On Friday night I thought I was just going out for a drink or two with a friend. So we went to North Beach and ran into some other people I know. And a drink or two turned into, well, a bit more. Not to mention getting home around 2.

Drinks turned into dinner, dinner turned into the Lusty Lady, and the Lusty Lady turned into taking a tour of Coppola’s Zoetrope Production Studios and infamous Flatiron building, you know the one on Columbus that’s green and kind of triangular. It’s one of my favorite buildings in the city and one I’ve always wanted to take a tour of. Well, I got to. I also got to see the private bar and screening room down below.

And yeah, it was so more exciting than the Lusty Lady, which is what I’m sure most people are going "wait, what was that again?"

Wasn’t my idea.

I’ve been there a few times, back when I was younger and maybe a few years later when we discovered a co-worker was working occasional nights there. What I remember is basically you go into this booth, a screen comes up, and just like in Madonna’s "Open Your Heart to Me" somebody dances in the center while everyone watches from a booth. The main advantage of the Lusty Lady is unlike all the other places in North Beach, there’s no cover charge. In fact, just a minutes worth of "entertainment" is only $2.

Usually, when the screen comes up, you get to look at a couple of naked women maybe dancing but mainly looking completely bored trying to pretend to look sexy. I swear that one time I went, it looked like someone was doing homework. But this time the screen comes up and there’s a woman completely in front of me shimmying. And when I say completely in front of me, I mean completely in front of me.

She does a couple of moves and looks down at me and realizes that between my trying to do as much as possible to keep as little of my body from touching any part of the booth of possible and my discomfort in the whole, shall we say nearness of the whole thing, I didn’t look like I was enjoying myself. Plus there’s the fact that I’m not quite into the Suicide Girls look and my dancer was completely into the Suicide Girl thing and so I was probably spending too much time looking at the much cuter non-Suicide Girl behind her. So she leans down and starts talking to me, telling me that I should try to enjoy myself more. And not in a nice way, either, more like kind of a bitchy, "I just showed you parts of me only my doctor really sees, the least you can do is try to look slightly happy to be here" tone of voice.

Let’s just say the moment the screen went down, I got out of their as fast I could. It’s one thing to see way too much of someone’s anatomy, a whole other thing when they try to engage you in conversation, but a whole other thing when they start giving you attitude for not being impressed.