It seems totally fitting that the actual penthouse of the Palms is given over to the Hugh Hefner suite and, of course, Playboy Club, but that the Penthouse Club in Vegas is a single-story topless bar that sells lap dances. The reason: Playboy magazine from the start placed its racy photos in a context that was deliberately literary and classy and part of a newly imagined Playboy lifestyle. Many people could say with credibility, if not with a straight face, “I buy Playboy for the articles.” Whereas Penthouse was always a sex magazine (“Dear Penthouse, I never thought I’d be writing you ...”) that aspired to no more than the pretentious aesthetics of the photography founder Bob Guccione favored for the naked young women who became Penthouse Pets.
So, of course, that dynamic has played out in how both publications licensed their brand in Vegas. Playboy used its name to enter the gaming-resort business, whereas Penthouse went into the topless-bar business. Both seem to have made wise choices. Playboy Club has already celebrated its one-year anniversary at the Palms, and early signs are Penthouse is turning out to be a perfect brand name for a topless bar in Vegas.
You need no further proof of this than how packed the club was on a recent Friday night. I had been prepared for the place to be empty. That is because I intentionally visited the Penthouse Club with a dancer who quit Sin, the last incarnation of the property, because the location drew such little business. “I thought it would be great because it is right near the Strip. But it isn’t. It sucks. There are a cluster of strip clubs on Industrial, and that is where people know to go. If you aren’t in that area you are never going to get tourist business, and I did not want to work at a locals’ club.” She was not anticipating the name change making any difference, and she was not looking forward to this return visit. Her first comment offered while still in the parking lot: “It looks like the same Sin with a new sign that says Penthouse.”
Her opinion changed 15 minutes later, after she discovered and bought an outfit for work at the Penthouse Club’s lingerie store. “This store wasn’t at Sin.” In fact, the store wasn’t the only change she noticed, despite the similarity of the exterior; inside, she quickly confessed, the Penthouse Club was entirely different. The club has been thoroughly redesigned, with a layout that owes as much to nightclubs now as to the design of a typical topless bar. This includes, for example, many more VIP tables, and, in addition to the standard topless-bar VIP lounge, there are also special VIP rooms available with bottle service. As at a nightclub the bouncers are augmented by friendly male hosts, and, at least on Friday night, the disc jockey was daring to mix songs in a nightclub style rather than playing them straight through as is usual to measure dancers’ sets. One early promotion that is revealing: Opening weekend the club sent real Penthouse Pets to Vegas nightclubs like LAX to promote the Penthouse Club.
The result is an environment that draws a lot of tourists now into the Penthouse Club’s main room, which was standing-room-only on Friday night. The promotion also brought dancers who have a look that would fit into the Vegas club scene as well. Many of the more experienced dancers at the Penthouse Club came from the other major local topless bars. Keely, 29, a redhead from Georgia, put it this way: “I used to dance at Spearmint Rhino, but there are so many clubs around the Rhino and so many girls, and the competition is crazy. With Sin the location was perfect—near the Strip but away from the other clubs. But that made it scary. Now you can get tourists to come, and it is the Penthouse name that has brought in the tourists.”
Of course, tourists who expect a lap dance from their favorite Penthouse Pet of the Month will be disappointed. One 22-year-old blond dancer tells me she picked the club because she hopes to be discovered and make it into the magazine one day. But for now, outside of feature dancing, no Penthouse Pets are working the lap-dance beat. Club General Manager Rick Grand has a plan to change that. First, many of the girls who work at the club are attractive enough to be Pets, and he notes that while the magazine does not own the club, “We have an excellent relationship with the magazine, and we know how to get photos of our girls looked at by the magazine.” As models, Penthouse Pets may make reluctant dancers, but Grand figures that this won’t be an issue for dancers who wind up in the magazine.
All the emphasis on tourists, by the way, has not caused the Penthouse Club to slight the local market. There is a special “RU 702” lounge for locals. Membership cards to get inside the lounge are free with a Nevada ID. The card also allows free admission to the main club at all times and makes your first drink free, as well.
In all, the Penthouse Club has created a fantastic ambiance—but the visual splendor comes with some physical drawbacks. You can’t reach the “702 Stage” to tip a dancer from the “RU 702” lounge, and so the dancers on that stage frequently focus their energy on the main room. As for the main stage, all of the booths and tables on the floor surrounding it make tipping hard. Most surprisingly, stripper poles have yet to be installed on the stages. So the more ambitious dancers try to work it using a support beam that comes out through some of the stages. But the beam is really too thick for that purpose.
But these are small complaints. The Penthouse Club, though still very new, is already worthy of a position among the better topless bars in Vegas.
Longtime contributing editor Richard Abowitz wrote the Skin column for this paper years ago; he now writes it on a biweekly basis. You can reach him at [email protected].