Westminster council have dropped a court case against Peter Stringfellow regarding some touching {sitting on men´s knee etc} that their fearless investigators had spotted during one of their apparently non stop undercover operations at the club. The borough has several totally unlicensed ” rip off the unwary ” hostess bars which continue to operate with nary a visit but it still seems obsessed with harassing the most famous club in London. Like Camden´s failure with Spearmint TCR let´s hope this latest flop marks a watershed in council action
Club Wicked { see www.clubwicked.org } which is next door to London Bridge station and the former site of Bob Singleton´s excellent Decadence shows made the national newspapers this week as they are applying to add table dancing to their current repertoire of fetish nights but are being opposed by amongst others Southwark Cathedral. The new owner is an ex Met Policeman who likes to be known as ” The General” and is applying to have a license for this private members club which covers everything up to and including watching or taking part in sexual intercourse on the premises. This should be a much more interesting court battle!
John Gray CEO of Spearmint followed the likes of Richard Branson and Eddie Jordan in a BBC documentary called ” What do you do all day ” which shadowed him on a typical working day. This involved private aircraft bourn visits to the clubs in Harrogate and Sheffield plus meeting his former porn star wife. The interviewer´s verdict was that ” he was impossible to dislike “.
Bristol got off to a slow start in term of table dancing by UK standards with the first license only being granted in October last year but by Christmas there were already 4 clubs operating. Word has reached me now that 2 of the 4 are no more leaving just Central Chambers { www.central-chambers.com } and Club Crème { www.creme.com }. I suspect that this is a pattern that will be repeated throughout the UK with a rush of places trying table dancing { given the collapse of the conventional night club trade caused by very late pub licenses} but only the well managed and funded ones surviving.
Central Chamber also runs pole dancing lessons in Bristol. In London there are now several organisations that have started this up both for general fitness and for would be strippers. A new one to me is Polestars see {www.polestars.net } which has been running courses in Brixton for a while now { featuring I have heard sexy Sam Kirli as an instructor } and has now started courses in Shoreditch on Wednesday evenings.
One of the problems with the massive expansion of table dancing clubs which has taken place over the past few years is that it has resulted in lots of clubs being run by very inexperienced and often incompetent management. If a club is badly run it will struggle even if it is in potentially a very good area. An example would be the short lived Club Orchid {lasted around 3 months} and Luton´s LAPD {lasted around 6 months and closed in June}, now the word on the street already is that the well located Piano Lounge { Twickenham} could well follow the same pattern.
One that is not closing despite rumours to the contrary is Composure in Watford which is under new ownership and in the process of upgrading it´s premises. Another new Promises venue is G´s Bar in Newbury which has started dancing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Promises seems to be spreading it´s wings from the south east at present supplying girls also to Shape´s Cabaret Bar in Hull and the new Palace Club { old Expose´} near the Copthorne Hotel in Birmingham.
After the furore about it distracting students the word is that table dancing at the Baby Bar {www.baby-bar.net but not much on about stripping as yet ! }in Oxford is going rather well although to date it´s still Sunday´s only. Not heard whether it´s made the corrupted students of Oxford fall behind Cambridge in terms of academic achievement yet !
The renaissance at Rainbow seems to be continuing with the relatively new Bar Provoke in Cranbrook Rd, Ilford converting to the agency from doing it´s own bookings in June.
A poll on the London strip site in May for ” Miss Sweet Suburbia ” for the best girl working in outer London places like Southend, Watford, and High Wycombe was won by Jezebel who mainly works for Entertease these days.
I have heard of another non London strip pub, Tiffany´s in Grosvenor Rd, Aldershot started at the end of May having 3 girls on Saturday and Sunday from 2pm to 7. Lets hope this and Shooters {see last month} are the start of a national trend like the one that gave us all those stupid ” Oirish ” themed bars a few years ago.
Meanwhile in the East End a long time strip pub the Spreadeagle in Kingsland Rd seems to have shut it´s doors on striptease for the last time. Rumour has it the closure was caused by licence problems. This leaves just 4 strip pubs in the Shoreditch High Street area whereas in 1999 there were 10 at one point. It was run by the same people that run the Axe and has resulted in several girls losing as their jobs there as the rota is reduced.
Further bad news from East side of London came when it emerged that Bar 108´s all too brief career as a strip pub has been ended by a new owner who wants to turn the place into a pure restaurant. This has also removed the latest venue for Bob´s “Decadence ” shows which will now have to move for the third time in three months.
A new innovation in the striptease industry came to my attention in June when Laptastic { see www.laptastic.co.uk } organised a coach trip from Stockport to Birmingham complete with beer and dancers en route. Limo strips have been around for a while but perhaps this is the way to revitalised the UK´s hopeless public transport system !
Tyke
Author: Saxon
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