Flashdancers 2019

This is a review for Flashdancers at its new location, the old Private Eyes. Unfortunately, it's bad news all around. They moved the Flash girls over here and fired the Private Eyes dancers, and that didn't work well at all. The old Flash site was right on Broadway, near several subway lines, the 7th Avenue hotels and a convenient walk for guys who worked in the Times Square area or Columbus Circle. Private Eyes is between 8th and 9th, not really near anything.

When they were two clubs, Flash had a classier vibe (if a strip club can be said to be classy), a more affluent clientele, and girls to match. Private Eyes was a place you went for less pressure, chicks who were a little rougher around the edges, and maybe a little more contact than you'd get at Flash. It was also a smaller space, with a huge bar outside the dancing area and a couple of small stages where girls dance in bikinis that they wear under their dresses. Since it's time consuming to get into and out of the bikinis, most of the girls wear them when they're offstage, which detracts from the sexiness of the dresses.

The dance space is now way too crowded, and the stage makes it look like the girls are dancing on a big pool table in the middle of the room. In the old Flash, the stage was a stage, it was much larger and longer. Each girl could be in her own space and you could focus on the one(s) you liked. Now it's like a fish tank. Also at the old Flash, the girls at the bar were topless and also at the third small stage in the allegedly VIP area.

Private Eyes was never fancy, so they redid it to make it fancier. It looks like a 50s ice cream shop now, a lot of bubblegum blue and fluorescent lighting. They have some big-screen TVs at the bar, but it's often hard to get a seat because the club is small but they seem to have the same number of girls on each night. There might be the same number of guys, but they're more the old Private Eyes guys, they spend less and so a lot of the old Flash girls have departed and the replacements are less polished but also lacking the girl-next-dooriness of the previous Private Eyes crew.

They've brought along the "Safari Room" concept, a $2000/hour private space that seems absurd. Probably the really attractive girls spend all of their time there or in the other classes of champagne room, leaving the ones out in public at the lower end of the ratings scale. The club also lacks the two big lap-dancing areas that Flash had, so if you just want a $20 dance or two, you'll get it in a crowded space with all the world watching you.

Most of the Flash-type girls have left for places like Ricks. One of the other clubs, Sapphire, I think, is going to open up in the old Flash space, and when that happens, there will be even less reason for the high-earning girls to stay at the new Flash. Eventually, it will probably devolve into a club that's more like the old Private Eyes, but Flashdancers needs to move back to a premium location, which might or might not be possible.