Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991 TAG: 9104170071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Shame on you. You sold Henry Brabham short.
Not to be outdone by automobiles vrooming around a track-and-field oval inside Victory Stadium, Brabham has moved quickly to strike his blow for the trendy new Populist Recreational competition.
The L.A. Calendar Men will strut Friday night at the LancerLot in Vinton.
The calendar men are five huge chunks of muscular man flesh, lathered in several gleaming coats of baby oil and sent out on stage to prance about in outfits that really are jockstraps.
Pencil-necked men like you and me don't generally pay the $15 admission to see suggestive dances and quivering body parts.
But lots of women do.
They used to pay to see this sort of thing in Roanoke, until a new law cracked down on the sagging morals last year.
No more "buttocks, genitals, pubic region or female breasts exposed" in Roanoke.
But Roanoke isn't Vinton. Vinton welcomes now, and always has welcomed, buttocks, genitals, pubic regions and female breasts. Always will.
So Brabham, shrewd businessman and ice hockey impresario, figures he can draw a crowd and profit off Roanoke's puritanical code.
Or at least, he says, one of his staff members does.
"Much," rues Brabham, "to my regret."
Not that he has any philosophical problem with greased men in skimpy outfits gyrating for admiring women.
"That's their business," Brabham says.
Unfortunately for the entrepreneurial Brabham, it's his business, too.
The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control frowns on buttocks and other loose ends floating around inside establishments licensed to sell beer, wine and mixed drinks.
The ABC has its own rules ("breast, genitals or buttocks") and goes even farther to address fondling, flagellation and hair.
Henry Brabham is licensed by the ABC to sell booze, though he already has ordered that no alcoholic beverages be sold at the LancerLot during the calendar men act.
Small difference to the frowning folk at ABC.
They'll be there, undercover, says Jack Powell, assistant special agent in charge in the Roanoke ABC office. Noting the activities. Scouting for lewd or lascivious behavior.
Some duty, huh?
"They're going to nail me," says Brabham, who claims it's too late to back out of his contract with the L.A. Calendar Men. "I asked an attorney to find a loophole and he said there isn't any."
The ABC board would decide Brabham's fate if the calendar men can't squirm between the lines.
It could be a fine. A suspension of his liquor license. A revocation. A combination.
Audience members are not affected by the legal wrangling. They can drool without fear of prosecution.
It's Henry Brabham who's got problems.
Take that, Whitey.
by CNB