And now, an elegy... This may be...

And now, an elegy...

This may be my last review for BJ's ... unless I'm feeling very maudlin, in which case I might write a few more words later in the year and -- advance warning -- give this place a 10. I've grown to like this place a lot. Due to circumstances, within the past two years it's been sort of a necessity to come in once a week late at night, and I've grown to be very fond of the familiarity. There's always a bouncer inbetween the gameroom up front and the bar in back to check ID, the coffee is always a buck, and pop is always 2.

What is less than predictable, because from time to time there's a substitution or somebody just doesn't show up, is that there's a great-looking dancer up on stage behind the bar. Since I've been here many times, my face is pretty familiar to a lot of them: Tia, Tre, Brandy, CJ, Toni, Katie, Cassi, LaiJa, Jane, Montana, Jennifer, Jasmine ... I could go on. Needless to say there are about four dozen girls of the Party Time Agency who populate this club's nightly entertainment, and overall, I'm very sure they can stand up to the roster of nearly all of the places in the Twin Cities area. Sure, some of them may be older than the girls you'd see at Rick's or Deja Vu, but most of them here (and at 22nd Ave. Station five minutes away, where the girls of the Agency also work, as well as four other clubs in Minn. and Wisc.) have a brain and can hold a conversation. If you're not a dick and don't start immediately groping the girl as soon as she comes over, she'll talk to you.