What's the difference between a sushi bar and a strip club?
shadowcat
Atlanta suburb
Richland County officials have closed, at least temporarily, what County Council member Seth Rose described as an “illegal strip club” and bar named Pandora that he said was licensed to open as a sushi bar.
Pandora’s was operating on Bush River Road next to Interstate 26, several miles west of downtown Columbia.
Rose told The State newspaper he asked county zoning officials to inspect the business after getting numerous complaints about night noise from neighbors who live in residential communities adjoining the site.
“A county investigation also found that they were not only operating as a bar but also as an illegal strip club,” Rose said. “But when they applied for a business license, they said they were only going to be a sushi restaurant.”
That investigation involved a county inspector visiting the club to check on the allegations, Rose said.
Rose said Pandora’s application for a business license asserted the business was opening up a sushi restaurant.
On Facebook, a page for a business listing that address advertises itself as Pandora’s Bar and Lounge. It features numerous photos of scantily clad women, some in suggestive poses.
Pandora club operators could not be reached for comment. No one answered a reporter’s knock on the club door late Thursday afternoon.
A hand-lettered sign on the door said in part, “Closed tonight due to plumbing. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
The State obtained a copy of the order Rose said county officials posted on Pandora’s door earlier in this week. The sign said, “Do not remove this notice.”
No such sign was visible Thursday afternoon.
The Richland County “Stop Work” sign gave Pandora’s address and said the Planning Department had determined that “the activities at this location are in violation of the provisions of the Richland County Land Development Code” – specifically, that the bar is located within 600 feet of a place of worship.
The sign said if Pandora operators want to continuing using the property, they must contact the county.
“If they were just a bar, they would be a violation. But they took it a step further and became a strip club,” Rose said.
Rose, who attended a recent neighborhood meeting, said neighbors were concerned about noise coming from the club in late hours.
“It’s not just noise – it’s gunfire, too,” Rose said, referring to an early morning July 15 incident when gunfire erupted outside Pandora’s, causing patrons and employees to flee outside. A vehicle in the club’s parking lot was struck by a stray bullet and the windshield was damaged, the sheriff’s department said.
A Richland County sheriff's spokesman said Thursday night the department continues to investigate the shooting. While no arrests have so far been made, investigators determined the shooting was gang-related. Other similar violent incidents have taken place at the club, the spokesman said.
Two years ago, Rose helped lead a successful drive to close a strip club called Heartbreakers on a property adjoining Pandora’s. The closing of that club was a “major win for the community” because such clubs can lower property values, Rose said.
Rose said no one had any inkling another strip club would open after Heartbreakers closed.
“This one seemed to pop up secretly, and I am not going to tolerate this in District 5,” Rose said. That district stretches from downtown Columbia and includes the neighborhoods of Shandon and Rosewood out to this section of Bush River Road.
Fines for illegally located bars and strip clubs can run up to $1,000 a day, Rose said.
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9 comments
Not a lot. What they both serve smells the same.
Some people have been skeptical about the SJ and Gilroy underground circuit which did table dancing in Mexican bars, referred to as "Bikini Shows".
It is what people do when there are not enough, or loose enough, strip clubs.
It is real simple, someone appoints themselves talent agent and goes to the bar owner and comes up with dancers. Sometimes the talent agent is a dancer.
Sometimes these shows have also gone on in Vietnamese Coffee Shops. In one such occasion I got involved in showing the owner how to set it up, and then going to both Mexican Bars and the Sunnyvale Brass Rail to recruit dancers.
As these things are unadvertised, they are usually getting away with more than the regular clubs can. And they do attract a harder core and more OTC oriented type of dancer.
But eventually they get shut down.
At some of these bars, after the Bikini Show has been closed, they will have a "contest". It amounts to almost the same thing, one girl dancing at a time and getting tips, and actually doing who knows what. But very easily the other girls can get drafted into the action.
At Copa Cabana ( now closed ) one girl really wanted to win the contest. People were laughing because she took off all of her clothes. "She must have wanted to win real bad!"
But they knew that the bar could get in trouble over that. She was the cocktail waitress at another Mexican Bar, and I knew her from this. She was real friendly. She would get guys to buy her a drink, and do this with about 5 guys at a time, shuttling between one table and another.
If you wanted to feed her more money, who knows what might happen. Also, if you wanted OTC, or if you wanted a civilian date, I think she'd just do whatever you wanted.
No rules is better. And most of all, no Deja Vu style clip joints with the booths and backrooms, and no touching rules in the main room.
SJG
https://sites.google.com/site/sjgportal/
Bad Company, Wembley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4eacLvm…
I'm not understanding you shadowcat, this is what the Mexican Bars were doing, though only during some hours of the week.
Whether or not it is completely illegal depends on whether or not you need a license to operate a strip club. I would say no, as bars can have entertainment. But the city tries to say Adult Entertainment requires a special license. But then there was just the issue that they were going beyond local ordinances and what is allowed under the alcohol licensing rules.
In Viet Coffee shops, it is more frightening to the city, because having no alcohol license, it is harder for the authorities to shut it down. They know that lap dancing got going in San Francisco because the city lost a few court cases.
I mean the basic idea is that you just ad strippers to an already existing business.
There was also King of Clubs in Mountain View. Not Mexican, but doing a tamer version of the same thing.
And then George's Rockin' Robin had been such too. Easier to open a bar than a strip club.
The claim that you need a special Adult Entertainment license rests on the shakiest of constitutional grounds.
One of the Viet Coffee Shops announced a Bikini Show. But she was doing it on Friday Night, hiring a live DJ, and also paying the one dancer $200.
I explained to the owner why that was all the wrong way to do it. You do it on the slowest night, like Sunday or Monday. The "Bikini Show" will fill the house. In a 2 hour show, the house will turn over about 3 times. Guys will spend their money quickly because the aggressive girls suck it out of them. Then they leave and someone else takes their seat. So do it on the slowest night.
Also, no need to pay the girl. She will make lots of money. This one she had gotten was lame via a party service, was lame.
Then, no need to have a DJ, totally irrelevant. Just make a party tape with no gaps between the songs.
So I went to existing Mexican Bar Bikini Shows to recruit dancers, and to the Brass Rail to talk to one I., a Bikini Show veteran, and a Latina.
SJG