Surprisingly Uneventful for a Friday Night

Well, I finally made it to a Portland strip club after hearing for years that Portland is the strip club capital of the United States... and was deeply disappointed.

My friend's having his bachelor party here and after dinner and drinks we convinced the crew to check out Golden Dragon. We got there at 11:30 and were told that things don't really pick up until after midnight as this was an afters club. Great, that convinced our party to at least give it half an hour. We were a crew of eight and when we got there there were 12-14 girls. We didn't expect on a Friday night to be the only guys there, but we're not here for the guys anyway. After everyone got at least $200 out of the ATMs we took up a bench in front of the stage. Most of the crew aren't strip club regulars so I had to tell them to tip at least $1 a song, and they were all disappointed that we were collectively sobering up in a club that doesn't serve alcohol. I explained that it's pretty customary for any club that goes full nude to also not serve alcohol. To my surprise most of my party spent all of their $200 on 1s and no one could be convinced to go for a private dance. They were also uncomfortable as we were all in our 30s and some of these girls looked like they weren't even of drinking age. By 1:00am more than half our party took an Uber home.

A few of us stayed after being told that as an afters club things again... really pick up after 2:00am. With a smaller party we had a better time but it was still relatively uneventful. We tried to get the bachelor on stage, the DJ told us it would be $60 for two girls. Once we talked to a few of the girls they told us the DJ gets $60 but we have to give the girls $150 each. This seemed pretty steep for one song and after the misunderstanding we left at 2:30am. As we got into our Uber the Uber driver told us as an afters club... it doesn't get crowded or interesting until after 2:30am.