A solid dive bar, in the good way

I've made a habit of going to the No 5 whenever I'm in Vancouver. It's essentially the perfect dive bar in a lot of ways - waitress who calls me 'hon', Stones and Zeppelin on the radio, sports on the TVs, and occasional naked women dancing. I stopped by on a Friday right around lunchtime and decided to get some food (they apparently won some sort of local best pub food award). The cook had apparently left, and the waitress couldn't find him. I got a drink and watched the show (15 minutes later the waitress found me and took an order - apparently the cook had walked off to a grocery store).

The No 5 tends to have 3 or 4 dancers in rotation at any given time (and I think they have those same dancers for a given shift basically for a full week at a time). They range from cute to stupidly hot. Each tends to do 3 songs, progressively losing clothes song by song. I know that they have private dances, but at least on my visits (usually in the daytime), I've never actually had anyone offer one - they tend to finish their songs, clean up the stage, and head to the back.

The day I went, the first couple of dancers were young and natural, maybe less moves than average but hot. The star was Vanessa, an extremely tall blonde with some tattoos down her side and some large enhancements. She did a little bit of straightforward dancing, but mostly used the pole for what seemed like some impressive feats of strength. Awesome legs and abs shown off in the process.