Mr. Sphincter Goes to the Nudie Bar
A Nashville strip club has its license yanked after a stripper offers to 'yank' an undercover cop
by P.J. Tobia
Say you're the type of guy who likes to have your lap grinded by a young woman wearing little more than a bikini and hair extensions. Say you like it enough to pay a modest fee for the experience, even tipping Candi a little extra for the service. But say you live in Nashville.
You, sir, are out of luck.
That's because strip joints here must abide by the Sexually Oriented Businesses (SOB) code—a 14,000-word abyss that, among other things, prohibits contact between dancers and patrons while the dancers are, um, working.
It's all led to a rather artificial version of the gentleman's club experience. Take, for example, something called the "hover dance," wherein the stripper stands no closer than three feet from the consenting patron and shakes her stuff while he sits there not drinking—because strip clubs in Nashville don't sell booze.
Fortunately, for those who like a little less "hover" and a lot more flesh, Ken's Gold Club was—until recently—the perfect respite.
According to citations filed by SOB investigators, dancers at Ken's were performing lap dances that involved ass-on-groin grinding, genital exposure and simulated masturbation. Because of these sexy acts, the SOB board voted unanimously to yank the club's license, the first time the board has done so since the ordinance passed in the late '90s.
The investigation began with an anonymous tip, says SOB investigator Christine Gruen.
Gruen contacted Metro vice detective Joe Ladnier, who brought wires, cameras and a confidential informant to the multi-month probe.
On Jan. 29, Kimberly "Lacy" White approached Ladnier and his informant and asked if they wanted to buy some cocaine. "Then she asked me if I could go get $50 worth of cocaine," Ladnier tells the Scene.
In an affidavit, he writes that White promised to "take me to the upstairs lap dance area of the club and in exchange for the cocaine, she would perform a manual act of masturbation with her hands on me."
The cops didn't record the conversation because, according to Ladnier, "We didn't go in there for the purpose of obtaining information about any prostitution activity.... It was actually a narcotics investigation."
Instead, the detective says that White sat down next to him and just started talking about drugs. As a result, White was arrested for prostitution. A Ken's employee who spoke on condition of anonymity says that White was fired and that most of the others at the club are glad she's gone.
But most of the violations against Ken's fall into the pretty standard stripper-stuff category. One dancer, identified in investigation documents as "Hunter," "licked and sucked her breasts while onstage" and inserted "her fingers inside her vagina." The strippers also seemed to enjoy flashing their privates Ladnier's way. On at least two occasions, Ken's employees "moved [their] panties to the side and exposed [their] genitalia."
And then there were the lap dances. During these private episodes, strippers grinded Ladnier's crotch with their genitals, exposed their breasts, accepted tips by pressing their breasts together to take money from his hand and said all kinds of nasty things to the detective.
There were also violations of the so-called "three-foot rule," which precludes a stripper from coming within three feet of a client when she is "performing." Hence, all stages must be at least 18 inches off the ground, with a surrounding three-foot barrier.
This, of course, makes tipping hard. But according to SOB investigators, Ken's customers aren't the kind of people who abide by arcane civil codes.
"Three times a customer leaned over the three-foot boundary marked around the stage and left a tip on the stage," reads one SOB violation. "The customer's body and hand were well within the three-foot boundary."
Ken's was not the only strip joint under investigation. Detective Ladnier says his team visited every strip club in Davidson County, "just to be fair," but found no violations elsewhere.
Ladnier also encountered a Ken's stripper in an unrelated sting operation.
He says Tracy "Nicole" Fizer agreed to perform "oral and straight" sex on him for $500 in a Motel 6 off I-24 in Antioch.
Initially, investigators Gruen and Ladnier leveled 28 violations against Ken's and its dancers. In a marathon five-hour-plus meeting of the SOB two weeks ago, the board threw out 14 citations. The remaining charges will most likely be appealed in Chancery Court.
"It is complicated," says attorney Doug Sloan, who works for the Metro legal department and acts as a consultant to the SOB board. "When you're regulating what has been determined by the courts as First Amendment activity, you have to be very specific in what the laws limit and what they permit."
In the meantime, Ken's will stay open pending appeal.
Comments (5)
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THe SOB commitee, rightly named. another southern religious government "control" method.Anything to impose their oppressive views on the rest of us. I dont even go to strip clubs, and i still dont care what they do, because they do it where i cant see it...nothing wrong with that.
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What a waste of taxpayers $$! In a depressed economy where supply & demand still rules, this will just elevate the demand for "private party" arrangements outside of the clubs where strippers safety concerns will be a concern. Whatever FASCIST-minded THEOCRATS passed such garbage of an ordinance ought to be moved out of our country to Iran, maybe then they would appreciate that we in theory still live a free? and pluralistic society with many different & UNIQUE moral and religious beliefs. The perceived negative "secondary effects" theories of strip clubs is JUST a GUISE used by the religious right to further their FASCIST-THEOCRATIC agenda in THEIR ideas of what a Utopian world should be. SAD
What an absolute fucking waste of time? Countless other crimes going on but yet this "crime" receives how much police and court time, not to mention tax payer dollars.
Once again, the over-zealous right-wing Nashville church folks is trying to destroy another great club. First of all, if it wasn't for Chris Ferrell who was on the Metro Council when he created this ordience, we would not be wasting more of the taxpayers money. Second, the so-called law brought because of the murder of some girls who worked at a massage parlor on Church Street. To "avenge" these families, Ferrell along with then law director Karl Dean made this stupid law and on the downside has forced alot of dancers and feature adult entertainers to skip Nashville all together. The result is no one wants to go to the strip clubs. No one goes, no tax revenue for the city. Bottom line no one puts "a gun to your head" forces you to go to a strip club nor forces you dance there. Until Metro stops this sort of "small miniority" government for only people who do not, and I repeat do not go to strip clubs. Metro police needs quit wasting taxpayers going to strip clubs and wasting time on the dime and fight "real" crime in this city like the gang problem that continues to plaque our city.
