The comfort of a dive

Okay, it’s a dive, but it is weird and small so the interactions are interesting. I stop in regularly because it doesn’t have expensive booze, deafening music or hard-sell dancers. It’s easy to see the dancer board when you walk in, and decide it’s better to turn around and leave.

The layout remains unchanged since the new owners took over a few years back. The only addition is a thin curtain between the video poker machines and the dance area, to keep the gamblers minds on laying out dollars and maybe losing them or winning more. On the other side of the curtain we just lay out dollars for nothing but a view of nakedness. Soft drinks are three dollars as I recall. The bartenders are attentive. No cover charge or security in the afternoon.

No review could ignore the strange pit area the owner dug to plant a stripper pole in. I guess a seven-foot pole isn’t enough, so digging a hole for a twelve-foot pole made sense to someone. Customers look down at the dancer in the ten-by-ten pit, or she has to climb up onto the rail surface to give a closer look. And that’s much closer, which is worthwhile.

Dancers display a variety of body types and enthusiasm, some Latina or Black but mostly white, reflecting the clientele. In the afternoon, if you’re the only one at the rail, a dancer may even perform because there is nothing else to do. The dancers often have interesting personalities, and the chatting is better than silence. Of the two or three in the afternoons, body types are usually shapely, which is my preference, and a few are more than plenty and I count the songs until the next dancer.

Private dances are in curtained booths, but the cameras keep it all legal in my experience. Forty for one, three for one hundred.