Patpong Mandi - 4th Feb 2012

The night started so nicely at Jimmy Liks

What a night! It started out as a fun and civilised dinner with friends sipping a Patpong Mandi (my favourite cocktail) at Jimmy Liks. It ended in Bada Bing following a detour to watch a street fight and the arrest of several bikies. Welcome to a Saturday night in my neighbourhood - it's just like a scene from Underbelly.
It sounds odd when I say this out aloud, but despite living just a few minutes from the 'Golden Mile', I rarely see the seedy side of Kings Cross. To me my Darlinghurst neighbourhood is all groovy restaurants, great takeaways and funky cafes. Yet it never fails to surprise me how fascinated other people are by the less than cultured side of this area. And here, in the name of friendship, is where my night took quite an unexpected turn from Patpong Mandis.
I wound up watching two rather average dancers work their way (badly) around a pole on a tiny stage in the most unsexy of performances. When I hear the word ‘stripper’ my mind conjures up images of Demi Moore sexily sweeping herself around a pole and suspending herself upside down. Today's lesson in perspective is this - fantasy is so often better than reality. Instead of Demi like moves, these real strippers walked onto the stage, sprayed their poles with disinfectant and wiped them down with a cloth before swinging away. They then left the cloths and spray bottles in the middle of the floor as they proceeded to dance around. I expected to be fighting an overwhelming urge to give them a chat about having some self respect and preserving their dignity (all very stereotypical I know). Instead, I felt offended that their pole based performance was so bad. If I'm trading in my personal values and going against my moral objections to stand in a strip club and support a friend’s desire to tick something off her bucket list, I at least want a good show. Give me fantasy over reality any day!