My Dance Bag (March Bloghop)

My dance bag is a small disorganized disaster area. It used to be worse. I used to carry my ballet stuff in the same bag with my pole stuff. After "losing" my phone and keys for the 200th time I split the bags. One for pole and one for ballet. In an hour or so I'm heading off to a private lesson with Estee Zakar and my bag is ready to go. Welcome to Pandora's Box:

1. Duct tape. Doctors orders. I am not to dance barefoot on the ball of my left foot. It took three years of freezing, a chemotherapy drug and permanent scarring to get rid of a plantar wart. Besides. Duct tape fixes everything.
2. Towels. One for the pole and one for me. 
3. iPod. 180 Gig. I don't go to any dance lesson without it. If you hear that burning bags of cat poop were found at Apple headquarters it is because they finally discontinued the 180. My entire music library is on mine including some pole music playlists that go back to 2007.
4. Water bottle. I prefer Rockstar Zero carb but my doc tells me water is better for my kidneys.
5. Extra booty shorts and dance belts. I always wear a dance belt under my pole shorts. It keeps people focused on my pole work. Most of the stuff men wear for pole dance doesn't leave a lot to the imagination. When you are in your mid 50's this is NOT a good thing.
6. White Flower. Estee swears by the stuff. I'm hurting. I'm trying it.
7. Arnica. Arnica is in the same category as duct tape. Indispensable.
8. Dew Point, Dry-Hands, iTac2. I like Dry-Hands the best. But on some poles on some days the other stuff works. I like Dew Point a lot. Especially on 45 mm poles. Dew Point is also a great way to get glued to the bed sheets without all night monkey sex.
9. Contact lens solution, extra case, extra lenses, and re-wetting drops. 
10. Hand Sanitizer. We all know that EVERTHING rubs on those poles. Ballet barres are also metal Petri dishes.
11. Deodorant. Self explanatory
12. Spare hearing aid batteries. Embarrassing. I have a lot of hearing loss. Too many Deep Purple concerts and exposure to the 2.0 kilohertz sound pulses that are used extensively in meteorological research. I have an especially hard time hearing female voices. Their already soft voices make the consonants hard to hear. So if the music is loud, you are female, and I look bewildered, it is because I can't hear a word you are saying. 
13. Double sided tape. Things slip. After one inversion the drawstrings on my booty shorts are always hanging out. I also assume that some people really do not want to see my below the belly button ink.
14. One pair of Pleaser Taboo 7 1/2" Sexy Black Stripper shoes. (Don't ask. Future blog post) ;)

Pole preference. I learned on 50 mm brass Platinum Stages poles. I really liked working on brass. I visited another studio in Denver and they had 50 mm PS stainless. I spent half of my time trying to stay up on the damned thing. I learned to hate the 50 mm PS stainless. Back in December I had a chance to work on 45 mm PS stainless. No problem. I think it has more to do with the diameter than the material. I don't mind working on 45 mm PS stainless at all. I have two PS brass poles at home (45 mm and 50 mm). I like them but when I started working with Estee it was 45 mm X-Pole. I have one at home too and I'm not looking back.

I love the X-Pole. Period.

I do have to say one thing about X-Pole and Platinum Stages. Everyone seems to have a horror story about their quality control or customer service. Estee got my X-Pole for me and it was perfect out of the box. I bought two poles from PS. The first one was cut wrong and it was my fault because I forgot to click the correct ceiling length on the web page. They made it good overnight. The second was perfect from the get go.

So there is my story about commercial products and inside my dance bag. I hope I made you laugh a couple of times. I really try to avoid commercial dissing or endorsements. As they say YMMV