On a recent Sunday afternoon I...

On a recent Sunday afternoon I stopped in at the Yellow Rose, which had always been my favorite strip club in Austin. Between 3:15 and 3:45, the time it took to slowly drink a Dos Equis and hope for something -- anything! -- to happen, I saw a total of three dancers, one of whom danced for two songs. For the next 20 minutes, *nobody* was on stage! WTF?<br>

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I decided to cut my losses and check out XTC Cabaret, which I had heard about but never visited. Though I'm almost never on the east side of the city, the club was relatively easy to find: go east of I-35 a couple of miles on US 290, making sure not to get onto the new TX 290 toll road, then turn right on Springdale Road and go a half mile south. XTC is on the right side at the corner of Andtree "Boulevard", an unattractive one-block street that certainly isn't a boulevard.<br>

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The club isn't much to look at from the outside but is quite nice and spacious inside. There was no parking or valet charge, at least during the day, but cover was a rather steep $15. Because the girls dance nude, this is a BYOB place -- you can buy sodas and mixers but no booze. I've never really understood the reasoning. Maybe it's something like "Drunk men will lose all self-control upon the sight of naked women and try to rape them, so we just won't sell them alcohol -- but we'll let them bring their own!" Whatever.<br>