Fancy place but lame

This review is of a visit to Vivid on Wednesday August 22, 2018 from about 9:30 to 11 pm. I was in New York only for one night and hadn’t intended to visit a club, but Vivid was only half a block from my hotel so what the heck. The normal cover was $20 plus a 2 drink minimum but they waived the $20. It’s a rather narrow and not even all that long building. To give the impression of space all of one wall was mirrored. The entrance is near one corner of the short side. There was a coatroom on the right as you enter with an attendant, hardly needed on a warm summer night. Farther along the stage was on the left, kind of a keyhole shape with one pole in the circular portion. The pole extended up into a second story space. A flight of stairs extended up from one end of the stage which appeared to go to the dancers’ dressing room and the private rooms. There was one row of tables against the right wall and more tables and chairs between there and the stage. Some tables were right against the stage and there wasn’t really much of a place to go and tip at the stage if you weren’t sitting there. Finally farther along the right wall was the bar, which did not have much of a view of the stage. The decor was pretty fancy with rotating flashing lights etc. For some reason I could never figure out they sounded a siren every once in awhile. It was rather dark and loud. The male employees were wearing suits.

I had a large Voss bottled water for $9 from a waitress. For some reason none of them asked if I wanted anything else when that was finished so I avoided the second drink of the minimum. The club became fairly crowded although that’s only maybe 40 or 50 in such a small place. There were several women customers. A couple of tables were having bottle service. There were about 25 dancers, mostly decent looking with a mix of ethnicities and not many tats. There were also a couple of women giving massages. Stage dancing was OK, two songs with topless in the 2nd. Some made good use of the high pole. Lap dances were $20 per song payable to the dancer afterwards. They were done either at the tables or on couches at the ends of the room, completely in the open no privacy. I had one and done with 3 dancers. The first was a slim AA who came to the table, RCG grind plus some hand action.The second was a statuesque white woman, Eastern European by her accent, who had been standing around and not hustling for dances. So I approached her, but her dance was completely air. The last was on one of the couches with a white woman who was a bit better, some hands on but not to the crotch. I might of done a second song with her but she had to go on stage. There were private rooms upstairs for the price of $600 for half an hour, $800 for an hour (!)

All in all I found this place disappointing. Quite fancy layout, decent looking dancers, but mileage only low to moderate. A couple of months earlier I had been in NYC and went to Private Eyes and Flashdancers. While these have their own limitations I thought they were definitely better than Vivid. I hate to end on another negative note, but the sign in the window said that the health department’s grade of the sanitation of the food service at this place was only a “B”.