More Restaurant Than Strip Club, but the Food is Good, and the Scenery Can be Good too

I was staying near Reagan National airport for a business meeting, and I didn't fly out until the next morning, so I decided to go to Crystal City Restaurant. I've been here a few times before when in the DC area for business. The food is pretty decent, and some of the girls are good to look at, but this is (primarily) just an air dance place with pasties required, so temper your expectations accordingly. I drove my rental car to where the club was, and it's located in a short shopping strip between a 7-11 and I think a restaurant of some sort. It's a bit weird that there's this old shopping strip with a strip club that's surrounded by lots of modern buildings in the middle of a city. There's a very small parking strip right in front that can accommodate maybe 10 cars, so parking sucks. But you can park on the street at metered parking about a block away, or you can park across the street in the bank parking lot when the bank is closed.

Prior reviews have said that this place is more like a restaurant that happens to have some strippers in it, and this is an accurate assessment. When you first walk in, you go down a narrow hallway past the jukebox where the girls have to pay to select their own songs. The right side of the hallway is the wall of the club. The left side of the hallway is a glassed-in bar area that's for smoking. About half of the restaurant is glassed-in for smoking. The other half is open for non-smoking. The place is basically a rectangle, with the smoking section in the front of the club (with the hallway so you walk past the smoking section) and the non-smoking section in the back of the club. There are two bars, and the smoking section and non-smoking section each have their own bars.

The main stage is small, and it's right in front of the non-smoking section. It doesn't really have a traditional pole, but rather, a truss in the shape of an "H" with the cross beam of the H towards the top of the stage. The girls pick their songs from the jukebox, and then come up to the main stage and dance for about two songs. Then they do a tip-walk, and stop by each patron's table, and most customers give $1 to the girl when she stops by to say hi. Then she goes into the smoking section, which has a very small satellite stage that has a traditional pole, and does the same thing - dance for two songs, and does a tip-walk in the smoking section. The girl then goes and hangs with regulars or disappears to who knows where. The stage time during the night shift seems to but cut in half, with the girls only dancing on stage for one song before rotating off. This makes for more $1 tips at a quicker pace, obviously. The girls are really nice and friendly, and seem to appreciate the $1 or two that customers give them as they swing by. If a customer doesn't want to give them a tip, they won't get all huffy about it, but I haven't seen any customers refuse to give the $1 tip. Customers that are familiar with this place and aware of the customary $1 tip-walk ask their waitresses for change, and they usually have $1's already pre-counted and clipped in $20 bundles so they can quickly give change.