XX CLOSED RG1 2LG Sugar Lounge, Reading

[zante]

ClaudiaAtlantis wrote: (About another bar in Reading)

The owners divorced but the woman has opened up the Sugar Lounge next to Cafe Du Sport. It looks like a strip club whereas Honey Pot was a strip pub. It looks quite nice but I haven't had the chance to go in yet.

[zante]

61 St. Marys Butts, Reading, RG1 2LG - 0118 958 4839

Website

From the newspaper archives:

10/8/2006 Business in Reading
Bid for 'classy' lapdancing club
Businessman Michael Norris wants to do his bit for Reading’s city status bid – by opening a new lapdancing club.

Adults-only venue Sugar Lounge hopes to run above the Café du Sport in St Mary’s Butts, subject to council licensing chiefs granting an adult entertainment licence.

If the club gets the green light, up to 100 punters will be able to enjoy the sight of a dozen scantily clad ladies gyrating around a pole seven days a week.

Entrance will cost £5, with a £10 fee for a topless private dance, or £20 for fully nude.

Mr Norris launched the joint venture with Café du Sport after his previous business, the Honeypot in Friar Street, stopped trading five weeks ago when the freehold for the site changed hands.

The partnership will see the sports bar’s upstairs function room, Gravity, refurbished with a pole and private booths and bohemian-style décor.

Mr Norris told the Evening Post: “With the way the town is developing towards city status, it needs a classier venue – Sugar Lounge fits the bill.”

Sugar Lounge will be aimed at the smart/casual market, and while Mr Norris said he hopes to attract the fans and players from Premiership clubs when they come to Reading, football shirts will be banned.

He also said he would consider running ladies-only nights with male dancers.

If all goes to plan Sugar Lounge will open on Friday, September 1. It has applied to stay open until 2.30am. The club will run for 12 months before Mr Norris and the Café du Sport consider their options.

Bill Donne, from Silver Fox Licensing Consultants, submitted the adult entertainment application to Reading Borough Council on Thursday, July 31.

People living nearby have until Monday, August 28, to lodge their comments with the council’s licensing team.

Mr Donne said he did not anticipate any problems with the application, adding: “The exotic dancing is remarkably tasteful. It’s not pornographic – it’s just a bit of fun.”

First printed in: Reading Evening Post

[Moonraker]

The website link above now works. For some time there was only a homepage with the briefest details, now there's a new photo gallery. Can't say the girls look quite my type - too much pouting and posing as if they're auditioning for "Gladiators". I would have liked more gen about prices, PDs and house rules.

[Victor23]

Several dancers have told me that they work, or have worked, here and none made any negative comments. One said that it opens mid or late afternoon a couple of days a week, but when I tried to access the website (above), I got a very firm warning from Chrome that it hosted Malware. A Google led to this

old newspaper report

Why do the girls have to wear stripper shoes? I can just about tolerate inch-thick soles, but anything more looks cumbersome (and as for those with lights in the heels ...)

Vic

[TS_Jabroni]

Anyone been here recently? Cruising past later this week and might pop in.

[Victor23]

review

another one

[TS_Jabroni]

Cheers Victor - quite mixed! Was hoping that one of the more regular and educated visitors to this site might have a view.

[Victor23]

Apparently closed. The website link above no longer works. That leaves just the Lodge, underneath the railway in Abattoir Road. Very close to the station and safe to walk to from the town centre (though you wouldn't have very long there before the last train home).

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

No recent updates on their Twitter feed either. I'm marking this as '??' until I have further information...

[Victor23]

Tripadvisor

also says that it's closed.

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

That's a listing for a restaurant in Finsbury Park!

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

Following a little Googling, other articles confirm that Sugar Lounge is indeed closed now.

[Victor23]

Brute: your Googling is better than mine - obviously so from my error, but also because I could find no other references to the Sugar Lounge being closed, apart from the one to which I linked when posting about the application for a third (or second, as now seems to be the case) lap-dancing club in the town.

With stripping at two Reading pubs having lasted only a few weeks, the locality is sadly lacking in this sort of entertainment. Only burlesque at Oxford now, the WHHW and several venues some way east along the M4 corridor, stripping at the Swan in Arborfield is only once a week, I think.

The Tease Agency now only supplies dancers to two full-time venues, the Flags and Junction 9.

[TS_Jabroni]

Honeypot at Maidenhead used to be my favourite, but now that "The Man" is all over it I'm not interested anymore!

[Victor23]

Why it closed