dinner and a pole dance
As a journalist, I get invited to some unique, media-only experiences. This time, it was dinner and a pole dance.
Continuing my Los Angeles tour of gluttony, (the aforementioned meal followed my cupcake eating marathon), I put on my pole dancing gear and headed out for a ladies-only night on the town in Culver City. (Mind you, for me, pole dancing clothing consists of ballet flats, comfy pants and my EatSomethingSexy.com tee shirt with the image of my cartoon self pole dancing on a vanilla bean on the back–sorry if I ruined a much more salacious image for anyone.)
The evening was held in honor of a new Wednesday night promotion at Rush Street, a relatively new, LA version of a gastro-pub. Having installed a dance pole in the restaurant’s loft lounge, the restaurant’s crafty, (and I suspect all male), owners established a ladies night that includes free pole dancing lessons. The event is complete with pink drink specials featuring, (what else?) X-Rated Vodka.
Our small group of food journalists began with dinner in the restaurant’s main dining room. I arrived to an orgy of appetizers. At least 10 dishes jockeyed for position across the long table. There were sashimi nachos, lobster and shrimp egg rolls, portobello fries, sweet potato fries (my guilty pleasure), short rib dumplings and grilled baby artichokes (simple and tender with clean flavors – my favorite of the bunch). For the main course I selected a grilled shrimp salad, a nod toward repentance for my already overly-decadent week.
But the salad was not the main event to which I was looking forward. After dinner our group of girls moved upstairs where the instructors from Polistic sipped pink things while awaiting our arrival. Getting into the spirit, I ordered an X-Rated Cosmo of my own. (Anyone who knows me realizes how out of character it is for me to clutch a sweet, pink martini but, you know what they say… when in pole class… And actually, the drink wasn’t bad! As a pole dancing drink special, I don’t think I’d turn my nose up at this one.)
Our turns on the pole weren’t exactly exercise but nor were they shimmy and wiggles of seduction. We each took a single turn, looking and feeling more like children on the monkey bars than vixens at work. But as such it was freeing, a delightful sort of movement designed to let the body go. The Rush Street experience is not quite the overt aphrodisiac one would anticipate but the combination of food, frivolous drinks and freeing movement is definitely an aphrodisiac of a very special sort.
whirling around the pole