My wife took me here for...

My wife took me here for my birthday a little while back. It was our first visit. We had dinner at the steakhouse which is nice and has windows looking out over the stage. I'll start with the dinner: The food was excellent and the service was top notch. Of course, we were the only two people in the restaurant. There were a handful of customers around the stage in the other room, but no one else in the steakhouse side. In fact, several of the dancers commented to us later that we were the only customers they had ever seen in the steakhouse. It's a pity. The chef was clearly thrilled to have customers and she talked to us for a while, even buying us both a drink after the meal. The view of the stage is decent from the steakhouse and the atmosphere makes for a pleasant experience.

After our drink with the chef, we went into the club and sat at the stage. This is a slightly posh environment with a clean club, nice lighting, and a huge stage. Normally, there were two girls on stage at all times. After their show, they come around looking for tips as you would expect. And this is where the major faults of the club start coming into play. First, these are not the highest quality dancers out there. The stage is so far back from your seats that you don't realize it at first, but when they come around looking for tips, it's clear. And while that's not the biggest deal, their personalities make it worse. We met a couple of friendly dancers who chatted with us for a bit, but overall, they typically came over for their tip and rushed along to the next customer far too quickly. No conversational skills to be found, and some were downright rude. Second, they seem to spend more time chatting with each other in the corners than going around looking for private dances and quality time with paying customers. It's a shame really. We were looking for a nice couples dance but wanted to get to know a girl a little before we asked. None of them put the time in to make it happen. Eventually, my wife stopped one girl to ask where another had gone and when she didn't know, we simply got our couples dance from her. I'll come back to the dance at the end.

It begs the question: Does the club have poor dancers because it has no customers or does it have no customers because of the poor dancers? This is the enigmatic problem facing Christine's. Sure, the location doesn't help, but plenty of clubs are in less than desirable parts of town. How does a nice building inside and out, with a great restaurant and excellent service, and a wonderful atmosphere provide such a lackluster experience? Maybe if more people knew about this place, business would pick up, and more of the city's quality dancers would want in on the action. But in the meantime, it's a great idea with mixed results. You can go and enjoy a few drinks and some dancers if you don't expect too much. You may even get a better experience if you're more assertive than we were. But you'll still leave thinking this would be better if it was in a better neighborhood with more customers and better dancers.