Stripclubs becoming Private Clubs??

The clubs at Niagara Falls have required a membership for the past couple years to get around the smoking laws. Closer to home, no membership required, but you can't sell alcohol in a nude club. So, most of the clubs are topless.

In a lot of states, like PA for example, the liquor control board will not allow nude dancing where liquor is sold. So clubs that have liquor licenses don't have nude dancing, and clubs that have nude dancing don't sell liquor. This has been true for many years; nothing new here. But what confuses the issue is that the LCB rules aren't always enforced. And in some states the rules are by town or county and not statewide, so for example you have booze and full nudity in Baltimore but no where esle in MD. Peronsonally I don't mind the no-alcohol clubs at all, they're often a lot less rowdy, which is why some owners prefer that format. Plus they're usually a lot cheaper because you don't have to spend the night buying overpriced "dancer drinks."

On another thread some time ago, I warned that local clubs would have to try to work within U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Some posters tried to tell me that I didn't know what I was talking about. Well, here we go again. Some years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a case that came out of California, no less, that it was a valid and proper exercise of the state regulatory authority to deny a liquor license to any establishment that violated local laws, morals or standards. This was not a violation of free expression because the expression, nude dancing, could take place, but the state of California could deny the establishment a liquor license for the sale of liquor to the general public. Serving liquor was ancillary to the freedom of expression. You don't have to have a drink to enjoy nude dancing. So there are a couple of ways around this: (1) a nude club with no liquor license. We've seen a lot of these crop up. BYOB clubs or soft drink only, primarily in the South, have been around for years; (2) convert to a private club and restrict entry to members only. The state cannot regulate how the club grants or denies membership. The club, ususally, has a different class of liquor license, i.e., private club. Join the club and you get in and activity in a private, members only, strip club, is not subject to the same restrictions as a club serving alcohol to the general publilc. At least that' the theory. So some club owners will convert to private liquor licenses, charge a membership and try to give the customer what he wants.

A couple of good LD places in Maryland (Wagon Wheel and Showcase Theater) have had $10 annual membership fees for years. Not sure whether it's because of local laws or not - both places are BYOB. It may just be a source of additional income for the club since a lot of people only go to clubs once. Anyway it's no big deal. I've also been to clubs (I remember one in SC) that were members only but a local hotel key got you in without a membership. Places like that are not that unusual and have been that way for a long time so I don't see any trend in that direction.

Well this place isn't even a topless club so I don't know what's up. I only had to pay a dollar more ($5.00) than what I usually do. They said it was good for a 1year membership. He mentioned something that they had got in trouble the other night because none of the customers had a membership card on them.

I know in Lincoln, NE, they had a place called BabyDolls in which you had to pay some sort of membership fee to get in. Basically, it was a way to skirt the city laws of Lincoln, which bans nudity in places which serve alcohol. The city police were always trying to nail them, and eventually they did. I don't remember all the details, but everyone I know who remembers that place remembers it for the fact some dancer got nailed for having sex with a dog onstage, offhours, of course.