THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 18, 1995 TAG: 9508170008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
All establishments in South Hampton Roads licensed to serve liquor are subject to the rules of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which prohibit ``lewd'' conduct; to the zoning ordinances of the locality; and to the laws of the commonwealth, which require a certain ratio of food to liquor sales, a certain standard of record-keeping and a minimal amount of, uh, decorum regarding patrons and performers, if any. Ninety-eight percent of these businesses have no trouble complying.
In the past three weeks, however, the ABC Board has yanked liquor licenses from six nightclubs in South Hampton Roads. Three are go-go clubs in Portsmouth that reportedly have featured a 20-year-old in a thong bikini and pasties who exposed herself (further) to the patrons and used a shoe heel to perform a sexual act. A judge did find that the dancer's conduct was sexual and had no redeeming value; but the commonwealth's attorney, he ruled, had not proved that she had violated community standards of acceptable behavior.
And what part of Portsmouth was he from?
That ruling reflects less Portsmouth's shortcomings in the community standards department than the law's. As localities hereabouts have found just recently, a community standard is essential to prosecutions under obscenity law - but is also very difficult to establish.
Law-enforcement agents, the courts have ruled, don't qualify as indicative of community standards. A panel of church-goers doesn't either. And a panel of attorneys who represent go-go dancers charged with lewd conduct no doubt would protest along with the lawyer who represented Ms. Thong and Shoe Heel: ``If brief nudity during go-go dancing is obscene, then we're going to be re-entering a brief period of puritanical society.''
Heaven forfend that a community infringe on the artistic expression inherent in shoe heels. Or, as another attorney put it, go-go dancers are independent contractors who perform voluntarily, ``make a pretty good living'' and get bigger tips from more graphic acts. (Dancers don't always see it that way: Some recently sued club owners for wage exploitation.)
But a community can restrict the right of adults to shoe-heel art cum alcoholic beverages, and the locations, hours and audience of nightclubs that serve them up. Portsmouth just enacted such restrictions, but can't affect these clubs retroactively.
The state ABC Board, however, can step in whenever a club violates state law and regulation. Its penalties can be appealed both to the board and in the courts. But in particularly flagrant cases it can require an establishment to stop selling liquor during the appeals process. That can be a death knell to a nightclub, and a city that has failed to close down a trouble spot on the strength of its own ordinances will hardly kick if the ABC Board steps in.
Generally, nearby neighbors - most of a locality, in fact - will cheer ABC enforcement if a club has presented the sort of problems associated with Mr. Magic's, a nightclub in Virginia Beach. The list in this case goes beyond the usual failing to comply with ABC ratio and recordkeeping regulations. Last year, two people died in shootouts outside the club; since the first of this year, police have confiscated some 40 guns from patrons outside the club.
Club managers and owners, who include Virginia Beach NAACP President George Minns, contend that city and ABC officials are singling out Mr. Magic's because its clientele is primarily black. Bosh.
The need to have an ABC Board at all is challenged regularly. The need to change the law to permit bars that serve liquor without a food requirement and to clarify the establishment of a community standard is broached regularly. Nothing much happens in a General Assembly whose longtime Democratic majority includes quite a few lawyers who frequently represent establishments that have run afoul of the board, and whose increasing Republican minority has discovered this lucrative practice.
Meantime, an ABC Board that's tough on flagrant offenders of ABC regulations is not only justified. It's local authorities' and suffering neighborhoods' best friend. by CNB