How would you like it if a strip club opened close to your home?
chandler
Blue Ridge Foothills
How close? Let's say as close as possible for any commercial property. Close enough that the effect on property values, if any, would include yours.
What kind of club? Let's say a type of club you would enjoy if you went. And not ultra-discreet. A bit garish on the outside, and with the typical occasional late night ruckus in the parking lot.
If there was a dispute over its opening, would you participate?
(It would be cool if this could be discussed without detours about oil company profits, etc.)
What kind of club? Let's say a type of club you would enjoy if you went. And not ultra-discreet. A bit garish on the outside, and with the typical occasional late night ruckus in the parking lot.
If there was a dispute over its opening, would you participate?
(It would be cool if this could be discussed without detours about oil company profits, etc.)
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35 comments
Car dealerships? Keep them out of town. They contribute to air pollution! Candy factories? And the trucks that distribute candy? Require federal oversight, because they cause obesity. McDonald's? Make sure it's only ever put in a high-income high-education zip code, because only people who are sufficiently trained in the differences between good and bad cholesterol types can be trusted to decide for themselves about the risks of eating McDonald's food. If we were to allow fast food in poor, uneducated areas, we might contribute to diabetes and heart disease. Cows? Only where 'net-trolls can't try to butt-fuck them. That would contribute to the growth of new, as-yet-undiscovered communicable diseases that might mutate from bovine encephalitis and ox-borne malarial gametes.
Ancillary effects? EVERYTHING has potential negative ancillary effects. The point isn't that strip clubs do or don't create them. The point is, whether or not to hold the clubs directly responsible for them by directly curtailing the owners' opportunity to gain profit from the club.
And yes, the owners are generally scum-bags with loose ties to underworld types. Agreed. I think that most of them probably need to be strapped up in a gurney and left in their parking lot on a hot summer day ... but that's another question. :)
Also, I just don't buy the argument that just because they are ostensibly legal strip clubs are innocent, upright places of business. They are a nasty business. Dens of iniquity, to be sure. That's why I'm there. They do a lot of harm to people, strippers and customers. It's their choice, obviously, and I don't believe in denying them (us) the choice. Among other reasons, because I don't beleive it's possible to deny it. However I don't believe the neighbors should be denied the right to keep strip clubs out if that's what they choose, for whatever reason.
BTW, I didn't mean to make too much of property values. I just included that in the hypothetical to indicate proximity and something personal at stake.
wouldn't this just make for a red-light district for street whores and drug dealers. Some of the clubs here are in residentail areas. There's no prostitution near the clubs and no drug dealing going on that I know of. The proximity of the clubs to the neighborhoods does not seem to be a hinderance for home values.
So, if a club opened near my house, I wouldn't care at all.
I think we all find the "ancillary effects" reasoning very difficult to stomach, when we hear about another strip club being shut down somewhere. Inevitably the argument is that a good strip club will "cause" the neighborhood to get all sorts of negative effects -- prostitution, drug use, etc. I find that ridiculous and untrue -- most of the places where strip clubs arise, ar eplaces that already had drug dealers, and the infusion of outsiders actually reduces the drugs, for example. And anyway, if the ancillary effects were actually true, wouldn't that be more an indictment of the police force in the jurisdiction, than of the strip club, for the fact that they KNEW WHERE THE SUPPOSED SOURCE OF THE CRIME WAS, had a totally predictable pattern for it, and yet still couldn't prevent it?
So, ancillary effects of strip clubs? The argument doesnt' convince me. Ancillary effects of homosexuality? What are they? They don't exist. But ancillary effects of cigarette smoking? Proven by medical science! Therefore, LEGITIMATE TARGETS for legislators.
Not to say I like how draconian they've been in coming down on second-hand smoke, basically by hitting the panic button. But at least they have "just cause" for addressing the concerns of a certain set of citizens (those who WOULD choose NOT to inhale smoke but, previous to anti-smoking laws, had no choice but to have SOMEONE ELSE'S dirty air IMPOSED on them).
Get the theory? It's called the social contract. It's a fact. It's existed since the 1600s or so. It's being abandoned by religious fundamentalists.
So everything's cool, until a certain someone who lives in Paradise Valley decides to buy into these two clubs. You might have heard of her.. Jenna Jameson, porn star extrordinaire. She started adverting her name in association with the clubs and all hell broke loose and fire and brimstone from the city council was amazing. There's been a running battle for the past year, with the clubs being completely harrassed and under the microscope, interfering with day-to-day operation. All of a sudden there's a morality battle over clubs that have existed for I don't know how many years.
