Dolphin Tavern   

While most strip clubs have become the home of environmentally safe house music and girls in glimmering smiles, South Philly's Dolphin remains true to its rock 'n' roll roots, offering the finest of low-life decor (is the leopard skin still there?), musics (heavy metal, Rolling Stones) and un-physically enhanced dancers. Enter the Dolphin's tattered, baby-blue front with its mud-flap silhouette of a squatting babe atop the door. The tavern, low-ceilinged and lit from behind the bar, has a speakeasy feel, the promise of something dangerous this way coming. As the walls swell with loud, punky, metallic sounds -- anything from Guns N' Roses, Black Sabbath, the Ramones -- and the bar smells of Budweiser and Rolling Rock beer, girls pop forth in their wine-skin bottle hats and little more. With the Dolphin just blocks from the Spectrum and First Union Center, it makes a great stop after that Springsteen show. Plus lots of rock chicks like to frequent the place to check in on/break up with their bass-playing boyfriends. A good, old-timey, sleazy rock 'n' rolling affair. - - a.d. amorosi