Springfield Republican: "Ware selectmen OK written refusal to deny permit to Robbie's Place for nude dancing"
Posted by NPNAdmin at 12/27/2008 10:39 AM 
Categories: Ordinances and Regulations,Strip Clubs,First Amendment,Secondary Effects
Categories: Ordinances and Regulations,Strip Clubs,First Amendment,Secondary Effects
Today's Springfield Republican reports:
See also:
Springfield Republican: "Nude dancing faces decision" (11/27/08)
During the hearing, some of the bar's neighbors said their quality of life and property values have declined because of the pub's presence. Residents of Pulaski Street and Webb Court have alleged that Robbie's Place is responsible for excessive noise, parking problems, public urination, and other troubles.
Springfield Republican: "Bar that is suing Ware selectmen, seeks permit to allow nude dancing" (11/1/08)
US Appeals Court Upholds Daytona Zoning and Public Nudity Ordinances; No Grandfathering for Lollipop's Gentlemen's Club; Rebutting Daniel Linz (emphasis added)
...It has been by now clearly established that reducing the secondary effects associated with adult businesses is a substantial government interest “that must be accorded high respect.” City of L.A. v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425, 444 (2002) (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (quotation marks omitted);[20] see also Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. at 296 (plurality opinion) (“[C]ombating the harmful secondary effects associated with nude dancing [is] undeniably important.”); Ctr. for Fair Pub. Policy v. Maricopa County, 336 F.3d 1153, 1166 (9th Cir. 2003) (“It is beyond peradventure at this point in the development of the doctrine that a state’s interest in curbing the secondary effects associated with adult entertainment establishments is substantial.”)
...Here, the City of Daytona Beach plainly carried its initial burden to show that the three challenged nudity ordinances furthered its interest in reducing the negative secondary effects associated with adult theaters. The City has produced a substantial body of evidence that it reasonably believed to be relevant to combating those problems. Ordinance 81-334 prohibits nudity and sexual conduct in establishments that serve alcohol. As the Ordinance itself says, the City’s rationale was to reduce the negative secondary effects associated with adult theaters:
...Langston testified that live nude and seminude entertainment businesses “promote and perpetuate urban decay” and that “adult businesses have impacted on crime in the area surrounding Daytona Beach.” Id. at 547. Smith, who as an assistant state attorney had prosecuted drug and prostitution offenses in Daytona Beach, concurred that “there were more drug and prostitution offenses in topless bars than in other bars.” Id. at 548.
The City also relied on several controlled studies conducted by Dr. William George about the relationship between drinking alcohol and sexual conduct. Thus, for example, one study found that exposure to erotica led male subjects to drink more alcohol than did exposure to non-erotic materials.[27] Another study found that young men who believed they had consumed alcohol -- regardless of whether they had in fact done so -- displayed greater interest in viewing violent and/or erotic images and reported increased sexual arousal than young men who believed they had not consumed alcohol.[28] Still another study found that study participants perceived a woman they believed had consumed alcohol as being “significantly more aggressive, impaired, sexually available, and as significantly more likely to engage in foreplay and intercourse” than a woman whom study participants believed had not consumed alcohol.[29]
...the First Amendment does not prevent a city from limiting the venues where dancers may communicate their erotic message...
Crime, Nuisances Motivate Cities to Regulate the Location of Adult Entertainment Uses
...The City of Kent, Washington had similar experiences with the Roadside Inn Tavern. Prior to its forced closing, the Roadside Inn offered topless dancing and table dancing in conjunction with its selling of alcoholic beverages. Kent police investigations conducted in the summer of 1981 revealed a very high incidence of criminal activity at the Roadside, related primarily to sex crimes (prostitution) and drug related offenses. As a result of 57 hours of on-premise investigation, 162 charges were brought against 21 persons by the Kent Police Department. The report filed by the police stated: "The total time involved, and the number of charges, break down to a time expenditure of slightly more than 20 minutes per charge, attesting to the relative ease by which the subject of prostitution arises within an environment such as the Roadside." In September, 1981, the Roadside Inn Tavern was closed by the City of Kent.
