Late Night Real Estate: The Only Strip Club in East Palm Springs Valley
46156 Dillon Road in Coachella, California has had a storied existence as a home to strip clubs. It was just last March that the Desert Sun ran an article titled “Selling a ‘fantasy’: Coachella couple opens the doors to their strip club” about Chicas Gentlemen’s Club in Coachella, CA. The club was opened in March 2018 by a couple, Nadya Donikian and her boyfriend Kevork “George” Aposhian.
The spot on Dillon Road, which Google Maps tells me is right outside Joshua Tree and just a little bit down the highway from the Salton Sea, has, according to the story, “a long history as a locale for strip clubs and nightclubs.” Its prior strip club incarnation was as Lynx Gentlemen’s Club, where in 2010 prior to its opening, a 150-pound goat smashed into the club’s two glass doors.
“After staring at its reflection in the doors for hours, [Lynx club owner Hank] Piecura said the goat reared up on its hind legs and smacked the glass,” the story says. “The goat hit the door repeatedly until he smashed it.”
It was deemed unusual behavior for a goat.
Lynx must have lasted somewhere around seven years before it became Chicas in 2018. Kevork “George” Aposhian, a transplant from Los Angeles to Indio, navigated the notoriously arduous Coachella City Council permit process to open the club.
“Every single city needs a sexually oriented business,” he told the Sun. “What we’re selling in this business is a fantasy. Everyone fantasizes.”
Romance and a desert will to survive seem to be both things Chicas possesses, a mirage in the middle of truck stops and casinos between I-10 and Highway 86. And in spite of the article reporting that Chicas was a cheerily run family business, it looks like sadly the club is now on the market for $895,000—or $12,750 a month in rent—due to “owner’s personal health.”
They are, according to the listing, the “only gentlemen’s club in the East Palm Springs Valley/Coachella Valley” (a very surprising fact and a testament to the city’s permit process!) and have also “fast become the local favorite hangout.”
The club’s interior looks like a scene from Grand Theft Auto—an arcade creation with eighties squiggle carpet and pink accents. It’s also pretty big, with 8,500 square feet of seating, a stage with two poles, and a full kitchen and two full bars.
After scrolling through their Instagram and seeing the smiling faces of this couple who own a strip club together—romance, true!—it makes me sad they’re having to sell it. Unless it’s for the best? Either way, if it’s survived a crazed goat and a relationship, who knows what the future holds.
Give it a go here, and the tagline “Best strippers in the desert!” (irrefutably true if simply because it is the only strip club in this particular desert) CAN be yours!
July 7, 2020
In "Late Night Real Estate"
