Pleasantly Surprised

In the past, Xpose has been a complete waste of time during the afternoon shift, but I was driving by on a Tuesday afternoon around four and was surprised to see the parking lot almost full. Curiosity piqued, I pulled in to see what was what, expecting the worst that could happen would be that I'd have a beer and watch whatever game was on TV. I was pleasantly surprised.

First, the club has been remodeled again. The tables and chairs have been replaced with nicer ones, something like what Stars has. The original (original to Xpose) stages have been removed and replaced with three small (8x8? 10x10?) stages set side by side a couple of inches off the floor and separated by two or three feet of floor space. Two of those stages have polls. Only one was in use while I was there. Surrounding all the stages in a large U along the back wall and separating the stage area from the bar is a sort of couch which is divided into one man sections with armrests and drink holders separating the sections. Any old timers who remember the dance area setup at Jiggles will be reminded of that. It's kind of as if they took a bunch of the Jiggles dance booths and set them side by side in a long open U shape. But it also reminded me of a HUGE sectional couch. You sit on the couch with your feet a few inches from the stage. There's no rail separating the customers from the dancers now, so it's quite a bit more intimate. Two of the three girls I who used the stage today told me they dislike the new setup. On the other hand, as a customer I liked it. For a couple of bucks, each dancer gave me what amounted to a mini lap dance (10-30 seconds long) during each song.

Now the remodel wouldn't make much difference if the afternoon dancers behaved as they used to; ignoring the customers and the stage. A couple of the girls told me that the club still lets them do their own thing, meaning they can choose whether to go on stage or not during the afternoon. There's no DJ and the bartender couldn't care less whether the customers are being entertained. On this particular afternoon three of the six or eight girls in the club rotated onto the stage for two song sets. The others either hung out with each other or with customers at the bar. Still, the last time I was at Xpose in the afternoon there were only two girls, both of whom completely ignored the customers. So today was a step up.