Mayor objects to lap-dancing rules

Diana Sahagun

Friday, Aug. 2, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

If the strippers make a run for the Las Vegas border, Mayor Oscar Goodman will welcome them with open arms.

He won't, though, sit for a lap dance.

Goodman on Thursday said he hoped the Clark County Commission's decision to restrict lap dances would mean more business for strip clubs within the city limits, where the rules would not apply.

He said there is no way, while he is mayor, that a similar ordinance limiting the amount of touching during lap dances would be adopted by the city of Las Vegas.

"We're an adult community, an adult playland," Goodman said. "Let's not pretend to be something we're not. I think anything that's legal should be here."

After viewing racy surveillance video by Metro Police of county clubs, the commissioners voted to restrict the amount of touching allowed by dancers and forbid women younger than 21 from dancing at county clubs serving alcohol.

The new law would affect about 20 strip clubs in the county.

While county clubs may have been the subject of illicit activity, Goodman said, there are no such problems in city clubs.

"There's no prostitution taking place (at the city clubs) according to" Metro Police, Goodman said. "And if there was, they should arrest them, not make some big fuss as to what some 18-year-old girl is doing to make living."

After hearing Goodman's criticism, Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who sponsored the county bill, said: "We are separate entities and he's entitled to his opinion."

The city is considering an ordinance that would require dancers to obtain a business license at the cost of $100. The license would include a background check on the dancers, but the ordinance wouldn't change the way dancers do their jobs.

Goodman said he wished that the new Jaguar's club on Desert Inn Road was on wheels so the owners could "roll it into the city. "

The club's attorney, Peter Christiansen, said the club is just a stone's throw from the city, with Desert Inn as the boundary between the city and county.

"I thought it was funny the mayor said roll it into the city," Christiansen said. "It's dang near possible if it were on wheels, because we would only have had to move it 100 yards."

Christiansen said it's a certainty that dancers from the ages of 18 to 20 who work at county clubs will defect to city clubs. About 30 percent of Jaguar's dangers are younger than 21, he estimated.

But he said he doubted that the county's restrictions on intimate touching during lap dances will drive patrons to the city.

Goodman -- who has said that he has never had a lap dance -- said that in trying to make it a "family destination," officials are stripping Las Vegas of its uniqueness.

"People have to know when they come here they're able to have freedom, and get as close to the line (as they can) without crossing it," Goodman said. "If they cross it then it's against the law and we'll do something about it."