Colonie

Skin, breasts and thighs are coveted at the Thanksgiving table, but nowhere more so than at Nite Moves, the Latham gentlemen's club that has been offering free turkey dinners to patrons on Thanksgiving since 2004.

"There are a lot of people in our industry, whether it's a customer or the staff, that don't have family to spend the holiday with. We offer a chance to get a nice, hot meal and enjoy the show," owner Steven Dick Jr. said.

The show: scantily clad women performing physics-defying stunts on a slicked-up stripper's pole, lap dances and otherwise unorthodox entertainment on Thanksgiving. (Unless your traditions include Aunt Betty serving apple pie in a g-string and nipple tassels.)

"We used to have the same people come every year and look forward to it, but they've gotten older and moved away. It's different people now. We had one customer who came in every year, an older gentleman. His name was Phil. He always looked forward to coming in. His wife had just passed," said Richard LaMarque, a doorman at the club.

While the holidays are heralded as a time for family and togetherness, what happens to those who have no one to celebrate with? Spending the holidays alone is a dreaded cliché, and Nite Moves gives people the opportunity to feel included.

"The people who are coming in may not come in any other night, but they are here because there is nothing else. If you work all day on Thanksgiving and you don't have any family, you can come here," said Steve Curran, a security guard at the club. "It's nice to have a place where you can go and enjoy yourself and get a little dinner."

The $15 cover — same as every night — nets customers a free Thanksgiving buffet catered by Boston Market. About 50 people (typically men) come in on Thanksgiving night, which is equivalent to a normal night in the industry. The clientele are people who have no families or can't make it home for the holiday – older men, college students and people from other countries.

"We have that market cornered," Dick said.

A 23-year-old customer on the Thursday before Thanksgiving, who asked only to be identified as Jeff, said, "I'll be at my mother's house, but if I didn't have a family I would come here. The entertainment is better. Hell, the food is probably better, too."

Holidays can be lonely, with their emphasis on family, friendship and a sense of belonging. Some people volunteer or eat dinner at charity feasts as a respite from alienation. Others pay cash for the attention of attractive women in a dimly lit club on Thanksgiving.

"People get more of a stigma coming in during daylight hours. But on the holidays, people don't want to be home alone," LaMarque said. "It makes for a less lonely night. It's family, but it also feels familiar because it's food that everyone knows. It's happy."

Vixen, who has been stripping for a year and a half and has no family locally, worked on Thanksgiving last year and finds the atmosphere at the club to be welcoming and inclusive for both the customers and the staff.

"The way I think about it, it's that they — we — have nowhere else to go. I think it feels like Thanksgiving. The other holidays just have a different vibe."

Fiona, a stripper who has been working for almost 20 years, will be working her first Thanksgiving on the pole this year. "We're kind of like family here anyway," she said, and assumed she probably wouldn't eat from the buffet in order to make sure all customers are cared for.

More than marketing, more than for profit, Dick sees the Thanksgiving buffet as a way to keep morale up at an otherwise disconsolate time.

"It only costs a couple of hundred dollars. Even if it's just for the staff, it's a nice thing to do for them," Dick said. "We want to be open for the public, even on the holidays, and that means someone is working. We try to balance the two. Having a turkey dinner is a nice way to go."

Deanna Fox is a freelance writer. www.deannafox.org • @DeannaNFox