Club dancers’ reputations also on trial in corruption case

Thursday, April 27, 2006 | 7:12 a.m.

The corruption trial of two Clark County commissioners under way in federal court has politicians fretting. Testimony about one of them getting free lap dances and sexual favors as bribes is hurting public perceptions of elected officials.

Maybe so. But the dancers are none too happy either.

"Julia," who asked to be identified by her stage name, said she danced at Jaguars when it was still owned by the government's star witness, Michael Galardi. She said she never saw any county commissioners, let alone danced in their laps.

But if someone asked her to dance for a politician today?

"I would think twice about it," Julia said.

From what she's read, she believes Galardi was buying politicians. But it's the talk of "special treatment" by dancers that worries her.

"It gives dancers a bad reputation because whatever they're saying, it implies that when a politician came in that they'd get whatever they wanted," Julia said. "It makes people think that maybe all dancers are like that and that they could get something from them."

Certainly these days, few politicians would be caught dead popping into Cheetahs, one of Galardi's former clubs, for a quick drink on the house or an especially intimate lap dance.

Before Galardi's arrest, guilty plea and testimony, the club was best known as the setting for 1995's gyration epic "Showgirls." It's also where Galardi claims to have bribed county commissioners with cash and sexual favors from club employees.

Most owners of nude and topless clubs don't like to talk about the scandal, preferring instead to ask a reporter to leave the club. But some who will talk say it has given people the wrong idea about their business.

"It's not good, no question about it, no question about it," said Pete Eliades, owner of the Olympic Garden topless club, which has not been implicated in the corruption trial. "I can tell you the dancers feel the same way I do. It gives the town a black eye."

Eliades said that under the advice of his attorney, he wouldn't comment in depth about the corruption cases. "It's an easy way to make enemies, talking about it," he said.

The scandal's stain has even spread beyond topless clubs, said Ray Pistol, owner of Talk of the Town, a nude club.

"Automatically you get the smear effect, just like the bad county commissioners bleed over to the ones not on trial," Pistol said. "No one's said anything - most of the people I talk to know me - but with the general public, people out there, that's where you get the problem."

Talk of the Town, like Olympic Garden, is in Las Vegas city limits, which puts it out of the jurisdiction of the Clark County Commission. Galardi says he paid for special treatment of his clubs.

Pistol said he doesn't have that chance in the city, where he said mob-lawyer-turned-Mayor Oscar Goodman is so incorruptible that the mayor turned away Pistol's cash contribution at a fundraiser. It's a wistful Pistol who talks about a city government he calls clean.

"If a politician can be bought, I'd buy him or her," Pistol said. "In a heartbeat - cut through the red tape."

Not all dancers think their reputations can get much worse. One woman working patrons in Cheetahs last week, "Cheryl," said she'd been dancing there for three months, and the club's management had been cracking down on "extras."

That wouldn't help dancers' reputations, she said.

"Everyone thinks we're whores anyway, everybody who comes out - all the tourists - they all think we're whores," Cheryl said.

"Some guy gives you money to go home, and you say, 'OK, sure baby.' And then he's out in the parking lot alone, looking around."

She laughs.

"Yeah, we all got bad reputations."