UNITED STATES – Citizens within both Georgia and Tennessee may soon see changes in how some strip clubs in their states are regulated.Currently, dancers in Tennessee’s Metro clubs must not only remain three feet from patrons during dances but, like club owners, submit to a background check, and register with the city each year in order to keep working. Some, including councilman Adam Dread, think these are bad ideas that endanger privacy rights and potentially the lives of dancers, as well as interfere with their ability to work and the ability of the clubs they dance in to provide the kind of entertainment their customers prefer.
Defending the right of strippers to keep their names and addresses off the public books, as well as engage in lap dances as part of their livelihood, is not without its perils, but Dread believes in his mission.
“Somebody has to stand up for them,” he points out. “I think it’s a very important issue. I think a lot of people are politically terrified to go near this. It’s part of our job. It’s a public safety thing for the girls and it’s an economic argument.”
Dread, who believes that “when we are shutting down schools, the last thing we should be doing is sending someone in to inspect strip clubs,” has proposed a bill that would require club owners to pay a $100 registration fee to the Metro Beer Board, but dancers would no longer need to do so. According to the councilman, term limits allow him to be more politically courageous than he might otherwise be were he focused on long-term re-election.
Meanwhile, a May decision by Georgia’s Fulton County Superior Court Judge Marvin S. Arrington, Sr. that struck down county regulations concerning nude dancing and alcohol are being challenged by a club that has long allowed patrons to bring in their own liquid refreshment. By not providing alcohol to its customers, Maxim Cabaret has avoided dealing with alcohol licensing requirements. In spring of 2003, it began offering non-nude burlesque shows and procured a liquor license. When the format returned to all-nude entertainment, the club attempted to retain its right to serve alcohol, but was refused by the county, which insisted that the club now apply for a special zoning permit.
During the resulting court case, studies from 2001 were presented as evidence that the vast majority of crime that had taken place within a mile of a strip club did so near the five local clubs that served alcohol, as opposed to the previously bar-free but customer provided Maxim Cabaret. No comparable statistics for non-nude entertainment were provided for comparison, although Assistant County Attorney Steven E. Rosenberg insisted that were the court to uphold the Arrington decision, the exotic dance industry would “essentially have free rein in Fulton County.”
Begner pointed out that Coronet’s prior practice of allowing patrons to bring in their own bottles meant there was “probably more alcohol there, because if you can bring your own, you’ll probably drink more.”
He also faulted the study’s methodology, noting that three of the clubs are located near the same section of Fulton Industrial Highway that is notorious for prostitution and drug activity.
