Between our trips to Las Vegas, The Gal and I like to check out some local talent here in Phoenix – but we have to be careful as we are both professionals and we need to keep our anonymity. A good thirty minutes from us at Thomas and 32nd Street is Bourbon Street. We met another Phoenix couple at the Palomino Club in Vegas a few months ago and they gave this club a glowing review – so we decided to see for ourselves.

Since the Palomino is the standard by which we judge all the clubs we visit, it is only natural that we will compare and contrast based on what we consider the “couples gold standard” of strip clubs.

I called ahead; asking about any sort of packages available and the hours the club tended to get busy. They do appear to answer the phone outside of the actual club hours (at least they picked up my call at 10:00am). The woman at the other end of the phone was knowledgeable and friendly. I was informed there were no packages, but VIP services were available. More on that later.

Location and Parking

Just off of the 51 in south Phoenix, Bourbon Street is pretty easy to get to. Google Maps looks like it wants you to turn off a side road to get into the parking lot, but both entrances are right off Thomas.

We were warned the area looks a bit seedy (and to be honest, it does). The club’s exteriors aren’t going to win any awards – there are no real aesthetics to speak of; no theming or branding really to be had here. Nothing wrong with that (after all, it is what is inside that you probably care about), but after seeing the presentation by Christie’s Cabaret? We may have been spoiled a bit.

Parking is free and abundant. We saw no sketchy elements coming (about 7pm) or going (about midnight). It is pretty well-lit and feels safe enough; neither my wife nor I felt uncomfortable there.

Going Inside

As with most clubs, there is a large floor area and a bar. One wall is filled with six TVs (three flanking the left and right of the main stage) – playing various sports and television (The Gal and I prefer not to be distracted; we love it when clubs have music videos and things that augment the dancers; not pull your attention away from them) and most of the seating is designed to all face the same way.

The floor is very open and has about 30-40 tables (is there some place special that makes “strip club chairs”? I swear every club has the same couples-unfriendly seats – free advice? Figure out a table-friendly couples ‘love seat’) and the bar would probably accommodate 20-25 people. The dancers seemed to hang out at the bar a lot (and we found out why later).

Much like Alaska Bush Co. here in Phoenix, there are three stages at Bourbon Street; a main, larger stage and mini-stages on either end of the floor. When we got there, only the main stage and “Stage 3” were open. The dancers start on the main stage, then move each song to Stage 2 and finally Stage 3.

The music was quite diverse; from pop to rock and a little hip-hop and you’ll hear songs from the 90s on up. That will likely be a turn off to some people but we appreciate diversity in all things.

One thing most reviews do not discuss are things like the bathrooms. There are no attendants here (for better or worse) and the women’s bathroom is literally on the other side of the dancer’s dressing room (meaning you have to walk through it). Great if you’re a bisexual lady like The Gal here, but even so – my wife felt she was being a bit invasive to go to the bathroom. Worth noting that the ladies’ room has 3 stalls and both of us decided the bathrooms were clean and well-kept.

Last thing before we move on … The announcer was actually clear and you could easily make out the names of the girls coming to the stage. That sounds silly to mention, I know, but at a lot of clubs it is often hard to hear and if you love the dancer performing for you? It is harder to ask for her by name if you would like VIP time.

We’re going to cover the VIP area in a later section of the review.

The Staff and Drinks

We really enjoy meeting and getting to know the staff at the clubs we go to. Pretty simple math (and this doesn’t just apply to strip clubs); be nice and friendly and typically customer service staff will give you better service.

We arrived about 7:30pm (early for a strip club) as we usually do when we’re looking over a new-to-us club. We paid $10 each as a cover charge; the woman at the payment window could have been a bit more personable but it was fine.

As with every club we’ve been to, there are security staff that typically get you from the door to your table – and are really a first impression of the business (unless you count the woman at the payment window). At clubs we’ve been to in the past like Christie’s and Palomino, these “bouncers” are well-and-consistently dressed; and while they typically are there to enforce the rules and remove undesirable elements? They are also there to get you seated before the server shows up and they often oversee security with VIP.

Bourbon Street’s security was okay; we were brought to the floor and offered our choice of a couple of tables. We were not offered a tour or additional information. He pretty much did the bare minimum and was curt but not rude. It wasn’t easy to tell who was security and who wasn’t – there didn’t seem to be a “uniform” per se. There were times we thought we saw security members sitting at customer’s tables.

