The Pony

Cape Girardeau, Missouri, colloquially known as “Cape”, was populated for probably more than 12,000 years. But not surprisingly, it is named after a French trader who set up shop a measly 289 years ago. 

Cape is a college town that sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. Historic, downtown Cape Girardeau is lined with quaint restaurants, antique shops, and popular bars. Downtown Cape is undoubtedly the ‘it’ spot in an area void of ‘it’ spots. It actually is quite cute and about the only fun, hipster thing we have so our embracing it looks a lot like clinging on by our fingernails. 

The only problem is if you’re looking for a night out on the town, you better get started early because last call is at 1:30am. 

The Pony, well aware that young ‘uns wanna keep the party going, send their vans to cruise downtown and pick up their booze-addled prey. (cue Jaws music)

What’s “The Pony”? 

It’s a strip club. 

On the other side of the Mississippi River, about 5 minutes across the bridge in Southern Illinois, there is a speck of a town called “East Cape” (creativity coming out of their ears over there). Back when I was a party-craved college pupil, East Cape had a whopping population of about 400 people. There was a church, a restaurant with a cheap Tiki theme, a ‘Trading Post Flea Market’, a wetland field station, and not one but TWO strip clubs. One of those strip clubs was “The Pony”. 

Fun fact: The great state of Illinois does not have a set bar closing time. Boy howdy. Now you see where I’m going with this. The great entrepreneurial minds at The Pony sensed our predicament from across the river and what does any great business person do? They kindly provide a solution.

At about 12:30am on Fridays and Saturdays, the Pony vans start making the rounds, picking up everyone that wants to keep drinking, ferrying them across the river like some kind of modern-day Oregon Trail on the sauce. Why this need couldn’t have been met with just a regular ol’ bar, I’ll never fully understand. But those great minds in East Cape said, “If you want the brews, you get the boobs.” It had to have been an economic-stimulus-creation-of-jobs thing, right? I imagine a strip club employs more people than a bar. What’s the bar to strip club employment ratio? 

I don’t know if The Pony still provides this service because I’m no longer a college student networking with classmates and colleagues over a drink (by that I mean straight-up partying). But let me paint a picture of my early 20’s: Imagine you worked your restaurant job until 10pm, got home and showered, and showed up at the bar around 11:30am. You’re on your 3rd beer and the bartender is already screaming “last call for alcohol!” You know you have the spirit of 2 more beers in ya. You get out on the sidewalk with your friends, time to talk next moves. Jesse’s apartment is in the middle of nowhere. Megan’s roommate has to work early. Hannah still lives in the dorm. You don’t want people at your place because you don’t want to wait on everyone to get the hell out so you can go to bed. Nobody is having a party that you know of, at least no one you like.  

And then the Pony van pulls up. The clouds lift, light from heaven shines down to spotlight the van, and you can hear a harp. 

Did I mention this sinful shuttle not only putt putts your butt across the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge at no cost, but it will also take you home at the end of the night TO YOUR FRONT DOOR FOR FREE?!?!

These Warren Buffets in East Cape might be shitty at naming stuff, but let’s get these guys and gals on a national economic development plan. Their great ideas got a lot of beer money out of me, that’s for sure. 

So, the interesting thing that happened was the strip club lost some of its skeeziness and became a semi-natural after-party hang-out. “Y’all going to The Pony tonight?” became a common question that elicited zero odd looks. You could expect to run into your Sunday school teacher there. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. But a cousin, for sure. But I’m related to everyone from the area, though, so that’s another bad example… You could run into your college advisor, maybe… or a coworker, or that guy that always waits on you at the pizza place.

And you all just shrug it off, no embarrassment necessary because it is what it is. It’s basically the same as the bars across the river that you just came from, except here some chick you knew in the third grade is topless on stage and twerking to Lil Wayne.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes things still got weird. That is to be expected with bottomless booze, a sunrise curfew, and partial nudity. But it was only weird when it got weird. Going there and getting a few drinks wasn’t weird in and of itself.

It became so normalized that I didn’t realize it wasn’t part of the country-wide college experience right up there with homecoming, Spanish 101, and keg stands. It took moving and making friends with people that didn’t frequent strip clubs in their youth for me to realize that the Pony experience was just a cute little Cape Girardeau thing. Lucky us. I wonder what people think of me when my stories start with, “One time at the strip club…”. I try to cover it up with, “You see, in the midwest, everybody is just welcome everywhere. The strip club isn’t reserved for bachelor parties, drug dealers, and motorcycle assassins like in the movies.” And their response is usually, “Um, we are also from the midwest and no.”

I wonder how The Pony fared during the pandemic. Do you think the strippers just put on masks and everything else was business as usual? Masks and g-strings, what a world. Lap dance tips must have taken a huge hit if they had to maintain a six-foot distance. 

I have no idea if the Pony is still up and running, and if they are whether the business model has evolved. If you really wanted to find out, you could just stick around downtown until last call on a Friday night.