A friend from Austin was in town over the weekend and we went to Mary's so she could have a great Portland strip club experience. It was Saturday and the club was full, but we found a few seats and settled in with our stacks of bills to enjoy the lovely Satori, Viva, and Poison. Before she came to town, I'd emailed her articles about and by the Mary's dancers, telling her, "I love this club; the dancers have stacks of press clips."

I haven't hung out in a club where I work for a long, long time; not since 2000, probably. It's kind of appalling, some of the stuff you hear when you're not working. And hilarious. There were some broke, drunk rockers behind us who kept imitating Borat, talking about how the dancers needed to take off their clothes faster, and gloating over the fact that "We paid two dollars (the cover charge that's only applied on weekends) to see the naked bitches!" They weren't tipping, by the way. At all.

And then there were the guys sitting at the bar when I went to get change, staring at Satori with rapt attention. "She moves her boobs," one said. "Yeah. That's cool." responded his friend. It is pretty cool. She can move them a whole, whole lot just by flexing.

Oh, we also saw a fight, the only one I've ever seen there. Not sure what happened but it seemed like it took a really, really long time to break it up. Viva had just ascended the stage steps and quickly backed down them before coming back up when it was clear they were heading towards the door. We're troupers, you know?