The Gold Club:
1415 Locust Street, Philadelphia PA
215.670.9999
"Hey, Joe, where ya going?"
"I'm going to the Office."
"Why? It's after 5pm. Besides, our
office is back that way."
"You don't understand. I'm going to the
Office for Happy Hour."
"I spend 8 hours there every day and
none of them are happy."
"I can't wait to see all the exposed
tits and swaying heinies!"
"Are you having some sort of wild party
with the secretarial pool?"
"I'm talking about the dancers at the Office!"
"I work at the same company you do. We
don't have any dancers."
"No, silly, the topless dancers at the Office,
a go‑go bar at 15th & Chancellor."
"Chancellor? I've never heard of that
street."
"It's right by Old Original
Bookbinder's."
"Bookbinders? Chancellor
Street? This must be some swanky club, eh?"
"No, it's a dive. And Chancellor Street
is just an alley. Follow me!"
All of that is a dialogue lodged decisively in the
past.
Bookbinder's closed. The dive that
was the Office was renovated into an upscale gentlemen's club called the
Celebrity Room. Then it was renovated again into the Gold Club,
affiliated with one of the largest and most successful gentlemen's club chains
in the country. Pretty soon, it won't even have its entrance on Chancellor.
Instead, the club will open up on Locust and you won't have to walk down the
short alley that is Chancellor to get in.
The new address will be 1415 Locust Street,
which will put it just a little west of a number of upscale hotels also located
on Locust.
About the Club:
The neighborhood lies on the cusp of two
areas. West is Center City's upscale office district with upscale office
buildings & hotels. East lies City Hall and some sleazy neighborhoods
surrounding the politicians. By upgrading their facility, the Gold Club
seeks to reflect the upscale businessmen who work in that district and the
upscale tourists staying in the hotels instead of the working class people who
live to the east. Consequently, the Gold Club is doing everything they
can to help to gentrify their block and raise property values.
One of the first things I did after returning
to Philadelphia from my trips (described elsewhere) was to call the Gold
Club and schedule this photo shoot. The magazine's other staff
photographer, Gary Bell, & I arrived the following Wednesday
evening. He drove. I was willing to pay for us to park in a garage, but Gary
was able to find a spot on the street. When we returned at the end of the
night, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that we didn't get a ticket.
Don't presume you'll have the same experience, but know it is possible.
We entered the club from Chancellor. The
sign for Bookbinder's is still up. Chancellor is to the left, just north of
Locust. The sign for the Gold Club was easy to find.
Despite being affiliated with one of
America's largest club chains, the Gold Club is physically one of our
area's smallest clubs. It is nonetheless a small rectangle. From Chancellor,
the longer line of that rectangle led away from the door, parallel to 15th
Street. This part of my description, at least, will still be true once the new
entrance is open as Locust is directly opposite Chancellor.
From Chancellor, we entered into a very small
foyer. To the right of this are the club's three champagne courts. These
champagne courts are also be used for $30 V.I.P. couch dances. All of this
will be on your far left when you enter from Locust.
Running along the wall near Chancellor is the
bar. It's not a particularly large or dominating bar as it lies along one of
the club's shorter lines. In front of the bar is the club's only stage. Given
their size, there can only be one. Surrounding the stage are clusters of
wheeled gentlemen's club chairs. Given the wheels, the exact locations of these
chairs are not fixed. In what was the far right hand corner of the club is the
couch room. This will be the near left corner from Locust Street.
Settling In:
From the foyer, we met with general manager Chris.
I know Chris as a DJ from Erotic Cafe (another physically small club)
and the Oakford. Chris is a past winner of "Best DJ".
I ran into him again last month at Signatures during their Bikini
Contest.
Gary stopped to flirt with barmaid Tracey
while Chris gave me grand tour, with special emphasis on the new couch
room and champagne courts. The tour didn't take long. Afterwards, I decided
to shoot in the dressing room because it has lighter‑colored walls and
brighter lighting than elsewhere in the club.
When I returned to Gary, the first dancer I
saw was Charisma, my Las Vegas drinking buddy. Charisma won the
Bikini Contest at Signatures last month and they flew her out to Las
Vegas to participate in the national Bikini Contest sponsored by puregoldclubs.com.
I ran into her there and you'll find the details in "Clubs
Elsewhere".
I'd learned that Charisma now dances
at Gold Club & Signatures, so I'd promised to let her know
when we'd be shooting. Her number was discontinued, so I'd failed to reach
her. So I was surprised but happy when she turned out to be the first dancer I
saw in the club soon after we walked through the door.
