Frank Sinatra would have appreciated the irony. For Sinatra it was always the wee small hours of the morning when bad shit happened. You'd lose your girl. You'd get drunker than a skunk and discover later in the morning when you sobered up they banned lap dancing in Tampa.
Which is exactly what the Tampa City Council did, in all of its wisdom, by a 7-0 vote. According to the St. Petersburg Times, "hundreds of people, from nude dancers to ministers", packed a Tampa Convention Center ballroom Thursday to hear the skinny about what, up until now, was Tampa's number 1 tourist attraction. Now it will have to be the Bucaneer football team.
After hearing more than 10 hours of comment from vice police, adult entertainers, church leaders and hired experts, council members around 2 a.m. unanimously approved the ordinance. The ordinance would make it illegal for an adult entertainer to work within 6 feet of a customer or other entertainer. Violators will face a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. An establishment with more than three violations in 30 days could be declared a public nuisance and shut down.
One paper described those six feet as six degrees of separation that would bring an end to the wild frontier of Tampa's adult businesses.
"The ordinance would effectively kill the lap dance, which is to Tampa what Rice-A-Roni is to San Francisco," said the St. Petersburg Times.
Tampa mayor Dick Greco came onscreen and told the crowd that the issue was not singly driven by conservative council member Bob Buckhorn. Several voices yelled back, "Bulls---!"
"What is going on in this town right now is wrong," Greco thundered, promising he would sign the ordinance five minutes after it was passed.
The expected viewing of a videotape showing sex acts in Tampa strip clubs was canceled after an attorney for a nude club, Luke Lirot, filed a lawsuit in circuit court to block the viewing.
Anticipating that to be the case, police provided graphic details of their investigations, describing for council members scenes of group sex with customers, prostitution and rape. Dancers and lawyers for the clubs countered that what police found occurs only at a few seedy clubs, body scrub and lingerie shops, and didn't reflect what goes on at their clubs.
Tampa is one of the few cities that allow nude entertainers to have contact with customers, city officials said. That has led to a competition among clubs to see which can be the worst, Greco said.
"What is going on in this town is wrong, and it will not stop until you pass this ordinance," he said. "There's just too much money in it."
Dancers argued they weren't ashamed of making money by taking off their clothes and rubbing against customers' bodies to the rhythm of a three-minute song.
"I have never prostituted myself. I have never had a sexually transmitted disease," said Tigger Finkelson, who dances at an Adamo Drive club. "Dancing is not degrading to me. What you're trying to portray me as is degrading to me."
According to newspaper accounts, Five hundred people packed the ballroom before police shut the doors. About 300 more watched a big-screen broadcast from another room. "The scene was part moralityplay and part political festival," the St. Petersburg Times wrote. Many held signs distributed by radio station 98 Rock proclaiming: "I want my lap dancing." Backers wore lime green stickers with the phrase "lap dancing" and a red slash through it.
One 71-year-old woman, Elizabeth Hernandez, called a group of dancers sinners. "I go to church every Sunday," shot back 20-year-old Heather Linville, a dancer at the Mons Venus on N Dale Mabry Highway.
"I'm saved, I know I'm going to heaven," Hernandez declared later. Council Chairman Charlie Miranda had to hammer the gavel and warn against occasional outbursts during speeches. But only one observer was ushered out.
City Attorney James Palermo told council members that he wouldn't show the undercover police videotape because the suit was filed just before the meeting. But Palermo decided to submit a copy of the tape as evidence rather than show it. Police said that just beneath the veneer of lap dancing were women willing to masturbate customers or perform other sex acts for a price.
Usually it took place in sparsely furnished VIP rooms, bedrooms or back rooms, they said. Despite their best efforts, police can't stop illicit sex at the clubs under current laws, said Lt. Jane Castor, chief of the criminal intelligence bureau.
"Sometimes it feels like we're taking one step forward and two steps back," she said. One police officer testified that after Pinellas County imposed a 3-foot buffer and otherwise cracked down in the early 1990s, the clubs became far more tame and unhappy customers headed to Tampa's clubs. said. "It's more of a free-for-all on this side of the bay," the officer said.
That atmosphere puts sexed-up men out on Tampa's streets, said Jacqui Knight who said she once was attacked and held by a man who had just left a strip club. "I do care about those women that whip up men into a sexual frenzy, then let them loose on the public," she said.
But dancers called the ordinance overkill saying that it would ruin the business that pays their mortgages, kids' tuition and doctor bills.
"We have to have contact or it will destroy our business," said Joni Hicks, day manager of the Mons Venus. "Why punish a couple thousand people. Please don't condemn the innocent."
To become law, the ordinance must be approved a second time by the council and signed by the mayor.
"This is crazy," said Carmen Roman, a 28-year-old dancer. "Men are lonely. What's the big deal?" Thomas DiFiore came to support his girlfriend, a dancer. "I think she's more exploited working for $7-an-hour for a stockbroker who's grabbing her butt anyway," said DiFiore, an architectural photographer. "Why aren't these people out helping homeless kids in the Christmas season?"
Spectators in the darkened auditorium treated the hearing like a wedding: supporters of lap dancing sat on the left, those opposed on the right.
On one side were the platform shoes and lacquered nails. The dancers nibbled on fruit cups from the snack bar and chatted and wondered aloud if they hadn't seen in the clubs some of the men who were speaking in favor of the ordinance. They leapt to their feet at the arrival of Joe Redner, owner of the Mons Venus and the undisputed king of adult clubs in Tampa. Redner who wore a charcoal double-breasted suit, reportedly pulled in roughly $20,000 in cover charges at the Mons Venus on the eve of the hearing. Rednor reportedly told his side, "We are right! We are ladies. We are gentleman. We will not react. Do you understand?"
A man sitting on the other side shook his head at Redner. "He's the largest sexual predator there is," said Joseph Grem, 43, of Brandon. "For too long, the moral majority has been silent. All up and down Adamo Drive, it's either a Walgreens, an Eckerd's or a strip joint."
David Caton, president of the Florida Family Association was also there and ministers were also out in full force. And plenty of citizens wore green badges: NO LAP DANCING.
The hearing progressed into the late afternoon and evening -- one anthropologist paid by Redner told the audience that "touch is good."
Tom and Linda Kreger, in their battered black biker leather, boots and jeans, headed for seats on the right. The Kregers said they had been on the other side once when they ran porn theaters and strip joints in Michigan. The Lord changed all that, they said.
"We used to be in the business, the flesh scene," said Kreger, 54, who now makes fur animal costumes for a Clearwater company. "We want to see these souls set free," said Mrs. Kreger, 50. "If they don't come to the Lord, they're going to die. They're already dead -- they just don't know it."
Across the hall from the hearing, computer wonks from around the country were in town for a Microsoft-related technology expo. In their logo-emblazoned denim shirts and khakis, they gathered at the doorways during their breaks to take in the spectacle. "How 'bout we put up our own sign that says "No lap tops?' " one joked.
