[Adult Entertainment]
EXpose’ SD
5520 Kearny Villa Rd, San Diego, CA 92123
Hours: noon to 2 a.m.
Phone: (858) 278-5332
Reviewed: Saturday night, Sept. 17 2022, approx. 11:15 p.m. arrival time, $25 door charge.
by Reviewer X
First of all I need to acknowledge that this club has had a complete remodel since the last time I was in it maybe 9 years ago. There’s a main room with one medium-sized stage and one pole surrounded by low swivel seats. Walking in it gives you the feel of a small theater. You enter and pay then turn to your right, twice, past the concession window, and then see the mini-amphitheater environment. The first cigar room will be on your right and the second one will be across the space to the right of the stage. Both are walled off by glass and add to the elegant high-end look of the place. Further in to the left of the stage (stage-right for all of your drama nerds) is a wall of windows through which patrons in the outside cigar patio can relax and watch the show. I got the feeling that lots of time and effort had been put into this remodel and it was a success because everything looks good and plush. The lighting is now top-end too, strong enough where the action is but dimmer where the patrons sit, and never too dark so as to ever feel like a dive. It’s a small space but looks-wise competes in quality with any strip club I’ve visited so far including in L.A., Portland, Sydney, or Las Vegas.
I saw 5 girls dance following their feature performer for the night, and each had escalating quality. It looked like I’d arrived immediately after the porn star dancer had done her set, and there was a deep moat of cash surrounding the stage being swept up by a fully clothed smiley female assistant. The fifth girl up (my favorite) was Maryjane, a skinny bleached blond with small tits who was double jointed and able to stretch her legs abnormally wide and then place both her ankles behind her head. She looked up at me from the stage floor like that, raising her eyebrows and flicking the palms of her hands up. Her eyes asked, “Pretty neat, eh?” I had to respond with an approving nod because yeah, it was a cool looking trick.
I’d come to Expose’ SD for the first time in these many years because of a girl I met on the bus earlier in the day after dropping off my truck downtown. I’ll call her C. here. This was Saturday night, the same night Bad Bunny was playing in town I think at Petco Park which is a big venue. She’d told me the Bad Bunny show would “be good for business,” and pointed at herself to indicate it meant money for her at the club. Or maybe it meant she’s the business, I don’t know. We made some small talk and I gave her my number. She texted me an hour later. So I decided to visit Expose’ SD again.
The girls seemed overall pretty mellow and didn’t aggressively ask for tips on the floor like they do in some other clubs. One girl hit me up, another white girl with bleached hair and I think part of her head shaved down, a bit like 1982 punk rocker Wendy O Williams’ style. But that was all. I’d come back in from checking out the cigar patio and hadn’t seen her set, so when I took up a spot standing by the wall away from the stage she walked by and asked if I wanted to tip her. I did but only had a five and a twenty in my wallet and didn’t want to give her that when I hadn’t even seen her set. It made me feel like a cheapskate so I split shortly afterward. I’d tipped all I was going to while at the rail with the 5 girls that danced following the porn star. The girl I came to see was busy in a high-roller private or something and couldn’t be found so I was about to leave anyway.
Oh, did I mention? They have a nice walled-in fireplace outside in the open area of the cigar lounge where you can listen to the roar of the freeway on the other side of the wall next to the club if you get claustrophobic inside on a busy night like it was.
So, the girls were solid 4 to 7’s. Not that bad but not real porno quality sports models either. Sorry Expose’. The club is fine looking but talent is I guess getting hard to find.
$25 seemed high for the door cover (standard after 9 on weekends, I think he told me) but they did give a discount card for $10 off next time. I guess you’re paying for the atmosphere because like all juice bars they have no booze and hey it’s not like sex in the back room is legal yet. I should reiterate, this club has the nicest interior of a strip joint I’ve seen in San Diego. But I haven’t tried Goldfinger’s yet.
The place was packed. I saw I think two couples sitting to the right of the stage (that’s stage-left) near the cigar lounge. Other spectators were dumping loads of bills over the rail onto the stage. There was a decent vibe, not too friendly but not MMA night aggro hostile either. I only tipped the five dancers I saw a dollar each and one even smiled and mouthed “thank you” from the stage. I was impressed, very polite and cool I thought. But after 50 minutes I was bored and left, $30 lighter, not turned on either. Doing this without a drink doesn’t work for me, never really has.
Before I split I checked the screen for C’s name among the dancers and didn’t see it. She texted me later that there were a lot of girls and she was probably way down the list. I’d asked the bouncer if she was working and he said “yes.” Maybe I should have texted her while I was inside the club, girls like to say you should, but doing so seems impulsive and desperate to me. If I’m there and our paths cross, great. If not the universe didn’t align. Besides she’d told me she gets $400 for an hour in the VIP and keeps 70%. If she’s doing that I didn’t want to interfere.
A couple more observations: before her dance the double-jointed girl was pulling some jarhead into the privates and I overheard her cheerfully say there’s two dances. “One is the $20 one-song dance where there’s no touching,” she said. Then there’s the $100 multi-song dance, “where we break all the rules.” It must not have sounded convincing to him because he wasn’t buying it and told her he’d “have to think about it” before walking away. She continued smiling and chirped, “Okay!”
The girl was perhaps the hottest there that night too.
The other thing I noticed is that if you come to Expose’ SD remember this is a Cigar Lounge and Hookah Bar. So be prepared to tolerate plenty of cigar and hookah smoke drifting in from the adjacent patio.