While we settled in, I flirted with a
beautiful dancer named Jamie, dressed provocatively in fishnet. With a
pretty face and sexy curves, I was quickly taken with her. Now add Jamie's
vivacious personality and I was further attracted. However, she declined to
pose for us.
(Photo) Shooting The Dancers:
Gary & I set up to shoot in the dressing
room and waited for our victims to come to us. The first of these was Delilah.
She was familiar to Gary though, for some reason, she was slow to recognize
him.
Delilah
Delilah wore a sheer black dress with
a plunging neckline. The only thing to leap out at us quicker than her perky
natural breasts was her large radiant smile. Though she had plenty of shiny
jewelry in the vicinity of her face (a necklace & earrings) nothing
could outshine her smile.
Jenna N
Jenna N is a brunette with a mane of
reasonably short curly hair. Her eyes are blue and her smile is also bright. Jenna
was wearing an interesting black three‑piece outfit. At first only two
of these pieces were showing, but she turned out to have a matching g‑string.
The two outer pieces both featured lots of thick laces surrounding exposed
skin. Once Jenna removed her shorts, we were more fully able to admire
her buns.
Ginger
I first met Ginger last fall at Purple
Orchid. She had on the perfect Eagles outfit and I featured her in
their ad. I'd thought she was even more attractive out of the outfit and I was
looking forward to using less covered photos of Ginger. However, the
following month she was gone and I shelved her photos. Last month, I ran
into her again at Signatures while I was waiting for the Bikini Contest
to begin. This month, she asked why I hadn't listed her in "Lost &
Found". I was able to prove to her that I had.
The first thing anyone notices about Ginger
is her flame red hair, so orange that it could only have come from a bottle ‑‑
or a packet of tang. To her credit, she has dyed her eyebrows to match. I
know a number of women with auburn or even chestnut hair who insist that
they're redheads. Not next to Ginger they're not.
Her hair is otherwise short but full‑bodied
with ends that flip up. Ginger also has pale blue eyes and a pleasant
smile. Her pale skin is freckled just as you might a redhead's skin to be.
Altogether, you might say Ginger is very colorful.
Ramping up the color quotient, Ginger
was wearing an interesting and extremely colorful fall foliage patterned outfit
that was a dress on top and bellbottomed pants at the bottom. Her outfit was
so colorful that I started to get carried away shooting photos of her in it and
was slow to ask her to take it off. Fortunately, Gary kept his head.
Ginger began slowly, pulling down the
back of her outfit while standing with her back to us. Turning around, she
kept her hands over her breast for several shots, then just relaxed and
revealed her splendor.
Ginger has impressive natural
breasts. Yet her best asset is probably her ass. Ginger has the
sort of buns that jut or swell most pleasingly from her trim waist &
thighs. I could tell that from her tight pants, but her buns were even more
impressive once released from their hiding place.
Angelica
Next up was blonde Angelica who had
yielded her original spot in our order to Ginger. Continuing on a theme
of great buns, once Angelica lifted her dress, I was strongly impressed.
Also colorful, Angelica's short dress
was a white strapless sheath with explosions of pink and purple. Allowed to
fall down naturally, her dress just barely covers her buns, but it was well
worth it to prevail upon Angelica to raise it higher.
Angelica is a pretty girl with
shoulder‑length wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately, she's not
that photogenic, so I've struggled to find photos that won't do her too great
an injustice. It's odd how a face that looks so pretty in person so often
found just the wrong facial expressions captured on film.
For a while there, we'd had quite a throng of
willing models ‑‑ always a good thing. Just as Angelica was
almost ready to begin, Ginger came back. Ginger had already signed
a model release previously and thus was ready to begin sooner. Meanwhile, Naudia
was clamoring to be included. Since Naudia is quite pretty, I was more
than happy to shoot her, but I did not wish for her to stand around waiting
while we shot two other girls. So I suggested that she come back ‑‑
more than once. This made me feel bad, as if I was neglecting her. So I want
to make it absolutely clear that my only concern was monopolizing too much of
her time.
Naudia
When Naudia finally got her rightful
place in front of our cameras, she didn't waste a moment. A natural model, Naudia
was full of great ideas for poses and flashed from one to the next. It was an
exhilarating experience. I was glad we had our new digital cameras to help us
keep up. It's nice to know we'll never have to stop to change rolls of film.
Naudia is a dark beauty, with gleaming
brown eyes and a ready smile. During her photos, Naudia was less prone
to smiling, preferring more exotic and glamorous looks. She has red hair, but
unlike Ginger, hers is a more plausible shade of red, almost copper.
Naudia has athletic arms, shapely
legs, and nicely rounded buns. She's not just slender, she's toned and
athletic with a flat stomach and a muscular back.
