Posted on 08/19/2002 9:57:24 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
LAS VEGAS -- Here in Sin City, a modern Gomorrah built on the notion that there's a little bit of naughtiness in all of us, erotic dancing is hardly excessive in a town that takes $10,000 blackjack wagers.
One type in particular, the lap dance, in which scantily clad women bump and grind on male customers in a sexually suggestive way, has been for years a staple in the ''gentlemen's clubs'' that prosper away from the glare of the Strip's mega-resorts and casinos.
Erotic entertainment is so much a part of the landscape that even people outside the industry were scratching their heads earlier this month after Clark County commissioners approved strict regulations on lap dancing. The rules would apply only to parts of the county and the Strip that are outside Las Vegas city limits.
Lawyers for some clubs threatened First Amendment lawsuits. Dancers, estimated at 5,000 or more, vowed to organize, register to vote and seek revenge at the polls. Newspaper editorials lambasted commissioners for wasting time on a trivial matter.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former lawyer for the mob who never misses a chance to tweak his rivals in the county, joined in, too. ''If the commissioners want to put all of their adult cabarets on rollers, all they have to do is push them in my direction,'' the mayor says.
Commissioners considered banning any contact between dancers and customers but opted for less-stringent rules.
The rules that brought a snicker across this desert valley prohibit clubs that serve alcohol from employing anyone under 21, prohibit contact between a female dancer's breasts and any part of a customer's body and ban the practice of customers putting bills in dancers' G-strings. It also allows grinding against a customer's leg, but no contact with a customer's feet.
Two commissioners who voted for the law have had second thoughts, and it could be revised or repealed at the panel's meeting Tuesday. But some experts say the county is on solid legal ground.
Courts have ruled that, unlike topless or nude dancing, which has some protection under the First Amendment's free-speech clause, a lap dance with contact between dancer and patron is considered conduct, not expression.
''The argument is that this is not simply the communication of an idea, that it comes closer to an act, the sale of sexual services,'' says Jesse Choper, a constitutional law professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Andrea Hackett, a dancer at Deja vu Showgirls, is organizing the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance. ''You would just about need a manual to do a lap dance out here,'' she says. ''First you have to decide if you're in the city or the county. Then you need an anatomy book because apparently we need to stay away from customers' feet. It's pure madness.''
Dancers also say the law would unfairly deny dancers under 21 their jobs in topless clubs that serve alcohol and drive them to clubs featuring nude dancing because, by law, those establishments can't serve alcohol.
A lap dance in a club's public area costs $20, up to five times more in a ''private VIP room,'' although a bouncer is present. A dancer can gross $200 to $1,000 a night.
Club owners and dancers say there's little evidence to support charges that erotic dancing promotes prostitution. Solicitation is grounds for firing a dancer. A club risks losing its liquor license. Surveillance cameras and bouncers monitor customers and dancers.
Las Vegas won't follow the county's crackdown but might license dancers and collect fees, Goodman says. ''We are the adult entertainment capital of the world, and we'll do everything we can to promote anything that is legal.''
Actually the reason for this is technology. The X-Rated movie theaters started closing up with the advent of the VCR.
So much for Clowntoon's next European tour.
Natural death ? Most likely...
1. X-rated movie theaters all over the country died because of video. Whacking off to a video in your living room was better than going to a filthy theater in the bad part of tow.
2. Blonde Midwest girls could make more money elsewhere.
I guess Dick Morris won't be going back to Vegas either.
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