AN ODE TO LUSTY ADVENTURES IN AKRON

So this story takes place about eight years ago. I had a co-worker who needed a ride to Akron for a doctor’s appointment, and I decided to be a nice acquaintance and help.

For context, Akron is about a 40-minute drive from where I’m from. I parked the car, and we went inside. I explained to the receptionist that I was the driver and that I would just hang out in the waiting room. I was informed that it would probably be about a two- to three-hour wait, so I told my buddy that I was going to head out and find something to do, and to text me when he was ready for me to come get him.

So, what is there to do on a Thursday afternoon in Akron? I guess drink some beer.

I started driving around, pulled into a parking lot, opened Google, and typed in “places for beer around me.” A place caught my eye: a dive bar with bikini dancers called Lusty Adventures.

As a single male during this stage of my life, why not?

So I rolled in, and it was about what you would expect for a day-shift strip club in Akron. They don’t call it the skank shift for nothing.

I know a lot of guys try to pass off going to the strip club as going to the “gentleman’s club,” like they are having tea with the Duke of Wellington at Tavern on the Green, but I’m going to be blunt: even using the term “strip club” was a stretch for this place.

I rolled in, ordered my beer, which was surprisingly very cold, and tried not to make eye contact with the skeezers moonlighting as exotic dancers. The one thing that caught my eye was the genius business model the owner of this club had.

The music was provided by a TouchTunes jukebox, which the strippers fed dollars into to keep the music going. They needed music to make money, and then they would take that money and feed it right back into the jukebox, like the endless cycle of “what’s yours is now mine.” This guy must have been a fucking regular George Pullman, running this place like it was a company town.

For some reason, my mind wandered back to that day at Lusty Adventures, and I decided to do a quick Google search to see if it was still open. It is not. The fire department finally shut it down after multiple fires that came from the upstairs apartments. That’s what happens when you hire crackheads and let them live upstairs.

I don’t know if the name Lusty Adventures fit the place, but it sure was an adventure.