TACOMA, WA — It’s not the coffee that’s too hot for the Bonney Lake City Council, it’s the female baristas; or at least the ones who wear lingerie or less while they’re serving their pulse-pounding concoctions. A recent decision by the board found the businesses that employed the women in violation of – wait for it – the city’s adult entertainment ordinance. What this means for the area’s groggy morning coffee drinkers is the same amount of caffeine, but with less exposed female flesh.
“We can enforce it,” City Attorney, Jim Dionne, informed The News Tribune, after explaining that the ruling came in response to the fact that employees have worn clothing – or not – that served “to expose any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola” while on commercial property.
Dionne did not tell the press whether the exposure of the male areola also qualified a business for governmental censure or qualifies their employers to be official adult entertainment venues.
According to Dionne, although no criminal activity has been associated with the various espresso stands that have opted to feature sexily and minimally clad women, they are legally deemed to be a public nuisance and illegal.
Although the ruling will likely dismay those whose days were brightened by the sight of a smiling girl wearing a lacy teddy and handing them a steaming mocha latte, it has encouraged officials and citizens in Auburn and Lakewood who have felt compelled to shut down similar caffeination stations.
Dionne takes his suppression of the female areola in relation to coffee seriously, calling the use of bare and barely covered breasts “a deception” practiced by the espresso stand owners in order to lure customers to their establishments. As The News Tribune reports it, Dionne sees barista nudity as nothing more than nudity, and therefore devoid of any First Amendment rights.
Bonney Lake Mayor Neil Johnson agrees with Dionne and sent a letter to non-compliant espresso stand owners last week, telling them to put more clothes on their employees or prepare to face the music. Since then, Johnson says that the blight of bare flesh has since ceased to be an eyesore for his fair city.
To make sure all boobs are kept in what Dionne and others consider to be their proper place, he recommends that the city adopt an ordinance restricting general nudity, since it does not currently have one.
But all may not be lost for those women who enjoy preparing and serving coffee and other coffee shop related beverages and treats – and the customers who love to tip them.
Bikini-wearing is not a violation of the adult entertainment ordinance and wouldn’t even require so much as a warning sign to alert those offended by the sight of tiny rectangular pieces of cloth decorating a woman’s deceptive bosom.
Make mine a hazelnut latte – and Double-D-Size it – with extra cream!
