Good for a certain niche experience

Pulled into the parking lot at 10:30pm Sat night 2/25/23. It was packed! I had to circle around a bit looking for a spot before settling on a non paved side lot in the mud. Parking lot had good lighting. I’m hoping the large attendance is a good sign for what's inside. The place shares a roof with a pool bar which I didn’t go in. Maybe that's where the crowd is at? Anyways, walked past the pool bar entrance to the Lipstix public entrance, a couple of average looking guys were leaving which made me feel safe since this neighborhood is an unknown for me (I live in Illinois).

Went in and paid a $20 entrance fee to a woman who was playing online poker on her phone and was very distracted by it. I paid with a $100 bill and she gave me 4 twenties, 10 singles, and 2 fives in return. Like I said, she was distracted. Went in and the bouncer said to make sure I leave any knives I may have on me back in my car (yikes) and to put my phone and keys into a bucket before going thru a metal detector.

Ok, now I'm in and its very dark. To the right are a couple of pool tables, dart board and some electronic games further back with an ATM. Directly ahead is a pretty nice looking bar. Its large with lots of counter space and at least two people working it. To my left is the majority of the place. There is a larger portion of tables and chairs on the bar side then the stage splitting the room in half , then there are a more tables and chairs and the DJ station on the door side I came in on. The dance stage looked like some kind of monkey island from a zoo. It had lots of connected jungle gym type bars (horizontal and vertical) instead of your typical stripper poles. Its long and there were two girls dancing on it.

Now my eyes are adjusting and I can see there are a lot of customers, l would guess near 50 or so, but that didn’t even fill half the space, so its a pretty big area. I wonder how much room is even left for the next door pool bar I saw on my way in. The place looks clean and well kept. Interesting thing is that all the walls are decorated with pics of Marylin Monroe. Maybe that's a connection to the name Lipstix?

I headed to the bar area to check out the girls who were either waiting for their stage rotation or just hanging. Nothing special there but at least none of them descended on me for a dance as I've had happen in other places when they detect a fresh wallet to drain. In fact, it kinda seemed like the amount of girls in the place was pretty low compared to the number of patrons. There were only a couple sitting at the bar. I hope there are more around the tables in the dark. I bought a bottle of Angry Orchard (ya, ya, I know) for $6.25 then sat at a middle of the room table on the bar side of the stage.