I had both the time and...

I had both the time and money this weekend and, after a long absence, I decided to visit Heartbreaker's again. The last time I was there, the club was still in the middle of a renovation. A lot of the work is done, though far from all of it. The bar is now finished, and the new stage is basically done. A lot of the work that's been done just does not make since, at least to this observer. The old private rooms in the back are now completely closed off, the former opening drywalled over, and "private" dances are now performed in the area that was once occupied by the pool tables. In fact, the entire club now only occupies what was once the bar area (it's still there, but the guy who collects the cover charge sets there) and the main "stage" room. What's going to happen to the rest of the club, about half of the floor space, is something of a mystery. The talk the night I was there (Saturday) was of the previous night, when the club (and everything around it for several miles) lost power for a couple of hours. Evidently the management had decided to close the club after waiting for the power to come back on, only to have the lights come on again as the last customers were being cleared out. Whether this was the cause or not, there were only five women dancing, and one of them commented to me that there should have been several more working. The selection of women that was working was actually a lot better than the normal that this writer remembers, with most running in the 7-9 range, Hayleigh holding the top end of the range as usual. The club had a decent crowd, maybe twenty people, with about five to six female patrons, not a common sight in my experience. Spent a couple of hours watching the dancers cycle through their rotation on stage, talked to a couple of the women, caught up with Hayleigh on how things were going with her, and got a private dance. The new stalls are about half the size of the old private rooms and still partially unfinished. The prices are still $35/70/100 for a one/two/three song dance, and the touching rules are still the same. The major downside is that to get you and the dancer into that smaller space, your back ends up almost against the curtain that closes the stall off from the entry hall, which is very unnerving, at least to me. Overall, it was good to see that the club hadn't gone over to the 'standard' model with you paying a fee to use the room, a "tip" for a bouncer at the entrance, then even more money to the dancer. The bad news is that the place is still something of a work in progress, and the cramped dance stalls are no where near as comfortable and private as the old rooms were. Worth going again? Yes. Could it be improved? Probably.