Health-Conscious Strip Joints

We're going downstate this weekend for a bachelor and a bachelorette party. The latter is really a misnomer. I'm not sure what the specific qualifications are for a bachelorette party, but I'm pretty sure that having the bride-to-be's Grandpa and Grandma in attendance pretty much disqualifies it.

I'll be attending the bachelor party. Actually, it sounds like we're playing disc golf, having a cook-out, and either watching a baseball game on TV (assuming the Tigers don't lose the next 2 games) or a hockey game in person. To my way of thinking, this means that someone planned a bachelor party without actually talking to the groom-to-be, because I have to assume that no red-blooded American male is gonna okay a bachelor party for himself that does not, in any way, involve strippers. This is, after all, quite possibly the last opportunity for him to view, let's say, assets which do not belong to his bride-to-be.

Being the good friend that I always try to be, I decided to do a little research in order to to formulate a backup plan. (You know, in case he yells "This is a bachelor party! I want assets!")

As Grand Rapids is a pretty conservative place, I was concerned that there might be a scarcity or decent adult-oriented establishments. Silly me.

It turns out that there are a couple site that review strip clubs. Also, they do not involve NSFW pictures, which I found interesting. Obviously these are sites for folks with a purely academic interest in strip clubs. (Unfortunately, the names of the sites are NSFW, so I was glad I was doing the research on my wife's laptop sitting in the periodical room at the library. You don't really want sites like "strippers-r-us.com" popping up in your history at work.) Anyway, it turns out that G.R. does, in fact, have a very highly thought of establishment called the Red Barn Adult Theater.

Among its other selling points was one that stood out for me. Since it's illegal in Michigan for an establishment that features full nudity to have a liquor license, the Red Barn features a juice bar!

I think this is great. It's much easier to convince your significant other to allow you (And to all of you guys who are saying to yourselves "I don't need anybody's permission to go anywhere!", you are obviously not married, so shut up.) to visit a strip joint if you tell her that you promise to be very health-conscious while you're there.

Which leads me to a related story.

Years ago, when my buddy Kev was in college, he and a few pals enjoyed a guys-night-out which included visits to multiple bars and a strip joint or two. The next day, while all the guys were feeling a bit under-the-weather, one of the guys looked particularly bad. One of his eyes was swollen half-shut. Since none of the guys really had perfect recollection of the entire evening, they couldn't figure what he'd done do give himself the beginnings of a shiner, but they weren't particularly concerned. However, as the eye got worse over the following couple days, they all convinced him that he should see a doctor.

The diagnosis was a bit, well, icky. It turns out that the gentleman had a pubic louse in his eye. Evidently a product of enjoying too many lap-dances from gals who didn't enjoy showers.

Luckily, I feel confident that kind of thing doesn't happen at clubs with juice bars.

Laterz.