Columnist Jeff German: Saving Las Vegas from dirty dancing

Friday, July 19, 2002 | 3:56 a.m.

IS IT TIME to call out the Lap Dance Squad?

If Clark County passes an ordinance later this month barring strippers and patrons from touching private parts during lap dance routines at topless clubs around town, it sure will be.

Metro Police can expect no shortage of volunteers for this duty.

The job may not be high risk, but it should be challenging. It will require 20-20 eyesight and the consumption of lots of Vitamin A.

Let's imagine for a moment that you're an officer assigned to the Lap Dance Squad. You stroll into a local topless joint late at night, citation book in hand, looking for violators.

As you peer around the club, you focus on possible suspects among the dozens of close encounters with dancers occurring around you.

You ask yourself:

"Is that poor guy in the tank top with the beer belly hanging out of his shorts touching or not touching Dominique's private parts?

"Was contact made when Candy shook her size 42's, adjusted for implants, in that cowboy's face?

"Was the stud in the gray business suit just reaching for a $20 bill in his pants while Tiffany rubbed her hindquarters on his chest?"

Suddenly, you realize that the job of spotting violators is pretty subjective and not as easy as you thought.

Eventually you fill up your citation book and go home knowing that you have saved Las Vegas from another night of dirty dancing.

But you wonder whether anyone cares.

This is Sin City, after all, where you can have sex in your hotel room just by calling up one of hundreds of outcall services listed in the Yellow Pages.

County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who's pushing the lap dancing ordinance, says she's not out to regulate morality. She just wants to lay down guidelines to help police stop the spread of prostitution on the topless nightclub circuit.

If there's a concern about prostitution, it hasn't necessarily filtered back to the public. You don't hear residents screaming for the heads of politicians because lap dancing is out of control.

It's just not on the same radar screen as getting doctors back to work to save lives.

What Gates may be on target with, however, is a companion anti-sex ordinance that hasn't attracted as much publicity. That ordinance is designed to prevent the Strip from turning into a giant gentlemen's club.

The casino industry knows that tourists like being surrounded with sexual images from the minute they lay down their first dollar at a blackjack table.

So in recent years it has given the tourists what they want -- cocktail waitresses in skimpier outfits, more risque topless reviews and high-tech nightclubs offering dance contests that simulate sex acts.

All of this, casino executives say, has been designed to keep gamblers at the resorts during evening hours rather than at a growing list of high-class adult nightclubs off the Strip.

The problem, according to County Business License Director Ardel Jorgenson, is that the casinos keep "pushing the envelope" to the point where they're almost doing the same things as the topless clubs, even though they aren't zoned for that kind of activity.

"We don't want the lines to blur," Jorgenson says. "We're trying to make things very clear."

The new Strip ordinance won't force the hotels to change much of the way they conduct business now. It still allows topless reviews in casino showrooms. But it prohibits the hotels from staging events in their nightclubs that encourage patrons to go topless. Special events, such as annual fetish and fantasy balls, also will be restricted under the ordinance.

Other provisions, like banning topless entertainers at casinos from accepting tips, also are included in the new proposal. So are the restrictions on lap dancing.

Jorgenson says those provisions are aimed at preventing adult nightclub operators from gaining a foothold on the Strip. Rumors have been circulating within the casino industry for months that some operators are eyeing deals with the resorts.

So far the industry doesn't seem too upset about the proposed changes.

But industry leaders are watching it closely and likely will have something to say on the subject when the County Commission takes up the two anti-sex ordinances on July 31.

"This town revolves around adult entertainment," says George Togliatti, vice president of government and community relations at Harrah's Entertainment. "We have to be careful about crossing the line in how we regulate this kind of behavior."

Tell that to the Lap Dance Squad, George.