After two visits to Bogart's in...

After two visits to Bogart's in Inkster (see my review) and one to Sensations in Grand Rapids (see my review), I ended my mini-tour of Michigan strip clubs by spending a couple of hours on a Sunday night at the venerable Parkway Tropics. The club is oddly situated in a mostly residential neighborhood on Lake Michigan Road NW just a half mile or so from the downtown campus of Grand Valley State University. It doesn't look like a strip club at all from the outside; the inside doesn't seem to have been renovated in decades.

I paid $3 cover, bought a beer for about $4, and watched the entire rotation of five dancers -- three white, two black -- twice. Because there were so few dancers, each girl's two stage dances were followed by a song with no one on stage. The stage was a very large rectangle with the DJ booth and a pole at the rear and a runway extending out into the seating area. Strangely it was at floor level -- at almost every club I've ever been to, the stage is elevated at least a couple of feet above the gawkers. Moving to one of the seats right at the stage caused the dancers to give me a nice grind for only a $1 tip.

I finally decided upon a couple of $10 dances in a very dark private dance area from an attractive blonde in her 30s. As was the case at Sensations, the top stayed ON, the hands stayed on her hips or waist, and there was neither hanky nor panky to be had. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my visit and would even go back on a future trip to Grand Rapids. Dial your expectations way down and you can have a good time at these relatively wholesome bikini bars. It's kind of like making out with a girl in high school in hopes of glimpsing, and possibly fondling, a nipple or two.