NICE WINGTIPS

If you lived in San Diego before it got spiffed up downtown, and spent any time in the vicinity of the Greyhound station and the Funland arcade, you no doubt walked past a seedy looking time machine of a strip bar, the name of which escapes me. Strip bar, because it had strippers, and it had alcohol, but there's no way it qualified as a strip club. I'll give you an idea what it was like. In the display window, where a glamor photo of an entertainer may once have been, there was a faded black and white poster of Raquel Welch, from One Million Years B.C. It was in that window for years, decades after the film had come and gone. I must have walked past it 46 times.

After seeing the poster slowly deteriorate for years, I decided to see if Raquel Welch was inside. She was not. But I passed through some sort of portal. It was very dark, the room smelled, sweat, booze, cigarettes. I was with my friend Kevin. We had decided that that, if we were curious enough to look inside, it would be the right thing to do, to sit down and take it in with a beer. But in a single moment, our voyeuristic anthropological study got turned on its face. There were about a dozen or so patrons in the bar, most were just kind of glancing at the stripper. No real gaping. The dancer finished her set, and then, from the stage, she said "I'm off work. Does anybody want to take me home with them?" Dead silence. The scene had such a sad, pathetic vibe that my buddy and I just looked at each other and simultaneously nodded towards the door. As we were walking out, "...And thaaat was..."

I honestly don't remember what music was playing in that place, but I'd like to imagine that at one time, in its heyday, they were spinning stuff like the songs below, all from the Las Vegas Grind series of compilations. Thanks to the Mystery Suggester, I now know that the Gee Cees' "Buzzsaw Twist" is an early Glen Campbell cut (1961). Hence this whole diversion.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Jaguars - Drive-In mp3 at Plastik Props
The Frantics - The Whip mp3 at Unnecessary Umlaut
Barbara and the Boys - Hooty Sapperticker mp3 at Internet Archive
The Hollywood Persuaders - Drums A Go Go mp3 at X818
The Gee Cees - Buzzsaw Twist mp3 at Rocky 52