Seattle, WA, 1989 (PDF)
Seattle had eight such dance halls (termed "adult cabarets"), six established since 1987...
The increased number of cabarets resulted in citizen complaints, including phone calls, letters (from individuals and merchant associations) and several petitions with hundreds of signatures. Protests cited decreased property values; increased insurance rates; fears of burglary, vandalism, rape, assaults, drugs and prostitution; and overall neighborhood deterioration. The report noted that patrons of these cabarets most often are not residents of nearby neighborhoods. Without community identity, behavior is less inhibited. Increased police calls to a business, sirens and traffic hazards from police and emergency vehicles are not conducive to healthy business and residential environments.
Report to the Rome City Commission--Adult Entertainment, Police Department, City of Rome, Georgia, (March 6, 1995) (PDF)
This report includes crime data from the city of La Grange, Georgia... Located in that small suburb of Atlanta, is a three-year-old “adult nightclub.” In just one year (1994) that single adult-oriented nightclub generated 141 calls-for-service, with thirty-five of those calls being criminal in nature. Those crimes included such violent crimes as: eight criminal batteries and eight aggravated assaults (knives, baseball bats, and firearms with shots fired). The report also includes many of the other municipal studies articulated elsewhere in this digest.
Activist Strategies: Indiana Feminists Block "Girls Gone Wild"; Berlin Resident Fights Strip Club Liquor License with Remonstrance Petition
...Berlin, CT newspaper The Berlin Citizen on January 25 named resident Kurt Kemmling their "Citizen of the Year" for his fight to stop the Infra Red Café, a topless bar, from getting back their liquor license.
Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK
...club owners tend to absolve themselves of any responsibility if sexual services are found to be on occurring or being arranged on the premises, yet at the same time there is some indication that they encourage the dancers to project an air of sexual availability to customers. By making it difficult for the dancers to earn an adequate living legitimately, through requiring the payment of ‘rent’ for each shift worked in the clubs, and by hiring excess numbers of dancers at any one time, club owners and managers also create a series of structural conditions that can lead some dancers to offer sexual services in order to survive financially. This is not to say that there is evidence of significant numbers of dancers engaging in prostitution activities, but that the clubs are run in a way that both implicitly encourages the customers to seek sexual services from the dancers, and means that some dancers will offer them...
Strip Clubs: Dancers Pay to Work There
...the girls who work there, the dancers...pay $150 to $200 a shift for the privilege of working... I asked one guy in the business, "What's the biggest risk to your business model?" He said if the government stops immigration from Eastern Europe.
Valley Advocate Website Announces 2008's "Best" Adult Entertainment Club; Holsopple's Inside Report on Stripping (explicit language)
...The women in this study condemn the men associated with stripping and the impact stripping has on them as the worst parts of stripping. Women do not like the way customers treat them (Thompson and Harred 1992). Furthermore they say they do not like talking to customers, asking men for money, and resent having to have to deal with them at all. They find customers irritating because they are drunk and have negative attitudes towards women. Women characterize customers as scum, psycho mama’s boys, rapists and child molesters, old perverted men, idiots, ass-holes, and pigs. Strippers are largely disgusted by customers and describe them as pitiful and pathetic, stupid and ignorant, sick, controlling and abusive.
MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"
Carolyn McKenzie: Undercover with the Viewing Booths; Disease, Intoxicants Prevalent Among Strip Dancers (explicit language)
I've had wives call me and say, "I'm reading the credit card bill, and there's all these strange expenses on it, places I've never heard of." Well, those places are the cover organizations for the clubs, or the massage parlors, or lingerie services that their husbands have been frequenting. The next question I get is, "Well do you think I need to get a physical check-up?" And I say, "Yes, you do." I can't tell you how many of them call me back and say they have turned up positive for an STD. I also want to tell you about these 39 women that we have helped to get out of the industry. Out of that number of 39 women, only 6% were married. 90% were single moms trying to support their kids... 75% of them had STD's when we took them in for their medical check-ups. 16% had felony records that they were working with and 25% had misdemeanors. 95% of them were using drugs and alcohol, and three of them had addictions so severe that we had to put them in long term rehab programs.
"Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor."
I cannot tell you the lie and the fantasy that [strip clubs are] for men. Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor...
The Truth About Lap Dancing: A Performer Speaks Out
The key fact is that everyone knows they can make more money by breaking the rules. In a culture where you are literally selling yourself for cash, and you are working on commission, then you’d have to work very hard indeed to stop people going for extra money if they know they can make it...
Getting drunk was considered by many to be the aim of the night as well as making money. If you had managed to get drunk on other people’s money then you had done well...
Strip Club Tips: How to Savor an Exquisite Blend of Fantasies, Lies, Exploitation and Despair (explicit language)
For a stripper's perspective, we present a selection from 37 Stripper Rants, as posted in March to gripe site Ofuzi...
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction (explicit language)
[Performers in the sex industry] have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called cunt and whore and to be followed home or stalked...
A Review of Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers
Ware selectmen OK written refusal to deny permit to Robbie's Place for nude dancing
The selectmen have approved a document defining their board's opposition to a downtown bar's request for a 2009 entertainment permit including nude dancing...
The document says granting the permit "would adversely affect the public health, safety or order." It stated the requested entertainment cannot be held in a way that would protect employees, patrons and the public from disruptive conduct, criminal activity, or health, safety or fire hazards...
The document notes that the bar's neighborhood is densely populated and includes multifamily homes where elderly people and children live. It also cites complaints about the bar lodged by neighbors at the public hearing.
See also:
Springfield Republican: "Nude dancing faces decision" (11/27/08)
During the hearing, some of the bar's neighbors said their quality of life and property values have declined because of the pub's presence. Residents of Pulaski Street and Webb Court have alleged that Robbie's Place is responsible for excessive noise, parking problems, public urination, and other troubles.
Springfield Republican: "Bar that is suing Ware selectmen, seeks permit to allow nude dancing" (11/1/08)
US Appeals Court Upholds Daytona Zoning and Public Nudity Ordinances; No Grandfathering for Lollipop's Gentlemen's Club; Rebutting Daniel Linz (emphasis added)
...It has been by now clearly established that reducing the secondary effects associated with adult businesses is a substantial government interest “that must be accorded high respect.” City of L.A. v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425, 444 (2002) (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (quotation marks omitted);[20] see also Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. at 296 (plurality opinion) (“[C]ombating the harmful secondary effects associated with nude dancing [is] undeniably important.”); Ctr. for Fair Pub. Policy v. Maricopa County, 336 F.3d 1153, 1166 (9th Cir. 2003) (“It is beyond peradventure at this point in the development of the doctrine that a state’s interest in curbing the secondary effects associated with adult entertainment establishments is substantial.”)
...Here, the City of Daytona Beach plainly carried its initial burden to show that the three challenged nudity ordinances furthered its interest in reducing the negative secondary effects associated with adult theaters. The City has produced a substantial body of evidence that it reasonably believed to be relevant to combating those problems. Ordinance 81-334 prohibits nudity and sexual conduct in establishments that serve alcohol. As the Ordinance itself says, the City’s rationale was to reduce the negative secondary effects associated with adult theaters:
It is hereby found that the acts prohibited in [this ordinance] encourage the conduct of prostitution, attempted rape, rape, murder, and assaults on police officers in and around establishments dealing in alcoholic beverages, that actual and simulated nudity and sexual conduct and the depiction thereof coupled with alcohol in public places begets undesirable behavior, that sexual, lewd, lascivious, and salacious conduct among patrons and employees within establishments dealing in alcoholic beverages results in violation of law and dangers to the health, safety and welfare of the public . . . .Ordinance 81-334 § 2. To support this rationale, Ordinance 81-334 cites two Supreme Court decisions, New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca, 452 U.S. 714 (1981) (per curiam), and California v. LaRue, 409 U.S. 109 (1972), both of which upheld prohibitions on nude dancing in establishments that serve alcohol. See Bellanca, 452 U.S. at 718 (upholding statute where the legislature had found that “[c]ommon sense indicates that any form of nudity coupled with alcohol in a public place begets undesirable behavior”); LaRue, 409 U.S. at 118-19 (“The . . . conclusion . . . that certain sexual performances and the dispensation of liquor by the drink ought not to occur at premises that have licenses was not an irrational one.”)
