When thinking about how I would...

When thinking about how I would review my latest trip to Hollywood Show Club, I realized something very important: This is the meanest club I’ve been to. I’ve been thrown out one time at one of my favorite stripclubs here in Minnesota, and there have been occasions I haven’t enjoyed myself in many clubs as I’ve traveled around this great nation of ours. But I don’t know if I’ve ever been disrespected, by strippers and wait staff, as often as I’ve been at HSC. That might come from the fact that I hear the owner of the place runs a draconian ship (still don’t see too many minorities walking through the door), or it may be from the dancers who work there. But the Saturday night I was there, the first of two straight, I came upon an epiphany: Why the hell am I putting up with this club’s bullshit?

This place and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club (which is yards away and closer to the highway off of Bunkum Rd.) probably are the two biggest and most crowded stripclubs in Washington Park and, I dare say, East St. Louis. Every time I went to HSC on a weekend night it was packed. On these visits, like the ones before, there wasn’t a table where a single like me could just sit and hang.

Worse yet, the scene in there absolutely sucked. Most of the customers were in groups having a bro night at the titty bar. Although none of them were black, they dressed like what you stereotypically imagine gangsters would wear – baggy jeans, sports jerseys (mostly the Cardinals – no, scratch that, always the Cardinals), backwards or sideways-turned ballcaps and a douchey vibe. The hot, bitchy girls there (and there were at least two dozen of them) were operating under the premise that groups of young kids who probably had to borrow money from their parents to buy what they’re wearing have enough money left over to tip handsomely. That or those idiots are the strippers’ high school buddies. Regardless of the reason, they missed out on a pathetic loser who was willing to tip. After several instances where all I got for my two bucks was a listless body shake by a disinterested girl or, worse, refusal to even acknowledge I was at the tip rail, I decided to just get up and stand next to a table of, I think, Indian guys who were just as intimidated as I was at the club, only they had each other and I was alone with my frustrations. (Speaking of frustrations, I have to admit that my main reason for going to HSC was to get a handjob from the lovely Ivy.)