Same as ever, only different

It would take a better philosopher than me to decide whether Lamplighter is still a strip club. It certainly used to be a strip club. It has a stage with poles and a mirror. It has chairs lined up facing the stage. But I'm pretty sure nobody has done anything on that stage for months. It also has a "champagne" "room": an armchair with a bit of curtain on the side. I've been going to the Lamplighter for what seems like 20 years, and I think I've seen that used twice. (Three times, if you count the time I tried it.)

So basically what you've got here is a bar that sells lap dances. There's really nothing wrong with that. The lap dances are $20 per song, plus a $5 fee to the house for the first dance of a session. That puts them solidly at the low end of the price scale. On my last visit I saw six dancers. Four white women were paired off with customers sitting at the bar. I didn't recognize any of them. I did know the two non-white women. They tried to talk me into taking both of them at once. Since I wasn't interested in paying twice as much for half the contact, I picked one, and left happy. (She tells me she won't take my money if I don't. I've never had occasion to test that.)

The core daytime lineup has been there a long time. Few of them are spectacular, but most are reliable. From time to time I see a new face, só although I think of this as a club that never changes, I also go there in the hope that "this time is different." It's yet another paradox for the philosophers.