...Langston testified that live nude and seminude entertainment businesses “promote and perpetuate urban decay” and that “adult businesses have impacted on crime in the area surrounding Daytona Beach.” Id. at 547. Smith, who as an assistant state attorney had prosecuted drug and prostitution offenses in Daytona Beach, concurred that “there were more drug and prostitution offenses in topless bars than in other bars.” Id. at 548.
The City also relied on several controlled studies conducted by Dr. William George about the relationship between drinking alcohol and sexual conduct. Thus, for example, one study found that exposure to erotica led male subjects to drink more alcohol than did exposure to non-erotic materials.[27] Another study found that young men who believed they had consumed alcohol -- regardless of whether they had in fact done so -- displayed greater interest in viewing violent and/or erotic images and reported increased sexual arousal than young men who believed they had not consumed alcohol.[28] Still another study found that study participants perceived a woman they believed had consumed alcohol as being “significantly more aggressive, impaired, sexually available, and as significantly more likely to engage in foreplay and intercourse” than a woman whom study participants believed had not consumed alcohol.[29]
...the First Amendment does not prevent a city from limiting the venues where dancers may communicate their erotic message...
Crime, Nuisances Motivate Cities to Regulate the Location of Adult Entertainment Uses
...The City of Kent, Washington had similar experiences with the Roadside Inn Tavern. Prior to its forced closing, the Roadside Inn offered topless dancing and table dancing in conjunction with its selling of alcoholic beverages. Kent police investigations conducted in the summer of 1981 revealed a very high incidence of criminal activity at the Roadside, related primarily to sex crimes (prostitution) and drug related offenses. As a result of 57 hours of on-premise investigation, 162 charges were brought against 21 persons by the Kent Police Department. The report filed by the police stated: "The total time involved, and the number of charges, break down to a time expenditure of slightly more than 20 minutes per charge, attesting to the relative ease by which the subject of prostitution arises within an environment such as the Roadside." In September, 1981, the Roadside Inn Tavern was closed by the City of Kent.
Seattle, WA, 1989 (PDF)
Seattle had eight such dance halls (termed "adult cabarets"), six established since 1987...
The increased number of cabarets resulted in citizen complaints, including phone calls, letters (from individuals and merchant associations) and several petitions with hundreds of signatures. Protests cited decreased property values; increased insurance rates; fears of burglary, vandalism, rape, assaults, drugs and prostitution; and overall neighborhood deterioration. The report noted that patrons of these cabarets most often are not residents of nearby neighborhoods. Without community identity, behavior is less inhibited. Increased police calls to a business, sirens and traffic hazards from police and emergency vehicles are not conducive to healthy business and residential environments.
Report to the Rome City Commission--Adult Entertainment, Police Department, City of Rome, Georgia, (March 6, 1995) (PDF)
This report includes crime data from the city of La Grange, Georgia... Located in that small suburb of Atlanta, is a three-year-old “adult nightclub.” In just one year (1994) that single adult-oriented nightclub generated 141 calls-for-service, with thirty-five of those calls being criminal in nature. Those crimes included such violent crimes as: eight criminal batteries and eight aggravated assaults (knives, baseball bats, and firearms with shots fired). The report also includes many of the other municipal studies articulated elsewhere in this digest.
