San Francisco part 5

I visited Vanity-after-dark on Saturday evening July 30, 2002 from about 8:45 to 10:30 pm. The club is on Broadway about 3 blocks east of Columbus. There is no parking at the club, just street parking and some very small pay lots in the vicinity, I was staying in a hotel and few blocks away and walked over. Doorman asked to see ID and I paid $15 cover at a counter. No security stuff. This outfit is 3 clubs in one, a supper club, the strip club which is upstairs on the mezzanine level and a regular night club on the street level which opens at 10pm.. The strip club wraps around an open space looking down onto the night club level. As you exit the stairs (there is also an elevator) you encounter a desk at the entrance to the lap dance area. Proceeding to the right you enter the main part of the club, with a bar to the left. The bar is fairly long but just a stand up bar, no seats. The interior of the club looks like it was redecorated fairly recently. The usual rotating lights. There are TV screens along the walls which were showing ESPN. Note this was UFC fight night but they weren’t showing that.

The “stage” was just a small circle of a semi-transparent material at floor level. No wall to it on the strip club side, the other side projects out over the night club on the lower level, presumably customers down in the night club have at least some view of the dancer. There is a rather short pole in the center of the stage. There is also a small platform off to one side with 3 poles forming a kind of cage. I assume dancing is done on this but it wasn’t in use while I was there. There are a number of small tables and chairs back from the stage. The stage is at one end of the rectangle of the opening to the lower level. On the left of the opening are some booths and on the right were some tables with table cloths that looked like they were set up for dining, but neither of these areas was really used while I was there. There is also something at the far end of the opening but it wasn’t clear what, maybe another bar? A waitress came around hustling drinks. I had a fairly small bottled water for $7 but the waitress still came and asked again several times. Alcohol is served at this club.

Initially not many customers but it was getting a bit full by the time I left. Unlike some other clubs in the area that I went to there were a number of AA customers including AA females. The dancers were young and good looking and dancing was energetic. Probably around 15 dancers while I was there. Some ethnic diversity, at least one dark skinned AA and an oriental who the DJ mentioned was of Cambodian descent. Dancers usually didn’t take their tops off until they accumulated at least $5 or more in tips. When I first got there the DJ role was done by a woman who mostly kept quiet, but later a male DJ with the usual loud stuff came on.