sinclair's Review
I went to Cocodrilo at 23:40 on a Tuesday night. The club is in a quiet area of Recoleta, across the street from the children's hospital. Three bouncers manned the entrance, and I had to walk through a metal detector. The cover charge was 15,000 pesos, which is about $14 currently. The cover charge included a ticket for a free drink. The first floor is the lounge. There is a small bar for walk up service only on the left wall. There is a small stage with a static pole on the right wall. The washrooms are in the back. The rest of the floorspace is similar to table seating in a restaurant. A limited food menu is served. The only types of beer served were Quilmes, Heineken, and Corona. Quilmes came in twelve ounce bottles or sixteen ounce tall cans, but both options were 9,000 pesos, which is about $8.50 currently. The tall can was the better deal.
The way Cocodrilo works is unique. Up until 00:30, it is a regular lounge with entertainment on the stage. The entertainment could be a singer, a magician, a band, etc. Between 00:30 and 01:00, dancers come on stage and do stripteases for one song each. The songs were full length. The dancers would get topless, but they had to wear pasties over their nipples to stay in line with local nudity laws. I counted five different dancers who came out and performed. Some came out into the crowd and grinded on guys' laps. At 01:00, the party on the ground floor winds down, and everyone makes their way up to the second floor. The second floor is a nightclub with electronic dance music blaring. The dancers from earlier, plus a couple more, danced on top of the bar, but remained in their bikinis. They were essentially go-go dancers to hype the club atmosphere. All of the females in the crowd on the second floor were freelance escorts. You can dance with them a little and feel them up, but they will eventually push hard to go outside the club and fuck.
I tipped the go-go dancers on the bar generously with 1,000 and 2,000 peso notes. I slid them into their bikini bottoms. I grazed my hand over one dancers' ass cheek when I tipped her. She freaked out. A bouncer came over and yelled at me and threatened to kick me out. The positive to this incident was that all the hookers on the dance floor saw this and knew I was ready to play. A big breasted girl came over and told me I could touch her ass and tits. I started palming her breasts like sixteen-inch softballs and grabbed her ass over her mini skirt. I did this to several of the escorts while I chatted with them and ultimately turned them down. The escorts were in the 4 to 8 range, while the go-go dancers were in the 7 to 9 range. Unfortunately, the go-go dancers did not appear to be available for takeout.
Most of the escorts seemed to start negotiations at $200. If you balked, they would all go down to $150. As the night wears on, and they get more desperate to not go home empty handed, you can get some of them to leave with you for $100. Sex workers prefer US dollars to Argentine pesos due to inflation, but most would still accept the equivalent amount of dollars in pesos. I was told there was no exit fee paid to Cocodrilo to leave with one of the hookers. You can either take them back to your place or go to an albergue transitorio (sex hotel). There are two close by. Hotel Discret is three blocks away, and Hotel D’Or Recoleta is about five blocks away. The sex hotels generally provide rooms for four hour blocks on weekdays and two hour blocks on Friday and Saturday nights.
Cocodrilo runs a business model that used to be common in Buenos Aires a couple decades ago, but it is now the last of its kind. Linking with escorts has moved to the internet. The only advantage of Cocodrilo’s model is that you can see and feel what you are going to bang ahead of time. Photoshopping and fake pictures are common amongst Argentine escorts online. I am not sure I would bother to return, but Cocodrilo was interesting to experience once. Bill Clinton visited Cocodrilo several times, and Diego Maradona was a frequent visitor to Cocodrilo.