It's kind of an interesting case.. from the outside looking in because I've never been to either club.. but I can see where if it were one of my favorite clubs, I'd be PISSED. Now here's the bit that should scare everyone around these parts.. This thing is on the ballot in Sept... if it passes the girls will have to keep more clothes on, and stay 4 feet away. I wish I lived in Scottsdale so I could vote on this. It's one of those "slippery slope" situations where if they pass this thing in Scottsdale, who know which other cities in the area will start going "hmmmmm"..
The anti-smoking bills started that way (the kind where you can't even smoke in bars).. and that scares me.. and I ain't even a smoker.
And I don't really see the argument about keeping (bottled) liquor stores out of residential neighborhoods or a long way away from schools. Presumably they aren't selling to children anyway?
It's kind of like the old arguments over tobacco taxes. On the one hand the government's position implies that smoking cigarettes is bad, and they want to stamp it out, by reducing advertising, putting labels on packages, running ad campaigns of their own, etc. On the other, they're pretty damned happy to take those exorbitantly high tax dollars year after year ... If the gov't were REALLY against smoking they'd just, well, outlaw it, and do without all the revenue that it entials, too.
Most industrila part type areas are just that home to non reatail type establishments that do very little public business save a few deliveries and vendors coming and going as well as their workers and I doubt that they would be offended by them. In fact i would wager to say that the great fights that have occurred in Tampa over the years would have never happened had the Mons Venus owner moved his place off of Dale Mabry which is one of the most visible streets in Tampa and right on the way to the Football stadium over to an industrial party like thay asked him to years ago. Ybor Strip is out in a semi indsustrial area sort of east of Tampa and you never hear of any issues with that club, but 2001, Mons and a few other flaunt themselves right in front of the world.
Huge, you're missing my point. I think everyone should have the same rights. That's why slavery was so wrong, one large group of people was excluded from having the same rights as everyone else. But I'm opposed to creating special rights for special groups.
I think I'm such a bit player in the REAL situations -- I don't own property (and can't see ever affording it in my lifetime) and drive long distances to go to clubs, so my "position" isn't typical to this discussion. Or is it?
I always vote against Bible-thumpers, if that's any consolation. Others?
Furthermore, if you do have a problem with the arguments such groups advance, it seems to me the place to take your stand is in the public arena where it needs to be persuasive and, if so, it counts for something. Here, it comes off annoyingly as so much hand wringing.
Unfortunately, the main torch carriers for the cause are indeed the club owners, using whatever tactics they can to protect their investment. It kind of tempers one's desire to get involved when that means sticking your neck out on behalf of some sleazeball with a liquor license who's probably out to screw you anyway. The concept of "voting with your feet" to bolster his funds for lawyers and bribery strikes me as a pretty weak rationalization, but in most cases it might be the best we can come up with.
Sucks, but its true.
I dunno, I think if a club showed up in my neighborhood and plenty of Bible-thumpers started hollering all their doomsday crap, I'd be comfortable hollering back that they were un-American fucks for insisting that their religion be practised by me. But if the opposition were more sensible about it, basically saying "it's a den of ill-repute", "it degrades women", "it leads to other crimes", and all those other smarmy kludges that we know aren't true but still gain votes? I think I'd have to remain ... distant ... from the equation.
But patronizing the establishment is, in itself, a type of voting. You're voting with your feet, and your dollars. Working there is, as well, for the girls. And, of course, paying off the cops and paying lots of liquor taxes etc., that's a type of making their position known that the clubs themselves are constantly undergoing.
Chandler, I wouldn't participate on either side of the dispute, it isn't that important to me. And I don't think it would have any impact on my property value.
Something similar actually happened many years ago. A group wanted to buy a farm just down the road from my development and turn it into a professional theater. I was the only one in our neighborhood who refused to sign a petition to deny the necessary zoning change. The theater group ultimately purchased a farm about 3 miles away and it has become extremely successful and upscale. I would love to have it just down the street from me.
When I first moved here there was a small bar/restaurant about a mile away that sometimes had strippers on weekends. The place is still there but it's become more upscale and they stopped having strippers a long time ago. I never heard of anyone objecting when they had strippers, but the area has become much more upscale and probably would generate opposition today.
There's an abandoned gas station about 10 miles from me that a group is trying to turn into the area's only strip club. They're running into lots of opposition and I doubt if it will ever happen. I'd go to that one.