I was on vacation in Michigan...

I was on vacation in Michigan for week and hit two strip clubs each in Battle Creek, the Detroit suburbs, and Grand Rapids. This is the first of six reviews from that trip.

I visited Heart Beats last August and wrote a very favorable review. This time was even better! I arrived a bit after midnight, following a concert in Kalamazoo, to find that the parking lot was almost full. The club is located at the corner of 20th Street and Avenue A in a so-so neighborhood about two miles west of downtown Battle Creek. I paid NO cover (on a crowded Friday night!), found a seat right by the stage, and settled in with a $6 draft Bud to enjoy the scenery. The club was rather crowded, though strangely there was still stageside seating, with a mostly white clientele and a smattering of blacks and Latinos. The ten or so dancers likewise were mostly white with a couple of black girls and represented all kinds of heights and body types -- something for everyone.

After I had seen several strippers on stage, and mindful that the 2am closing time was rapidly approaching, I asked two girls for private dances. As far as I can tell after two visits, Heart Beats has three lap dance rooms, two of them private and one semi-private, all of which I have now experienced. At least one reviewer has mentioned a "VIP room", but I have yet to see it. Anyway, the first dancer took me to the semi-private room, where we joined another "couple" on the neighboring couch, and immediately warned me against "excessive touching" -- a bit of a buzzkill. She was a brunette with a pretty face and a great body, including breasts nicely swollen from lactation (she had given birth a few months ago), but she didn't seem much interested in having them properly groped, so I quit after two dances despite her beauty and decent grind.