As this was my first time at a strip club, I really didn't know what to expect. In my mind, I envisioned sparsely-dressed women working a pole for the whole time while guys throw money at them, a la every strip club scene in the history of film.
As our stag party arrived at the street-level entrance, we were greeted by a man downstairs who checked ID. He then told us to take the elevator up to the 5th floor, where we were greeted by a woman who ran both a coat check and a picture-taking service (they take pictures of all patrons prior to them entering). After one last pat-down by another bouncer, we were let into the quite small establishment.
The woman performing was already at the tail-end of her performance, but you could tell that she had the attention of every man in the room. She danced in what's basically the central area of the place- 2 poles, about 50 or so square feet of "dancing floor". Around this "floor" are seats, which are then surrounded by a couple of bars and some VIP booths. We had a hook up, so we didn't need to pay cover, but we had to pay for bottle service and a few VIP booths. The booths ran $100. I didn't handle the bottle service but that was a few hundred as well.
Essentially, performances are 3-4 songs. The first song has the women introduced, and she performs a pretty upbeat dance performance while taking off a few articles of their costume. As the songs progress, the songs get slower and slower, all the while the performers are removing more clothing. By the last song, the performer is fully naked.
For the most part, the performances are sensual, but tasteful. The women are incredibly fit, and some of the things they were doing on the poles left me with my jaw on the floor. It's nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to pole-dancing, but seeing it in person is another thing. Like someone already mentioned, it's like a fully-nude Cirque du Soleil performance.
Between dances, other ladies walk around asking if you'd like a private dance. It's $50 for a lap dance, plus any additional tips you may or may not add on top of that. Each of the dozen or so ladies working were absolutely stunning. Actually, one of the more beautiful ladies was our server, who immediately notified our party (and reminded us throughout) that she didn't do the same performances as the other ladies do.
Overall, it was a pretty interesting experience. This isn't your rowdy, raunchy strip club (I hear that's what No. 5 is). I saw a number of lady patrons in the audience, and they looked like they were having as much of a blast as the guys in the room were. The only drawback were the cost of drinks, so all in all, as you would expect, a night out at the strip club is definitely not cheap. read more