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Thursday, August 01, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal County OKs lap dance rules New restrictions less stringent than initial proposal By J.M. KALIL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Citizens offered numerous reasons Wednesday why Clark County commissioners should butt out of the bump-and-grind business. During an at-times raucous meeting, speakers said strip clubs are not the dens of prostitution described by police, and they reminded commissioners that this is Sin City, after all, not Disneyland. But several speakers made a more personal plea, saying lap dancing puts food on their table and restricting it would jeopardize their livelihood. "How will I eat? How will I support my children?" stripper Brianna Wildman asked commissioners through tears. In the end, commissioners voted 5-1 to adopt lap dance rules that were far less stringent than those introduced two weeks ago. That initial proposal would have taken the bump and grind out of the dances by prohibiting a dancer's groin from ever touching a customer's body. The rules commissioners passed Wednesday were drafted by county officials who incorporated the concerns of attorneys for the affected strip clubs. These rules allow dancers to grind against a customer's leg, but bar more intimate contact. "The industry has worked with me not in creating a deal, but a compromise," said Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who proposed the ordinance. A cluster of strip club attorneys had come to the commission meeting prepared to argue that the proposed ordinance would put their clients out of business. They changed their minds after reading the new draft. "When they started out saying you've got to be 6 feet from the customer, and you end up with the girl being able to grind against his leg, you've come a long way," said attorney Peter Christiansen, who represents Jaguars, the $15 million strip club that recently opened on West Desert Inn Road. Christiansen and several other strip club attorneys said the ordinance passed Wednesday will force only minor changes in their clients' day-to-day operations. "We can live with it," said John Moran Jr., who represents The Library Gentlemen's Club on Boulder Highway and Strip Tease on Valley View Boulevard. Several attorneys said the only provision with a substantial impact is the prohibition against anyone under 21 working at a strip club that serves alcohol. Currently, the minimum age is 18. Dancers who are 18 to 20 years old now have three choices: change their profession, work at one of the all-nude juice bars or get a job at an alcohol-serving topless club in the city of Las Vegas. "The only real effect of what they've done is forced the youngest dancers to go totally nude to make a living," said one strip club attorney who spoke on condition of anonymity. Several commissioners said this was not their intent. But Atkinson Gates said she was not sympathetic to the dancers' plight. "They can get another job. They can do something else for a living," she said. "I don't buy that argument." Atkinson Gates said she introduced the legislation because she believed some of the acts commonly performed in strip clubs "are downright wrong, downright prostitution." Others were less impressed. "You're confusing sex with titillation," Dr. Jeff Arenswald told Atkinson Gates. "You have some repressed sexual ideas." The comment prompted Atkinson Gates to grab a gavel and yell, "I said shut up!" across the commission's chambers. She later apologized for the outburst. Commissioner Erin Kenny did not attend the meeting, at which Chairman Dario Herrera cast the sole vote in opposition to the new rules. Herrera said restricting what is allowed in county strip clubs could give a competitive advantage to strip clubs located inside the Las Vegas city limits, where the county rules would not apply. Lap dances previously were illegal in unincorporated Clark County, though the prohibition was not enforced because a district judge struck down the rules as too vague. Police officers testifying in support of the ordinance said enforcement would be aided by specifying what is and what is not permissible. They predicted this will quell secondary problems with drugs and prostitution in the clubs. In support of the ordinance, police and county officials showed commissioners 10 minutes of explicit video footage, some of it recorded by undercover officers, showing strippers performing in clubs. The nudity-packed footage was visible only to commissioners via private monitors and the more than 100 meeting attendees who filed into a nearby conference room to watch it behind closed doors. The tape showed dancers grinding their buttocks against customers, simulating oral sex, romping on a bed in a club's VIP room and dancing on a stage. "It's been an interesting and educational meeting," Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey said with a smile before casting her vote.
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