Poles on the stage, blues in the night

A couple of weeks ago, The Very Bad Boys took to the road and wound up in Byron, CA, which is somewhere and/or nowhere out in the Delta. Our destination: The Wild Idol. It's a bar that caters to bikers out on a Delta cruise, and the surprising large number of locals who seem to frequent the place. 

On the inside, it's a typical bar catering to folks with pickups and Harleys -- wood paneled interior with a pool table, formica tables for groups and a fairly large and well-stocked bar. The stage is memorable because it's large, but mostly because it has: The Pole. Yep. There's a large brass pole right in the middle of the stage. And believe me, it gets used. Even on the quiet after-Thanksgiving Sunday that the Bad Boys played, this pole got itself quite a workout. 

My familiarity with poles in general, and places with poles, are strictly limited to the Bada Bing from the Sopranos. I've never been to a strip club, never intend to visit a strip club, would not enjoy myself if I did, and would immediately want a shower afterward. There is a lot of substance and reality to the phrase "objectification of women." While I enjoy a beautiful naked body as much as anyone, having a woman writhe around in simulated arousal for the entertainment of a room full of boozed up, leering jackoffs just doesn't get it for me. But don't get me wrong -- that's not the Wild Idol's pole. The Idol is no strip club, not at all. The Idol puts the pole on the stage for women who want to pretend, in drunken moments of uninhibited fantasy, that they are strippers who can win the eyeballs of all the guys in the room. That notion doesn't drive me wild, either, but it's not quite so perverted as the strip club pole. 

While we were there, a young woman came in and started in on the pole. She was pretty, thin, and amazingly agile. She twirled a couple of times and then shimmied right up to the top of the pole, where she hung by her thighs for a couple of seconds, then shimmied right back down and gyrated for the next couple of sets like that. It was a, um, unique experience for me. Especially for a Sunday afternoon. She was dressed like the other customers, and never did anything particularly sexual (well, until the end, when she sort of pulled her jeans down for her boyfriend's benefit), but the whole pole thing was, well, just strange.