The Morality Police at their best

San Antonio Strippers to Wear Permits


SAN ANTONIO - The City Council on Friday approved an ordinance requiring strippers to wear their permits while they are on stage.

City Councilman Chip Haass pushed the measure, adopted unanimously by the 11-member council, as a way to make it easier for police to identify dancers.

But Jim Deegear, a lawyer for several strip clubs in the city, said it would put strippers in danger by making it easier for an obsessed customer to find out a dancer's real name and where she lives.

He said the measure is part of an effort to drive strip clubs out of business, and he said he will fight it in court.

So my questions are: Where exactly are they supposed to WEAR the permit and WHO exactly will be responsible at city hall when some dangerous asshat tracks one of these ladies (or men as applicable) and meets them at home and seriously injures or kills them?


Good job San Antonio /*sarcasm

Well, it's only polite if they put a $20 in a dancer's G-string, the policeman thanks her by name.

Solution: Duct tape it to their bodies someplace. (With the duct tape covering their real name and address, of course. )

Here's an idea. Amend the ordinance, as to require all city employees who enter into a strip club must display thier employee badge at all times, in plain sight for others to see.

Both are good ideas, but my favorite is requiring city employees to wear their badges into the clubs. Might just trim the hipocracy of the whole thing.

But I doubt it.

Most of the states who already have this ordinance make the girls wear it on their ankle. Having worked in several clubs in several states, I would prefer that the license be carried in my purse or in my locker. Whenever the authorities come in to the clubs they usually call all of the girls to the dressing room anyway, so why would they need to wear them? The police/ALE/sherrif can check it while they search the lockers and bags for drugs.

We need our identity protected from the jag offs who get pissed that their 2000.00 in champagne and vip dances does not buy them the right to a peice of ass. Posting a dancers real name is never safe, if it were we wouldn't have stage names.

Frankly I see the requirement for a license to be a form of harassment. First - it creates a public record that someone works in a strip club. This in of it's self is unsafe if the public record can easily be accessed over the internet as many city records now can.

I would like to know - exactly what heavy equipment does an exotic dancer operate that requires a special license? Is the waitress who works in the strip club also required to purchase a license? Is the bouncer? Are the valets (they are the only ones that probably should have a license)?

Or - is this license intended to be in actuality a "scarlet letter" declaring to all "good moral people" that the licensee is a "scarlet woman"?

Is there any logical reason to license an exotic dancer? And if so, why not a waitress? Or someone who teaches dancing? Or a singer at a night club?

Puritanism, noun - the nagging fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

Having been a stripper once (and not ever again -- thank god, though don't get me wrong, I am far from condemning those who are) I too think this is ridiculous.

A dancer has every right to her privacy and I KNOW that there are morons and perverts -- predators -- whatever you want to call them -- who WILL track a dancer down. This is scary; it is nothing less than the city telling the dancers that they don't care about them and that it's their own damn fault if they're raped in their own home.

Waitresses generally do. (Food handler's or alcohol server's license. Likewise with bartenders.) Valets would have to have a driver's license, obviously. (And they may be required to be bondable.... not sure on that one.) I think bouncers only need one if they're armed. (And that would just be a concealed carry permit for a weapon, same as any other citizen.)

They aren't required to have their contact information displayed to all patrons tho.

I completely agree. It is used as a sort of brand of iniquity. But I am also a licensed bartender. Cities, counties and states use these silly licenses to deter people from working in the clubs. The whole thing is a ruse and serves no purpose. They could very well just check my DL. Many women at my home club were arrested for touching their own breasts so this sort of harrasment is not at all surprising. The whole system is screwy when it comes to strip clubs. Nobody wants them around but everyone seems to want to go to them.

Texas

This kind of thing really pisses me off. It's not just moralism at work here. It has more to do with greed. This just gives the city another reason to shake down the club and assess fines, because forcing the dancers to get licenses isn't enough I guess. It's like cigarette taxes that are supposed to deter smokers. Riiiiiiggghhhht. If they gave a shit about your health cigarettes would have been illegal ten years ago. The supposed concern for our physical and moral well being is just a convenient excuse to run a protection racket.

Phew! Good thing there was scotch tape over that nipple. She coulda put my eye out!

Funny thing is that with dancers the only test required for a permit is an AIDS test which is a bit silly considering the fact that you would be far more likely to contract TB or Hepatitis (possibly crabs depending on the skank factor at the club). To be quite honest sometimes I wished that the patrons had to get permits so that I could have been protected from them. But you are right in that it is a way to extort monies from the clubs and the dancers. Though the IRS has more to do with it than the local law enforcement. Most dancers do not pay taxes at all though many even at the sleeziest hole in the wall clubs make more than 50,000 per year and at the more elegant establishments a dancer can make on average 150,000-300,000, depending on how hard she wants to work and how well she takes care of herself (this includes education, intelligent dancers make far more from talking than any dancer ever will from a simple bump and grind). The revenuers want a peice of the action.

Most dancers are independant contractors and if anything should be required to have a business license and carry insurance. Though I do not believe that any dancer could get workman's comp seeing as how one climb into the rafters violates several osha laws . The states are regulating in the wrong manner. A once a year AIDS test is not going to protect anyone. And a permit strapped to a dancers ankle is just asking for another "Baby" incident.

Ohh and Chip...

I worked at a club in a very small country town for a bit where we were required to cover our nipples with glitter (the craft glue kind that peels half of your skin off when you try to remove it at the end of the night). The other alternative was to put this little circle of flesh colored tape on the very tip of the nipple not the areola just the tip of the nipple...funny thing was that the stupid sticker would glow under black lights so it actually drew more attention to the area. They were fun though at about 1:30am when we were all drunk and the stage lights were out, I would just sit and laugh at the glowing nipple dots zooming around looking for the last few vip dances.

Must be the implants.