Activist Strategies: Indiana Feminists Block "Girls Gone Wild"; Berlin Resident Fights Strip Club Liquor License with Remonstrance Petition
...Berlin, CT newspaper The Berlin Citizen on January 25 named resident Kurt Kemmling their "Citizen of the Year" for his fight to stop the Infra Red Café, a topless bar, from getting back their liquor license.
The Infra Red Café on New Britain Avenue featured topless dancers and had been the site of numerous incidents of criminal activity, such as underage dancers, fights that included weapons, noise problems and numerous infractions of a lesser nature.Former Stripper Tells Easthampton Hearing about the Life: It Stinks
Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK
...club owners tend to absolve themselves of any responsibility if sexual services are found to be on occurring or being arranged on the premises, yet at the same time there is some indication that they encourage the dancers to project an air of sexual availability to customers. By making it difficult for the dancers to earn an adequate living legitimately, through requiring the payment of ‘rent’ for each shift worked in the clubs, and by hiring excess numbers of dancers at any one time, club owners and managers also create a series of structural conditions that can lead some dancers to offer sexual services in order to survive financially. This is not to say that there is evidence of significant numbers of dancers engaging in prostitution activities, but that the clubs are run in a way that both implicitly encourages the customers to seek sexual services from the dancers, and means that some dancers will offer them...
Strip Clubs: Dancers Pay to Work There
...the girls who work there, the dancers...pay $150 to $200 a shift for the privilege of working... I asked one guy in the business, "What's the biggest risk to your business model?" He said if the government stops immigration from Eastern Europe.
Valley Advocate Website Announces 2008's "Best" Adult Entertainment Club; Holsopple's Inside Report on Stripping (explicit language)
...The women in this study condemn the men associated with stripping and the impact stripping has on them as the worst parts of stripping. Women do not like the way customers treat them (Thompson and Harred 1992). Furthermore they say they do not like talking to customers, asking men for money, and resent having to have to deal with them at all. They find customers irritating because they are drunk and have negative attitudes towards women. Women characterize customers as scum, psycho mama’s boys, rapists and child molesters, old perverted men, idiots, ass-holes, and pigs. Strippers are largely disgusted by customers and describe them as pitiful and pathetic, stupid and ignorant, sick, controlling and abusive.
MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"
Carolyn McKenzie: Undercover with the Viewing Booths; Disease, Intoxicants Prevalent Among Strip Dancers (explicit language)
I've had wives call me and say, "I'm reading the credit card bill, and there's all these strange expenses on it, places I've never heard of." Well, those places are the cover organizations for the clubs, or the massage parlors, or lingerie services that their husbands have been frequenting. The next question I get is, "Well do you think I need to get a physical check-up?" And I say, "Yes, you do." I can't tell you how many of them call me back and say they have turned up positive for an STD. I also want to tell you about these 39 women that we have helped to get out of the industry. Out of that number of 39 women, only 6% were married. 90% were single moms trying to support their kids... 75% of them had STD's when we took them in for their medical check-ups. 16% had felony records that they were working with and 25% had misdemeanors. 95% of them were using drugs and alcohol, and three of them had addictions so severe that we had to put them in long term rehab programs.
"Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor."
I cannot tell you the lie and the fantasy that [strip clubs are] for men. Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor...
The Truth About Lap Dancing: A Performer Speaks Out
The key fact is that everyone knows they can make more money by breaking the rules. In a culture where you are literally selling yourself for cash, and you are working on commission, then you’d have to work very hard indeed to stop people going for extra money if they know they can make it...
Getting drunk was considered by many to be the aim of the night as well as making money. If you had managed to get drunk on other people’s money then you had done well...
Strip Club Tips: How to Savor an Exquisite Blend of Fantasies, Lies, Exploitation and Despair (explicit language)
For a stripper's perspective, we present a selection from 37 Stripper Rants, as posted in March to gripe site Ofuzi...
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction (explicit language)
[Performers in the sex industry] have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called cunt and whore and to be followed home or stalked...
A Review of Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers
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