the ultimate strip club list

July 18, 2008  •  Vol. 15, Issue 199

My girlfriend and I dropped by the Kelowna Cheetah's on a Sunday evening at about 8:30 PM. Its area of town is upscale, and Cheetah’s interior decor was also fairly nice, with a large, complex-shaped stage that extends for about 30 feet (oops, I mean 10 meters) and has hundreds of small blinking lights around its perimeter (all of which worked). The stage was well lit, with none of the irritating high-tech (but ill-designed) lighting often installed in strip clubs that shines in the audience’s eyes without illuminating the dancers. Even better (to us), the club was smoke-free.

Unfortunately, at 8:30, the nice well-lit stage was empty. The friendly doorman assured us that the girls would begin dancing at about 9 (we’ve heard this before…). So we had dinner next door at a very nice restaurant (Ric's). Returning at 9:30, the stage was still empty, but the doorman assured us that the girls would begin soon (yeah, sure…). But we were beginning to like this fellow, so we entered, especially since there was no cover charge. We asked how many girls there would be, and the doorman said that, while there had been four the previous week, there’d be only three this week. But three is better than zero (see our review of the other club in Kelowna, Willows).

A very pretty athletic girl in an elaborate costume did a nice erotic striptease at about 9:45 for four songs, but, on leaving the stage, was overheard to say that she was the only dancer there that evening, and that it'd be a minimum of twenty minutes before she'd be back on stage. We hung around for another ten minutes and decided to leave, but just as we reached the door, the doorman assured us that another girl had just arrived, so we returned to our seats. Indeed, another attractive girl appeared on stage and also did a nice striptease for about four songs. A few songs later, another girl danced, and then another. By the time we left, we saw five different dancers in all, which was not at all bad for a small city like Kelowna. And how often is the reality better than that promised by a strip club doorman? And they were all quite pretty, and all but one had very good moves.

There appeared to be no contact allowed in the club, and tipping seemed irrelevant. In fact, no attempt was made to extract any cash from patrons for private dances or anything else for that matter, although we did see one fellow disappear behind a curtain with a girl and return one song later.

Also, while you could walk up to the bar and purchase a drink, no waitress ever wandered over to our seats or any other seats to offer to bring any. And as we'd just had dinner, we didn't bother to buy any either. So the total cost of our fun evening at Cheetah’s was zero.

But what was more interesting about this club that evening was its patrons. There were about a dozen males and a dozen females present. Unlike all other strip clubs we’ve attended, this place seemed to be an active pick-up spot, with patrons frequently hitting on each other. Most of the women were certainly gay—almost all were with only female company, and they cheered loudly for the strippers and abruptly rejected the advances of the one or two men at the club who wandered by and tried to talk to them. But most of the MEN also appeared to be gay, frequently hitting on each other and several sitting in intimate positions with each other. And one fellow came over and hit on my girlfriend AND ME. I must say that this was the first time that this has ever happened to us, and in a strip club no less. We politely rejected him, and he left us alone.

And if this weren’t interesting enough, life at Cheetah’s proceeded to get even more interesting. Several fights broke out among the men for reasons not apparent to us. Fortunately, the bouncers were able to deal with them, but they only broke up the fights and didn’t eject the patrons involved. As a result, the atmosphere became rather tense. One fellow, who seemed to have imbibed a dangerous combination of LSD and alcohol, wandered around the room making nonsensical but threatening comments and gestures to many, and the bouncers seemed powerless to stop him, despite numerous stern warnings. Another simply appeared to suffer from some sort of mental illness and wandered around, simply staring menacingly at other patrons at very close range without saying anything. This fellow also tended to whistle loudly in unsuspecting people’s ears at close range. Again, the bouncers talked to him but didn’t eject him, allowing him to harass patrons at will.

So there was plenty of entertainment to be had at Cheetah’s. Fun for the entire family.