Wish my local clubs were more like this

The Brass Rail was the first strip club I ever went to, way back when my buddies would road trip to Toronto to see our local baseball team from great seats at reasonable prices. We got lucky picking this one after a game because, as I remember it, it had something I'd never seen before or since -- closed circuit TV monitors in the front windows, showing the beginning of every dancer's routine, up to the point where the dancer's panties, usually g=string, came down.

It was a terrific club then. Really good prices, lots of girlies, and an enthusiastic bunch of guys in the audience. The dancers were mostly young, natural-bodied, attractive local girls who could really dance and weren't pushy when they came off stage. They really didn't need to be, at least on weekend nights when the guys just about lined up waiting for their faves.

I was back in Toronto for the first time in way too long last week. Yonge Street has really changed. It used to be a friendly, mixed-up, scruffy but safe neighborhood like the ones US cities had stupidly ripped up. Now it's almost gone, with steel, plastic, and glass replacing brick and mortar. You know what the next block's like before you get there. Not very interesting.