pretty much like before COVID

I hadn't been to Kittens since before COVID hit last year but I've dropped by a couple of times recently. My experiences on the two visits were quite similar but with a different set of dancers. My visits were both during the daytime, once mid-week and once on the weekend.

Overall, things are pretty much the same as pre-COVID but with different dancers. You pay your $11 cover and drink fee upon entering, tell the host what drink you want and a server will bring it to you soon after you're seated. Now comes the "fun" part: trying to find a seat. It's not that it's busy (dancers outnumber customers) but it's frigging dark. I don't know about other people but it takes me closer to 10 minutes than 10 seconds to adjust to the darkness. In the daytime, they usually use one stage (along the long wall) until there are more than 10 dancers or so then they open a second stage. On both of my visits, there were about 10 dancers working.

My experience now as well as over the past few years is that there is a small set of dancers that like to pounce on newly arriving customers. These dancers tend to be quite pushy. It's not pleasant to be hounded by someone when you can't even see them clearly (although maybe that's part of the point). Usually, they at least wait until you sit down but on one of my recent visits, a dancer started clinging to me before I could take more than three steps in the place. "You want to take me into the back." "C'mon let's go." Without prompting, she offered a HJ for $330. Are you kidding me? Even if I was interested, I wouldn't pay that much. After turning her down, she kept lowering the price until I turned her down at $200, then she finally moved on. This was by far the most outrageous example I've encountered but it really happened. This was followed by a second dancer offering a HJ (much lower price) but still being pushy. She was still pretty agressive but took "no" for an answer more easily than the first.