New Characters, Same Script
I had a long Saturday night and decided to see what was up at Night Shift, since I hadn't been there in about two months under the new ownership and since it has a reputation for being better on the weekends and I was able to get there early enough to see how the night would develop.
Some cosmetic things have changed. They took away one of the large TVs. There are now only two TVs over the bar, plus one as a backdrop to the stage. The TV that was sort of above the bar and angled at the stage is gone. There are still the two small TVs towards the back of the seating area that were installed towards the end of the tenure of the old management. The TVs above the bar and one of the small ones are still TVs, but the large one behind the stage and one of the small ones are in-house feeds, showing a rotating slideshow of stock footage and menu prices. Is that an improvement? You decide.
The new management is trying pretty hard on the customer service front. When I asked for one of the TVs to be tuned to the World Series, they were more than happy to promptly grant my request. Sky (the new owner/manager, I guess) has seen me once or twice, she circulates around the floor and checked in with me periodically. For the first time in a long time (or possibly the first time ever at Night Shift), I was asked to show ID and empty my pockets before even entering the building. Maybe this was a function of my not having been there in two months and new people not knowing me. Maybe you can expect it every time now. Who knows? But they were polite about it, it didn't feel heavy handed.
Room prices are unchanged. 30/LD, 200/15, 350/30. Still nothing close to a bargain. They now have those little cards in display stands on tables (like GGC and Millstream) with room prices (they claim the prices are "industry standards", haha) on one side and promos on the other side. It's still very much a "do it at your own risk, it's higher than you'll pay elsewhere for what may very well be a dud" proposition. As always, my regular readers know I do not eat or drink at these places, but food and drink prices seemed to be, uh "industry standards" (read: the usual ripoff). You still get the nagging feeling ownership cares less about dances and would be happy to make most of their money as a restaurant. Which leads to the dancers, who apparently come to work for no good reason.
One thing that seems not to have changed much at Night Shift is the rotating cast of dancers- here today, gone tomorrow. I saw only one familiar face from this summer (an eternity ago by Night Shift standards). There were about ten dancers working, I managed to put names to seven of them:
Autumn is a short, slightly thick, mixed AA with straight black hair, very full eyebrows, and puffy cheeks that make it look like she just had dental work.
Lava is a short, not too dark AA with tattoos on her upper sternum of a yin-yang and a Chinese or Japanese character.
Victoria is tall and thin and white, with long dark hair in back but a bowl cut like Moe from the Three Stooges in front. Victoria has no ink that I saw. Victoria was the only dancer who was bold enough to go around asking for tips after her stage set.
Yuma is a very fit Asian with a tattoo of a tiger's head on her right thigh. Yuma recognized me from last summer and we chatted a tiny bit. It seems she has correctly concluded I am not interested in a room with her but am good for a modest tip if she invests in a correspondingly modest conversation with me. Score one for intelligence and politeness. This was easily the best part of the night.
Rose is a thin caramel skinned AA with distinctively curly hair and a leopard print tattoo on her left shoulder.
Dana looks like a miniature Robin Givens.
And finally, Stasi. (Short for Stasia or Anastasia, not pronounced like "Stacey.") Stasi is very pretty- a Caucasian mix of Drew Barrymore and Rashida Jones. Stasi has long wavy dark hair and no ink that I could see. She is very, very pretty. I made some eye contact, she took the hint. We chatted a bit, but there was no traction. It seems like she's one of those been-around-the-block dancers looking for the low-hanging fruit, and neither of us really budged- I wanted her to work for it, she wasn't willing to. She complained that dancing is a lousy job if the money doesn't rain down. She got called up to dance, I gave her a little tip, we gave a polite hug and parted ways. Oh well.
Two changes worth noting, both of these changes are advertised in the club and on the website:
1) Monday is promoted as "Industry Night" with $20 dances and discounts on food.
2) The other interesting development is that starting November 8, Night Shift will be opening much earlier- from Noon, and staying open straight through until 2AM. I am more than a little curious to see what this will look like in practice for a place that has a reputation of not really getting started until 10PM even though they open at 8PM. Some may remember Night Shift originally opened at 6PM and they actually pushed back the opening time to 8PM because the first two hours were totally dead. I'm curious to see how many dancers will actually show up to work afternoons.
Signing off, long-windedly yours,
Kindofaloser
