sinclair's Review

I went to Le Pigale at 19:25 on a Thursday night. When you enter the building, you head downstairs to where there is a mandatory coat check and a desk to pay for admission. The cover charge on this particular night was $6. You then head back upstairs and enter the club through a metal detector. The bouncer told me I could not wear my hat in the club unless I was willing to pay an extra $20. I’m not sure if this was a rule for the club or the bouncer trying to make money on the side. I ended up taking my hat back to my vehicle and coming back in.

There was a special on bottles of Sincweiser: two for $11. The price for regular beer is $7.75, while imports are $9. There are two bars. The main bar is on the far back wall. Another bar was on the right wall in an alcove, but not in use. The club has a full kitchen to the right of the main bar. A lot of customers were ordering food. The kitchen closes at 23:00. There are more than a half dozen video slot machines in the back area of the club. The main stage is a large hexagon with one stationary pole. The stage and its surrounding seating is located in a pit area that consumes the left side of the club. A secondary stage with a single pole is on the right side of the room near the secondary bar. Supposedly, there is a third stage and a third bar in the basement. There was only one bartender and one waitress for over sixty guys. This added a wait time to getting refills. Most of the guys seemed to be businessmen or government workers.

Dancers were in the 5 to 9 range. Dancers would do their stage sets and then disappear back to the dressing room. Few dancers would work the floor. It was hard to gauge exactly how many dancers were working, but I would guess more than twenty-five. Finding a dancer to get private dances from was a bit of a task. You almost had to chase them down once they left the stage. I saw more stage tipping at Le Pigale than any strip club I have been to in Canada. It seems the businessmen were tossing $5, $10, and $20 bills on stage in a bidding war of sorts to get the attention of the dancers or impress their coworkers. I remember talking to a dancer named Katie from Ottawa. She was a tall (over six feet out of heels), blonde Anglo chick. She had a very soft voice and saggy boobs that were somewhere between a B and C cup. She obviously had kids. I’d grade her out at a 6. Next was Amethyst. She was a slim black chick. She had a large tattoo below her A cups. I’d grade her out at a 7. Then there was Taylor, the apple of my eye and a certified 8 at the very least. As I moved across the pit to approach her, she got scooped up by one of the suits and exited with him to the champagne room.