They just didn’t have the presence we’re used to. No altercations or incidents occurred the night we were there, so we were not able to see how they handled such events.

Our server for the night, Taylor, showed up right away and we started a tab. They will take your credit card and ID and hold on to it for the duration of your visit.

We liked her. She took good care of us – and we are very low maintenance guests (we didn’t ask for anything special, didn’t ask her to break bills for us, etc). There were a couple of lull periods we didn’t see her, but she was friendly and warmed up to us over the course of the night. Didn’t probably hurt that we tipped her well through the evening too.

By the way, when you are seated a little glass with a napkin is up on top of the light that sits on your table. Not only does that keep your table “reserved” while you’re there, the napkin has your server’s name on it. Clever. Shame it was turned away from us and we asked our server her name later anyway. If you want to call your server by name? Look at the napkin.

The servers were appropriately staffed; they all seemed friendly and attentive.

Between us we had two fuzzy navels and two rum and Cokes (so four alcoholic drinks), three diet sodas and four or five glasses of water – along with a slice of pizza (that was the only food they had outside of a vending machine that didn’t seem to want to take any of my dollars). This is pretty typical; we’re always kind of surprised that clubs don’t have more “finger food” available like pretzels, though. I guess eating anything at a strip club seems shady. The pizza was pretty much what you would expect (they had pepperoni and a ‘meat lover’ slice; we had the former). Our total tab at the end of the night was $69 which we felt was about right. The drink quality overall seemed okay; they got The Gal and I in a happy state and ready to get down with the dancers – so the drinks did their job.

The Talent and Couple Friendliness

We like a real diversity in club talent. We love variations of styles, body shapes and sizes — we really enjoy getting to talk to them and get a sense of their personalities, too.

The Gal likes girls 😀

While Bourbon Street doesn’t have the sheer number of dancers as a Vegas club, we were overall satisfied with the quantity and variations of girls.

Many reviews of Bourbon Street that we looked at complained about diversity in the dancers; especially a lack of tattooed ladies (which The Gal is really attracted to). Other reviews mention a lack of women of color.

We arrived at about 7:30pm and there were 10-15 dancers on rotation. By midnight, there were probably 25-30.

Overall, we found the diversity and “quality” of dancers overall to be “good”. Most ethnicities were represented and there was a good range of body types; large and small breasts (real and fake), short and tall (hard to tell with those stripper boots), booties of all sizes and styles, long and short hair, naughty looking girls (not enough for The Gal) along with the “girl next door” look.

What we didn’t see were “niche” styles; the “Asian School Girl” or dancers going for something very definitive. Some very cute and sexy costumes (The Gal loved Jeanette’s outfit) and the short little skirts are always a welcomed look here.

The Gal and I love a great pole work show (one of the things that keeps us going back to Palomino time after time). The main stage at Bourbon is smaller in comparison and while maybe a quarter of the dancers performed some sort of pole work (two or three of them did good stuff – and we tipped accordingly)? Most of them would be what we call “sensual dance”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – just different. If you love clubs for high energy pole shows? This isn’t it … at least the Friday night we went.

The club is low pressure. I don’t think we had to turn any dancers down; we simply weren’t approached.

We put out the proper vibes and communications (there is an art to being a couples patron, too, BTW) to the dancers my wife expressed interest in. Those that danced for woman, presumably, came and saw us later — and those that were obviously not into girls didn’t. We appreciate that — as long as there are enough dancers that ARE (so we have a good selection). This is where the sheer number of dancers in Vegas help out. Nobody likes the awkward exchange where not all parties are into it.

The dancers as a whole were “7s” and “8s” (in comparison to our experiences in Vegas) with a few exceptions on either side of the spectrum. We really took notice of a few; Piper (really the only tattoo-heavy dancer we saw – and totally The Gal’s type), Sapphire (very classic beauty), Jeanette and we did a good thirty minutes with the lovely Sahar – who really made an impression on The Gal, chatting her up while on stage.

Sahar was really personable, funny and was really feisty (something The Gal finds super hot; well – that and her cute little body). Sahar was one of the only ones that really approached us after The Gal indicated our interest in her. We will certainly be spending more time with her in the future.

Even so, we only had half of the dancers we put the vibes out to actually come see us. I’m not totally surprised, though. Our particular situation is different. We are a couple and we focus on my wife as the target for dances and attention. This immediately puts us into a different category. Not all dancers are comfortable with couples in general (I know, there can be a lot of drama here; respect and understand) and even more aren’t “into girls” even if they will dance for them on demand — they may not really know how to give the right attention to a woman.

