[Editor’s Note: For this answer, we turned to the inimitable Arnold Snyder, author of our book Topless Vegas and content manager for our website toplessvegasonline.com.]
Why would Olympic Garden, not too long ago one of Las Vegas’ premier topless clubs, give up its large venue in a prime Vegas Strip location for a smaller venue, not only off-Strip, but on a side street that has virtually no traffic?
The fact is: OG was struggling. It had lost much of its local support in the past few years and had become a club that was primarily a tourist trap. Locals found better deals on drinks and dance prices at other strip clubs.
As an example, on a recent Monday night, OG had so few customers for its Monday Night Football party that it didn’t even bother to have dollar dances at halftime — an MNF tradition for which the club has been famous for years.
OG’s Strip location is such a prime piece of property that I suspect the owners figured they could make more money selling it, leasing it, or converting it to a more thriving business. I doubt that the new business will be another strip club.
As for the new location, another strip club, Sophia’s, closed its doors permanently a few weeks before and was available. Located on Naples Avenue in a sort of no-man’s land behind the Panorama Towers off Dean Martin Drive, it’s a smaller, but a more luxurious, venue, having recently been remodeled. OG didn’t need all the space it had. Sophia’s also has seven private rooms, which OG not only didn’t have, but was forbidden to have due to its zoning regulations.
Meanwhile, OG simply couldn’t keep up with what the public wanted. The gigantic Sapphire Gentleman’s Club, right on Dean Martin Drive just south of the back of Circus Circus, had changed the strip-club landscape.
Ironically, Peter Eliades, the original owner of Olympic Garden, was initially a co-owner of Sapphire when the club opened in 2002. For the first few years of operation, Sapphire was unsuccessful, continually on the verge of bankruptcy. OG at the time was raking in the bucks.
In 2006, Eliades sold his share of Sapphire for $40 million, probably happy to get out from under the unprofitable monster club. But that’s when Sapphire made some policy and management changes that started to make the club profitable.
Then came Crazy Horse III and Hustler Club, both mega-clubs that were catering to locals, and OG just fell by the wayside.
Sophia’s less-than-prime location doesn’t make a lot of difference to OG, as most of OG’s customers were tourists who arrived by cab. OG already has its deals with cabbies going and the cabbies know where the new location is.
Whether or not the new OG, renamed Sophia’s, will thrive under the post Eliades ownership and management has yet to be seen. I visited Sophia’s on the weekend it opened and discovered the club had made one change from OG’s policy—domestic beers for locals (NV ID) were only $7, as opposed to $15 for tourists. Apparently, the club is now trying to attract locals, which it never did in its Strip location.
Here’s how to tell if a Vegas strip club is going to be successful: It’s all about the dancers. If you go into the club on a Friday or Saturday night and find a handful of second tier (older out-of-shape) dancers, the club will die. Dancers are the product, the main reason customers go to a strip club. If a club has a decent quantity of A-list dancers, it will succeed.
I stopped in on the club's second night of business at its new location and the dancer quality ran the gamut from sizzling to so-so. But that doesn't mean much. New venues often waive dancer house fees for a while to get as many dancers working as possible until they can see who the moneymakers are, how big of a dance crew they'll need to take care of their customers, etc. We'll have to check Sophia's out in a month or so and see how it's faring.
But here's the bottom line. Sophia’s is OG’s last stand. It’s a very cool venue. I’m hoping the club makes it.
