Beware the Hustle

Showed up a bit after 8pm. Parking lot is large, well-lit, and patrolled. Cover was $45; door guy tried to convince me to "treat her nicely" (the front cashier) to waive the cover - pretty non-specific so I just paid the normal cover and tipped $1 because she was nice. The actual layout is more or less OK, but the first oddity is that there are no chairs at the bar. I didn't ask, but my impression is that in order to get a seat straight-away, you need to tell the hostess, and you'll be obligated to buy some amount of drinks.

And those drinks are spendy as hell - both mixed drinks and water were like $17 each - outrageous. And so the hustle began, before I hardly even had a sip of my drink. The first woman, maybe a 6+, wasn't taking no for an answer. I eventually caved for the $100 for three dance group VIP, in large part out of curiosity. Apparently, drink prices have gone up back here, as the hostess quoted me a $50 mandatory bar tab...and I still had my first drink in hand. The dance itself was fine, decent contact, but the room is incredibly dark. Also, this particular dancer was trying way too hard with the sweet talk, but I'll chalk that up to personal preferences. It certainly wasn't doing it for me.

So I downed my first drink at the end of the dance, and headed back towards the bar; I actually lingered in the hallway for a bit, just to get away from the hustle and try to finish one of my two drinks (a cocktail and a water, because I'm driving). I eventually get back to the bar and am approached by a nice 7+ Russian girl who actually engaged in conversation. She was pretty hands-on, so I periodically tipped her throughout until she eventually brought up dances. We started with one floor dance at $25, but eventually progressed to four for $100 plus tip out on the floor. We were in a nice corner, and the dances were high-contact; she would have had good VIP potential, but I was trying to stick with floor dances tonight in order to sample more dancers. She was sweet, and didn't try to hustle much or whine about VIP.