My bisexual wife likes dances from girls who like girls.

I wouldn’t put on the billboard “couples friendly” – but there were at least five couples (more as the night went on) and we all seemed to have a good time. We’ll get a better feel for this when we return to Bourbon Street.

Something worth noting before we move on is that the club apparently discourages the girls drinking while they are there. We enjoy buying friendly dancers drinks, but we were informed that “dancer drinks” are $25 and they aren’t allowed to consume them on the floor; it has to be at the bar. We thought it was strange, but these are the interesting things we like to note in our reviews that others may not.

All About The VIP

Let’s start off by saying there was something off about the VIP stuff at first. At the Palomino, signs are posted clearly the pricing for various services and durations. You would think that your server would have a good idea how VIP works – and if not her? The dancers themselves should be very intimate with all the levels of VIP. We felt like there was some secret code that needed to be deciphered when we wanted to know about VIP.

Maybe the VIP rates and services change frequently here? I don’t know – but it wasn’t until we had the “VIP Hostess” come to our table that we knew what was going on.

After asking Taylor (our server) and a couple of the dancers about all the available experiences – Taylor finally invited the VIP Hostess, Lisa, to come over and chat with us.

Save yourself a lot of time; just ask your server to send Lisa (or the VIP person) over to the table. She gave us information and a tour of the VIP – we liked her a lot.

VIP is an area located to the left of the main floor where you can spend time with the dancers; this includes lap dances, what they call “entry level VIP” and of course the expensive “Champagne Rooms”.

There were no table dances at Bourbon Street (Christie’s has been the only club we’ve gone to that has them) – lap dances are $20 per song.

The lap dances are carried out in a room private from the main floor. Every dancer and her customer(s) appeared to have a small divider between them but otherwise it wasn’t anything special. We only walked through that area and didn’t get a dance there (we’ll do that next time) but if I had to guess, it can accommodate ten or so lap dances. Not sure how the arrangement will work for couples.

We didn’t get a good look at the champagne rooms, nor did I catch the pricing of those rooms, but I believe they start at four digits in price.

At the Palomino, they have private small “rooms” we call “the horseshoe rooms” as each one has a horseshoe shaped couch that the dancers can really open up with (even on a couple) and they are fully curtained off for privacy. Here at Bourbon Street, that would really be the “entry level VIP” and it runs a bit more than Palomino.

Entry level rooms have a comfortable couch (seated us both great) with enough room for the dancer to move around well enough to give you a good show. These are private “rooms” and you really feel alone with the dancer (where you wouldn’t with the lap dance). The dancers with customers back here are taken out of rotation for stage dancing.

The entry level VIP starts at $400 for 30 minutes and includes drinks and your dancer’s time (don’t forget to add a tip for your dancer; remember, all VIP situations require the dancer ‘tip’ the VIP services). Obviously for 60 minutes the price is $800, but Lisa told us every hour AFTER that drops to $500 per hour.

Again, I feel there is room for Bourbon Street to improve the VIP situation maybe with fixed, posted prices or by training up the server staff to be more comfortable with the information. Future trips will be more comfortable.

Mileage

Another big consideration from clubs is “mileage”, right? How much you’re allowed to touch and interact during dances.

As a woman, my wife is often given far more latitude in touching than men ever are. My wife also doesn’t abuse this and sometimes even touches less based on the dancer’s body language. We try to be polite customers and in our experience, this politeness leads to more allowances with repeat dances.

In Vegas, there was a lot more touching going on. A LOT MORE.

Mileage has a lot of factors. The state/city may have rules, the club itself may have rules — and of course, in the end — the dancers have theirs too and that is the final say.

Mileage can be tricky waters to navigate.

We want the dancers to be comfortable with us — so we always discuss boundaries. This is good advice to stag men attending clubs too.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a ton of opportunity during this visit to assess this club’s (and its dancers) mileage. We had one VIP experience with Sahar (and she was awesome; if you’re reading – thank you!) but she danced for The Gal, not me.

When we return to Bourbon Street, we’ll get more dances and update this review accordingly.

We’ll Be Going Back!

The club is fine for couples; perhaps with repeat visits we’ll get more attention like the “regulars” seemed to get. Hopefully Sapphire, Piper and Jeanette will come see us more next time, too.

We were treated good by staff and talent. My wife got her girl on. The experience was affordable.

As with the Palomino Club in Vegas, we’ll be back to Bourbon Street again soon.