Pleasures is like most strip bars....

Pleasures is like most strip bars. If you want to have a good time there, you will. There's beer and pretty girls. The beer is cold and most of the girls are friendly. If you're trying to choose from among Wichita's limited offerings, you're more likely to be entertained here than at any other place in town.

've been visiting Pleasures since the early ’90s. It's seen a number of remodels — not always for the better. The last one, in particular, was a mistake. Although the wraparound furniture is more padded and comfortable, the chairs are not designed to make it easy for a dancer get next to you and physically flirt. The previous generation were rickety and a little hard, but the armless design allowed girls to straddle you, lean into you, put a knee (gently) between your legs, or pull up another chair and hook a bare leg over your own in the effort to solicit a tip, a lap dance or a drink. Now, the dancers have to choose between sitting on you and looking over their shoulder or standing politely beside your chair. Yes, it's good for customers to be at ease in sturdy furniture, but a strip club should never put any barriers between dancers and their clientele.

The year-in-year-out saving grace for Pleasures is that there's always at least one dancer (usually two or three) who deserves to be called gorgeous and who has the personality to complement her looks. I discovered that's still the case at my most recent visit. A beautiful Latina dancer caught my attention immediately, but I wasn't the only one attracted to her. A good half-dozen patrons were generally following her from stage to stage as she rotated through the lineup. I had a long wait for a lap dance because local law enforcement dropped by and stayed for nearly an hour. Dancers like to stay on the safe side of the law so they avoid doing lap dances when the officers are in the establishment. While everyone waited for the cops to leave, bored patrons tried to outdo each other by thumbing wads of dollar bills onto the club's top dancer as she writhed around on the stage floor.