I went to the Playhouse on...

I went to the Playhouse on a Saturday night just before 11pm. The club is across Middlebelt Road from the Detroit Metro Airport, but it is kind of out in no man’s land with not much else near it. This makes it impossible to avoid the mandatory $6 valet parking. The nighttime cover was $10 and bottles of beer were $7. Including a $1 tip to the bartender, I was already out $24 before turning my attention to the four foot tall, double-poled stage in the middle of the room. The club itself was newly remodeled and looked very nice and clean, including a nice long bar that occupied the south wall of the building. The private dance booths were in an elevated area on the west wall, and each included a curtain for privacy.<br>

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Now here is where things get bad. On a Saturday night, prime time, the club only had three dancers working, and none of them were above a 3 on my strict scale. Two were chubby white girls from the local trailer park, and the third was a black dancer that was wearing some type of compression belt to keep her gut from jiggling too much on stage. In fact, this place had more staff (I counted seven: valet, DJ, manager, cook, bar back, bartender, waitress) than customers. The most customers inside the club at any time were a whopping six PL’s. I had never seen a club so dead on a Saturday night in all of my years in the hobby. I really don’t know how this club was staying in business. The only decent-looking female in the place was the waitress, Johnny. She would go up on stage and dance a set in the rotation with the three dancers. She was an 8.5, but she wouldn’t take off her bra and panties, nor do private dances. Supposedly, lap dances cost $25 per song, and you’d have to pay a $20 fee to the club to use one of the lap dance booths. Based on the quality of the dancers, I did not partake in any private time.<br>

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I later found out the Playhouse had been closed down in the summer of 2012 and had just reopened on February 8, 2014. It seemed like the club was never able to build a steady clientele or keep attractive dancers since its reopening. I think they need to start first by getting regular customers to come in by getting rid of the valet, the cover, and chopping down the price of beers. If they can get a steady flow of customers to come in, hot dancers will want to work at the club. A better-looking line-up of dancers will then draw in even more customers once the word gets out. Another idea would be to market the club to different niches not being catered to at other clubs in the metro area (i.e. a swingers' night or a BDSM show night). All of the staff members were extremely friendly and thankful that I visited, which tells me they are trying to get some traction going here. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever been to a strip club where the employees were as welcoming as they were at the Playhouse.