Dive In

I visited Bandaids in Phoenix Arizona on Friday May 25, 2023 from about 2 to 3 pm in the afternoon. The club is at the corner of 7th Street and Virginia Ave. It is a standalone building in its own parking lot. The free self parking is fairly large but if it fills up signs say that additional parking is available on the other side of the wall in a small shopping center. Entrance is on one short side of the rectangular building. A guy at the door looked me up and down and then gestured me to enter without any cover or other formalities. As you enter there is a small bar to the right along the short side of the building and a longer bar to the right along the long side of the building with some seating across from it and well as the seats at the bar. There is also a door to the left that leads to what looks like an outdoor smoking patio. A lot of mirrors so initially it was hard to tell what was an opening or not. A door at the far end of the bar room leads into a squarish main dance room which has a small circular stage with perhaps 8 chairs around it and one pole, and bench seats around the walls and a few tables and chairs. There is also a second tiny stage in the front room near the entrance from the street. The lighting was rather minimal and the furniture has seen better days.

A waitress came around but no particular pressure for drinks, I just had a generic bottled water for $5. For a small club in the afternoon it was fairly crowded with each maybe 20 customers and an equal number of dancers. They kept a dancer on the main stage all the time and by the time I left they also had a dancer on the small stage by the entrance. The dancers did one or two song sets with the top coming off at sone point, which seemed to depend on the amount of tipping, of which there was not a lot. Essentially no pole work on display, anyway the ceiling is low. Songs seemed to be normal length, a lot of them in Spanish.

There were a variety of dancers, probably about half non-U.S. born Latinas and the other half a variety of ethnicities . There was no discrimination against weight, I would guess half the dancers could be called heavy. Dancers were very active in approaching customers for dances. The only prices were $10 per song out in the open in the room with the stage and $20 per song in the “vip” area which is just a row of cubicles behind a screen at the end of the room. The cubicles have half height side walls, bench seats, and open at the end. So not particularly private. Dance fees paid to the dancer afterwards. Generally they waited for the next song to start and no overcounting.