $40,000 in $1 bills. A scuffle soon broke out, followed by gunfire outside, wounding three. Mr. Jones later accepted a plea bargain for conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.
But these days, club managers said, the practice is no longer limited to Super Bowl-bound athletes and entourage-leading rappers. “It’s anybody, it’s average Joes,” said Tara Christine, a manager for Scores New York in West Chelsea. Customers can buy the club’s pre-packaged stacks of 100 singles, edge up to the stage and let loose. “It pumps up the atmosphere,” Ms. Christian said.
LOOSEN UP
Even before the term started popping up in rap videos, or ESPN segments, this form of precipitation was not unknown, particularly in smaller clubs outside the city. “It’s kind of a Jersey strip club thing that they would promote in order to generate more money,” said Michael Wright, the chief operating officer for Sapphire, an upscale 10,000-square-foot club near the Queensboro Bridge. A club manager “would take 50 to 100 dollars out of their own kitty to rain on the dancers, to incite other customers to loosen up their wallets.”
W THEIR
Of course, one can imagine what the feminist author Andrea Dworkin would have said about women being treated like tarpaulins at Yankee Stadium. Even the dancers themselves seem divided, Mr. Wright said. “The upscale entertainer looks at it like a little bit of an insult: ‘Don’t throw money at me,’ ” he said. Everyone else? “They’ll take the money.”