From a club perspective, I had one of the worst road trips in quite some time when visiting the Topeka, KS, area a few months ago.
The club vibes felt weird and depressed. Further, the dancers that I dealt with seemed to be quite sensitive and generally lacked sophistication or almost any good game. I think I even scared a couple of them, though of course I did not so much as lay a finger on any girl or say anything remotely harsh (though I did lose my patience a little with one).
The four clubs that I visited were the Out House (Lawrence), Flamingo Club (Lawrence), Topeka Sports Cabaret (Topeka) and Baby Dolls (Topeka). Notes on my visits are as follows:
OUT HOUSE: The girls are attractive here and I am told that it is a party-like atmosphere on the weekends, but during my visits it was very sedate. The first night I visited there were 5 girls and one the second night there were only 4 girls working. On the second night they did not even bother running the stage as two of the girls were sitting with me and my buddy and the other two were clearly catering to their regulars. A majority of the girls were young, though there were a couple of seasoned pros in the mix. Body types ranged too, but all except one were quite fit and attractive.
Before 10 PM, the $20 lapdances, which are done in thinly padded chairs along the side walls, are discounted to 2 for 1. As a rare departure from the norm, I took ample advantage of the $10 LDs, more than anything because I was bored out of my skull as the girls that I was dealing with were young and/or otherwise painfully dull. I would have tipped a girl a decent amount for her time if there was even one who had something besides canned lines and generic crap to say. The only thing close to an original moment was the story that one of my LD partners shared with me, during the dance at all times, about how she is forced to pay for her boyfriend's stuff. I would not have spent nearly as much time there as I did except I was with a friend who very much liked the place.
The funniest thing, however, is that this seems to be the club that a lot of girls want to work in. I met two different girls in the other clubs that I will be discussing that told me that they were fired from the Out House for different infractions and missed the money that they used to make. You would be stunned to hear this by looking at the club, which is a real hole in the wall, but there it is.
Overall, this is probably a good club for Kansas, but it is a bit of a LD factory without a lot of edgy fun or flair, which for me makes it a boring place.
FLAMINGO CLUB (aka, the "Dirty Bird") No energy is the theme here. The girls don't hustle and talking to one of them could put you right to sleep. This was my second visit in three years and it sucked as much as the first. The girls are a mixed bag, an equal mix of mediocre country and ghetto girls, yet universally boring.
I did end up talking to one for a while and decided, against my better judgment, to go back for a lapdance. I ended up in a large room, brightly lit with red lights. There is a window to this weird cave near a bar that was not in use that night, but through which a bouncer was supposed to routinely peek. However, as is my norm in a strange place, I greased the bouncer on the way in and this ensured that he was nowhere to be seen.
Greasing the bouncer may have actually been a mistake. She seemed very worried about his absence and, part way through the first song, mumbled something about not being able to take her bottom off, not wanting me to feel ripped off, and then stopped the dance. Moreover, she actually said that she was not going to charge me and even tried to hand me a $20 as recompense for the bouncer tip.
Un-fucking-real. I hadn't laid a finger on her and gave her no cause (that I could tell), either in our get-to-know you chatter or during our brief time in this room, to make her think that I had any specific expectations of anything other than a LD. Of course, I did not take her $20 and I gave her something for the dance, but wow. She was actually going to pay me to go away.
TOPEKA SPORTS CABARET This is a large and well appointed sports bar/SC. I could see being a Sunday NFL regular if I lived in the area. My experience with one girl, however, was not as encouraging.
To be fair, she was young and fairly new to dancing. Also, to be perfectly honest, after already spending time in two of the local clubs and meeting many others just like her, with the same lack of game and canned lines, my patience was running a bit thin. I'll be perfectly candid when I say that I probably did not behave as well as I should have.
What really edged my irritation level up is when she stood there, for 15 minutes, rubbing the shoulders of both me and my travel companion. I invited her to sit down multiple times, yet she insisted on doing this. She obviously didn't get it. Finally, another girl sat down next to my buddy. Seeing Dancer 1s quick look of annoyance at this, I let her know that what just happened is how it should be and that she might want to rethink how she tries to sell two well dressed, older guys who obviously have money to spend. Now I don't normally tell a dancer how to do her job, but, as I said, my patience was thin at that point.
What finally pushed me over the edge, though, was when I declined her offer for LDs, which was made about 10 seconds after she finally sat down. She made the silly comment, “Oh, you just go to clubs to drink then.†After she stood there for 15 minutes working both of us at once and feeding us canned lines, all the while declining an invitation to sit until another girl finally forced her hand, she really expects to make the sale that easily? In response to that dumb comment, I told her a little story that sent her running to the dressing room, where she hid out for the rest of my time there.
Additional little tidbits about this place included the DJ who continued to run around the club with his mic in an effort to stir things up and the buzz around a poll dancing competition that was coming soon. Woo-hoo.
Finally, as we were leaving, a dancer standing near the door says, “Nice suit, are you a lawyer? I need a lawyer and I can pay cash.†She actually followed me out the door while she was making her inquiries. Between this event and comments about my suit from almost every gal that stopped by, I'm guessing that they don't see suits too often in this club.
BABY DOLLS: This club had a lot of brass and glass in it, along with strobe lights, a smoke machine and all of the other essentials for a gimmicky club. However, despite the pseudo-posh interior, it took me almost 15 minutes waiting at the door for the door guy to come back with change from the Benjamin that I had handed him to pay for the cover.
In all fairness, we did not stop here for too long. Also, with the generally disappointing state of affairs in the area thus far, and after having to hang by the door while they got their acts together, my patience was at an end. I was committed to leaving if I so much as got a whiff of a bad vibe from the dancers, which of course happened with the very first contestant.
The girl who sat with me was one of the only attractive girls in the place. I initially thought that I might be in luck, but then she decided to regal me, unsolicited, about how she never goes out with customers. Much like the other stops, I never so much as hinted at looking for anything. Did I have some look that made me seem predatory? Idk, but she did make sure to let me know that a regular across the way had a favorite who she heard was – gasp – seeing her regular outside of the club. She said it as if it was some great revelation and quite naughty. Did she think that I was LE and, perhaps, this was her chance to get one over on another girl?
Enough was enough. We went back to the Out House for night number 2 since my buddy liked it there so much, but I knew that this trip was a bust from the perspective of any entertainment value.
Weird and Topeka in the same sentence