Not just nostalgia

I visited Red Garter in Key West on Tuesday Feb 12, 2019 from about 9:30 to 11:30 pm. This is the first club I ever did a TUSCL review on, about 2 years ago. I was curious what my reactions would be after this time. I was prepared to be somewhat disappointed, but this visit turned out to be better than expected. Partly due to it being rather busy this time. The club is located near the north end of Duval St., an area with a lot of foot traffic. It is part of “Rick’s Entertainment District”, an area of mostly open air bars etc that is next door to the club. The club is a long narrow building with the short side along Duval. There are two entrances, one on the street end and the other halfway along the long side leading from the “Entertainment District”. At this time no doormen and no cover being collected. As you enter from the street end there is a bar on the left and the front stage on the right. Further along there is a sort of hallway with one of the lap dance spaces on the left and the restrooms and dancers dressing room on the right. Past this is the side door on the right and another bar on the left. Then finally the rear stage. During very slow times the rear bar and stage are not used. Near the side door is a flight of stairs leading up to the “Champagne rooms”. Smoking is allowed. There were no TV’s. Since the space is rather small there were only a few tables, most seating at the bars or on low stools around the rails of the stages. There were no waitresses so one had to go to the bars to get a drink. In fact I didn’t buy a drink at all and they were fine with that. From what I remember the decor has been updated a bit from 2 years ago, now the usual strip club black with some flashing lights etc. Both stages had 2 poles but rather low ceilings. The front stage also had horizontal bars around the edges that some dancers used.

Although the number varied somewhat as time went on there were about 25 to 30 customers. Several woman customers got good attention at the stage rails. There were about 15 dancers, age 20’s and 30’s, a variety of body types but leaning toward the trim smaller boob model. Some had tats. They were about half white American and half Eastern European (one said she was from Hungary) with one black with a Brit accent perhaps from the West Indies. Music was reasonable volume. An odd choice for a strip club was one dancer danced to “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music”. I find this particularly ironic for a strip club since in the musical it is sung by the character of the Mother Superior of the convent! Dancers did 2 songs on the front stage and then moved to the rear stage. Usually to top came off in the first song and the bottom in the second. Several dancers got down and spread their legs for a good view. Lots of Stevie’s for customers at the rail. One advantage of sitting at the rear stage is most of the dancers were already topless or nude when they got there! An oddity is that the dancers carried their stage tips in buckets while moving from stage to stage.

Lap dances are done in two areas. The first is off the hallway between the front and rear and is a communal area with bench seats and no privacy. It is separated from the outer rooms with saloon type swinging doors. It has space for about 4 couples. The other lap dance area is at the very back of the club beyond the rear stage. Also with saloon doors to the main room it is divided into cubicles with partitions between them on the sides but open on the ends so visible to anyone walking by. Lap dances were $20/song generally payable to the dancer afterwards although there was one dancer who wanted to be paid upfront. No starting in middle of songs, all dancers asked if you wanted to continue at song transitions and no asking for tips. Only one dancer pushed for the upstairs Champagne room but didn’t mention price. Dances were topless, 2 way touch in the usual not kitty areas. I had 1 dance with 3 different women, 2 with another and 3 with a third. The 3 dance set was with a bigger breasted white woman who close up was probably approaching 40.