Naudia had on an interesting outfit as
well. It was a zebra‑print with flowers superimposed on top of the zebra
stripes. It was a dress with tiny fabric links between a skirt and top,
revealing most of her flat stomach and athletic back.
Once we'd finished shooting Naudia our
backlog disappeared and we actually found ourselves with nothing to do for a
while. I went back into the club and rounded up Charisma.
Charisma
Going into this shoot, I'd thought about
using Charisma on the cover. I met her last month. I'd seen her in
Vegas earlier this month. She'd won the Bikini Contest. She seemed like she'd
make an excellent link joining together disparate elements of this issue. Besides,
she's extremely pretty and charismatic.
Another thing about Charisma is that
she's quite photogenic. Gary & I loved what we were seeing through our
viewfinders and in our preview screens. And now I love all the photos we
took. I'm not sure how many rolls of film we would have used up if we were
still shooting film.
I do know that there were too many photos
altogether for me to edit on a computer screen. And it isn't exactly easy
trying to winnow the field down to just the few we need no matter how or where
or in what medium I do it. The truth is that there are quite a lot of great Charisma
photos that we could have used on the cover and quite a few more that we could
have used in this article ‑‑ which is a good thing.
Charisma has long straight auburn hair
that reaches more than halfway down her back, or if shifted to the front, falls
gently to the base of her breasts. Her hair is thick and full‑bodied and
I got the idea to literally cover her breasts with it as a potential cover pose.
Over the years, we've run a lot of photos of girls with their hands over their
breasts, but not too many using their hair to do the job.
Charisma has pretty eyes that are
either green or hazel. She has a winning smile that lights up her face. Yet Charisma
is one of those rare girls who still look good when not smiling. So I tried
shooting both expressions in most of the suggested poses. She looked pretty
both ways, but I guess I prefer smiles because I like to think about happy
girls.
In Vegas, Charisma had bragged about
her natural breasts ‑‑ in contrast to the fake breasts of the
feature dancers. But until I saw her at the Gold Club, I'd never seen Charisma's
breasts. Now that I've seen them I can attest that they surely are worth bragging
about ‑‑ infinitely superior to the best work of saline or
silicone.
Charisma also has an admirable trim
waist that makes her chest all the more impressive. Her legs are shapely and
her buns well‑rounded. Altogether, she's a very pretty and sexy girl.
Yet one of the best aspects of Charisma
is her personality. She'd quickly won me over last month when I shot her at Signatures.
She had no trouble winning over Gary during this shoot. She'd even been able
to project her personality across an entire crowd at the national Bikini
Contest in Las Vegas and quickly became that crowd's favorite ‑‑
despite the many feature dancers present.
I was so impressed with Charisma that
I not only made her our covergirl, I added her to our Dream Team to
appear at Classic Night on Wednesday, November 10th.
Sunny
The last dancer we shot was Sunny.
Not just partly sunny, her smile just beams. Sunny is also a blue‑eyed
blonde. Her thick, straight dark blonde hair falls to her shoulders.
Gary asked if Sunny had ever been told
she looks like a TV character, "Topanga" from Boy Meets World.
Sunny said she'd heard that and that she'd also been compared to some
famous actress. However, I caught the resemblance to "Topanga" and
immediately started thinking that would be a more distinctive stage name than Sunny.
So forgive me if I slip and call her "Topanga" in the future.
VIP and Couch Dances:
At this point, I decided I needed to more
thoroughly check out the club's couch dance facilities. So I bought a couch
dance from Charisma. Then I bought two V.I.P. dances from her to see if
they'd be noticeably different. The VIP dances are both more private &
more expensive, but don't seem to be noticeably different in quality.
I also decided to buy a couch dance from Ginger,
whose sexy body had been turning me on during the photo shoot. Ginger
gives a great couch dance in which she uses her pretty face to good effect. I
also tried two V.I.P. dances from Ginger. These were also great but of
similar quality to her couch dance.
While I was having my idea of fun, Gary had
his. He lured barmaid Tracey into the dressing room for some photos.
After several tame shots, Gary talked Tracey into posing in her bra but
without her blouse. Given that her blouse was reasonably low‑cut, this
primarily reveals more stomach than the full outfit did. However, I would be
remiss if I failed to show you one of these later photos. Tracey's
tight leather top may have left a few small lines on her skin, but I hope these
are undetectable in this reproduction of her photo.
Tracey has shoulder‑length
blonde curly hair and brown eyes in a pretty face. She is also an attentive
bartender and kept the crowd's throats wet throughout the evening.
Contact Information:
The Gold Club
1415 Locust Street
Philadelphia PA
215.670.9999
The Gold Club - All New For Center City Philly
