City Funds New Strip Club

Yes, you read that right. Last week, the City of Seattle settled a lawsuit brought against it by Bob Davis, a comedy club owner, who wanted to open a strip club but ran into the city's moronic and unconstitutional ban on allowing new strip clubs in the city. He won in federal court last year and the city is about to hand him a check for $500,000, an agreed upon amount to cover his damages. What's he doing with that loot? According to an article in today's Seattle Times, he's going to open a new strip club, likely after voters weigh in on November 7 on Referendum 1, which calls for shooting down Mayor Greg Nickels' proposed four-foot rule (and other newer restrictions on strip clubs). If the rules are shot down, then strip clubs would be allowed to operate under the city's already lame laws (no drinking booze in Emerald City clubs!). But under the federal court ruling, the city would have to allow more than the four current clubs in the city (although only two are what you might consider active clubs). But Mayor Killjoy has proposed that new clubs only be permitted in a red-light district south of Safeco Field, an idea that is meeting resistance among Georgetown residents who feel singled out and a City Council that doesn't want to piss off SoDo neighbors.

The intelligent thing to do here would be for city leaders to wake up: this isn't 1965; there is now all these Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers who like to see naked women (and men) dancing about; and, it isn't an insult to feminist precepts to let that go on. Besides, younger, hipper parts of town would gleefully welcome a strip club or two in their midst. Count on it.

Other than the bizarro world idea that the city is now funding a new strip club in order to answer for its bizarro world strip club laws, there is the deep irony that $500,000 is almost precisely the amount of money the Mayor tried to cut out of the city's 2006 budget for homeless shelter beds. Can't wait to see what the Mayor's proposed budget looks like next week, when he formally presents it to city Council.