Miami - E11EVEN

Warming up in the apartment

Those who know Enrique and me, know we are very different people. Both personality wise and in terms of musical taste, there's close to zero overlap. He likes rock, I like hip-hop, ragga and soca. He likes ska, I like house. He likes underground, I like fancy stuff. This makes it very difficult for us to go party as "a couple" and actually have a memorable night. But even for this, Miami had a special surprise for us.

As a I have explained some time ago, I am huge Nicki Minaj fan. I learnt that she would perform for NYE in a club in Miami, so of course I was dying to go. Still, the problem was that we had already booked flights to spend NYE in San Juan, and the 340$ entrance fee was a bit too much - even for a talifan like me. To compensate for it, Enrique agreed to take me to the club on a separate night because if Nicki is performing, then it must be worth checking out right? We bought the tickets online and Enrique checked online reviews, indicating the place was actually a strip club.

I was in COMPLETE denial... Until we arrived there. Indeed it was one-of-a-kind, just not what I expected. Long story short, the reviews were right. E11even is open 24x7, as a club that doubles as strip-club. This was a bit shocking for me, the whole idea of having women walking in underwear around you is something new to me. But I tried to make the most of the investment and enjoy the show from some of the best pole performers EVER. The girls were able to climb a 5m high bar - which was not attached to anything else than the central platform, so it had some vibration to it. They performed fearless acrobatic tricks that typically ended with dance on the circular platform, while customers rain notes on them. Once the 2 girls on the main stage were done, a guy in suit would collect the notes into some metal bucket, a new pair comes and it keeps rolling. Not what I expected, but hey definitely an interesting part of the local culture - if you ever tried pole dancing as a sport, you will certainly appreciate the difficulty of the show much more.

In my defence, the website does not mention full body strip tease anywhere.