A question for KCQ

[jajake56]

Since you have been recently, I am curious about the construction on top of HK. Were you able to find out what it is? A 10th floor, with more rooms? Penthouse type rooms like the 9th floor?


Which makes me wonder how they can afford it having been shut down for most of a year. Yeah the speakeasys are going but can't be bringing in the income they get when open.

[KCQuestor]

I don't know what the construction is. There was a crane working on it when I was there a couple of weeks ago.

I'm sure Hong Kong is hurting as much as any other business, but their speakeasy is really jumping. If anything it's the employees who are going to be hurting, since they were all contractors. The waiters actually PAY to work there, so it's not costing Hong Kong much in salaries to be closed.

When the quarantine is finally lifted and things return to normal, I wouldn't be surprised to see Hong Kong even further out ahead. They will have had a year to renovate, and they had already made plans to expand all the way to the corner by the taco stand. They bought out a couple of the smaller hotels on Ninos Heroes, so I'm assuming the plan is to incorporate all of that into their space. They already consolidated Las Chavelas bar into their space -- it's all connected now (or was when HK was open). Lots of guys complained, because las Chavelas was a lower cost place with local music and less sharky girls. Now it's just another wing of Hong Kong.

The 7th and 8th floor rooms have all been gutted and converted to the speakeasy rooms. It will be interesting to see how (or IF) they put them back. They may decide that a speakeasy is a novelty and a convenient operation even after the quarantine. They could have a regular strip club downstairs and a more "brothel-like" setup upstairs.

One thing I'm surprised that Cascadas doesn't have is a pool like at Rizo de Oro. In their speakeasy you can buy a bucket of beers and take a girl into the swimming pool suite, and spend your time splashing in the pool with a bunch of cuties. Seemed well worth the $100 for the drinks, since it would take most girls more than an hour to drink that and you'd spend the time with them in the water. I definitely plan to try that next time.

Adelita Bar built the new "Club Coahuila" and I'm assuming the space there came from the Valentina Bar or the hotel on the alley side. If they keep that all going, they can have a pretty formidable complex as well. Not as much as Hong Kong, but substantial.

I'm not going to speculate on the origin of their funding, but the sex business often has ties to shady elements, so I'd imagine there is external money that is able to prop them up during this down time.

[jajake56]

I'm no engineer but it makes me wonder how many times they've built up on the original building. Has the original structure been reinforced to withstand the additional loading?


With a lack of building codes, like those we have here in USA, seems the building itself could become very unsafe.

[VraiSapuer]

Hey, KCQ. Can you explain the "speakeasy" thing? I'm a bit confused by that.

[KCQuestor]

I kind of mentioned it above, but I'll try to clarify.

The clubs/bars are closed down, but hotels are allowed to operate. Since each club is affiliated with a hotel (although legally separate), people moved the party to the hotel. They took an area of the hotel and moved the furniture out of the rooms and replaced it with couches and stripper poles. You go to the hotel and the halls are lined with girls from the clubs, and you bring them into a room and sit on the couches and negotiate just like you used to do in the clubs. The only difference is you are in a small room with space for 8-12 people rather than in a whole club with 300. It kind of feels like a floor party in a college dorm, where each room has a mini-party going on. There are waiters to bring food and drinks, and music playing all through the rooms. In some of the nicer hotels the rooms were former suites, so they are connected and it is more of a house party kind of a vibe.

I'm not a fan of this model, since you can't easily see all the women available -- you kind of have to pick one and hope she's good. Of course you can send her away and go pick another. But I always liked to sit in the club and just scan the crowd of available ladies before deciding on who I wanted to sit with. It's harder to do that in the speakeasies.