A cale of two

When my wife and I started talking to people about the fact that we were going to take a trip to San Diego, all I heard was how beautiful the city was.

"You're going to love it there," was probably one of the most common things that we heard when preparing for the trip.

Honestly, I couldn't wait for the trip. I was going to get to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and get to see all sorts of animals that I've never seen before, and get up close with a cheetah, an animal that I've always wanted to see up close. I was going to see the Pacific Ocean again, something I had only seen once in my entire life.

What was one of the first things that I saw when I left the airport? A sign for "Dirty Dan's Platinum Plus Topless Dancers." I guess when people said the city was beautiful, I should have asked for some sort of clarification as to what exactly they meant.

As I explained in an earlier story, I don't have issues with topless dance clubs, but I could not believe how many I saw (from the outside) while in the greater San Diego area.

By the time that my wife and I had gotten to the resort that we were staying at for the weekend, we had seen no less than 4 topless dance clubs and had found out, to my surprise, that Dirty Dan's Platinum Plus Topless Dancers was a chain. We saw at least 3 of these clubs before we left San Diego. Apparently Dan is doing pretty well for himself.

My theory on Mr. Dirty Dan, or Sir Dan as he is known in the British Isles, is that he was looking for a clever name for his club in the early 80's and wanted to capitalize on the fame of the hit TV show, Solid Gold. One thing he didn't want to do was to mess with Dionne Warwick, so he just decided to try out names from other various precious metals and jewels until he found one that worked with the classy sort of establishment that he was out to create.

After the focus group testing for "Dirty Dan's Silver Sluts" and "Dirty Dan's Diamond Damsels" gave him some fairly negative responses, Dan was forced to go with his third choice.

I guess I should have expected something like this when I heard about the large Naval and Marine presence in San Diego. I always wondered what "Semper Fi" meant. Apparently it translates to "Shake that ass for me."