Palatial. But still seedy.

Been a couple of times, higher end club for the neighborhood. Beautiful interior-massive stage(s), expansive booths, a nice bar. The private dances ($20) behind cloth curtains on clean couches-everything matches and is in decent shape. Plenty of places nearby using furniture that seems to have been rescued from the curb or dorm rooms.

You enter by climbing a narrow flight of stairs. Upon arrival, there’s a booth for collecting the cover and coat check. Small but well stocked bar straight ahead and the booth seating and stage to the left, private dance rooms to the right.

I was there on the early side of things, like, 7:30-they open at 7:00-but, hey, in Quebec in winter it’s dark at, like 3:30, so it didn’t feel early to me. It was pretty beat, I may have been the only patron in this huge place. A cutie with dreads practicing some moves on stage, cocktail waitresses huddled around the bar dishing with the bartenders and the substantially sized bouncer. I was quickly bored but decided to stick it out because I had paid a cover ($10 CA) and I had a full beer ($7 CA)that was going down slowly. By the time a girl appeared and asked if I wanted a dance, I would have said yes to anything. She was cute, slender with blonde hair-not really my type, I prefer curves-but like I said, I was ready to agree to just about anything.

On our way to the private booths, we checked in at the coat check/cover charge/and-apparently-the-dance-fee-counter. I paid for a dance and we were off.

The booths/rooms were really nice-plenty of room and cleaner than anything else in the area. We settled in for a dance and it was nice. I wasn’t there for ‘nice’, though. I tried another and it was competently performed, but not a ton of grinding or the sort of teasing that makes you think that there’s more on the menu(I heard later, definitively, there isn’t). Decided to cut my losses at three songs. Hand her $50 ( prepaid for one out front; two songs and a stupid tip) and she takes a long look at the bill, grabs it and says ‘thanks baby but four songs will cost you eighty.’ I point out that it had been three songs, she counters with it was actually five.