Fuel Shall Bring a Bit of Vegas to the Civic Center

The liquor license just transferred over for Fuel, a new club coming to Market Street. It's going right where Etiquette Lounge used to be, adjacent to the Renoir Hotel. The owner is club man extraordinaire Rick Haynes, one of the major players behind Redux in Walnut Creek, Tommy Lee's Crash and Vixen in San Francisco and Lolita's Cantina in Vegas, to name a few. He's currently transforming the space into a showy venue with stripper fireman poles growing from the bar to the ceiling, glass pillars and a mirror mosaic-encrusted bar and back bar.

At night, four "sexy ladies" will run a cabaret-type dance show with skits every half hour. To give an idea what that's going to look like, Enrique Lugo of Striptease and Fantasy in Vegas will do the choreography. There will be holograms too. Conveniently, Haynes also runs Digital Illusions, the company that puts images of Madonna and other fancy people on the walls inside Lolita's, so he knows what to do.

In an interesting twist, three large HD TV screens will play sports to entertain nearby federal building workers during the day and early evening hours. To that end, there will also be happy hour specials. And Haynes has struck a deal so Fuel patrons can order from the menu at nearby Little Joe's, and they'll bring it over. Cocktails, mostly served martini style, will concentrate on clear booze, mainly vodka, since it's called Fuel and all. They'll have beer too, but keep in mind, that's not the focus. We'll have some flashy pictures to show you before this one opens around the middle of June.