Vegas Dancers to March September 1 The issue's so important, former dancer Treasure Brown has decided to postpone her wedding because of it. The issue being that of lap dancing and the fact that as of Sept. 1, ordinances go into effect in Clark County, Nevada prohibiting it. Clark County is better known as Las Vegas. Here's what happened a couple of weeks ago and which prompted Brown, who likes to refer to herself as an "undercover lobbyist" to form an alliance known as WEADS, Women and Entertainers Anti-Defamation Society. From the Gene Files: Vegas Imposes Lap Dance Rules Bugsy Siegel would be turning over in his grave to know what a pussy ass town Las Vegas has become. Clark County commissioners want to impose rules on lap dancing. Speakers in opposition to the measure said strip clubs are not the dens of prostitution described by police, and they reminded commissioners that this is Sin City, after all, not Disneyland. Other opponents of the ordinance said lap dancing puts food on their table and restricting it would jeopardize their livelihood. "How will I eat? How will I support my children?" stripper Brianna Wildman asked through tears. But in the end, commissioners voted 5-1 to adopt lap dance rules. Though they were far less stringent than those introduced two weeks ago. That proposal would have prohibited a dancer's groin from ever touching a customer's body. The rules commissioners passed yesterday allow dancers to grind against a customer's leg, but bar more intimate contact. "The industry has worked with me not in creating a deal, but a compromise," said Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who proposed the ordinance. A cluster of strip club attorneys had come to the commission meeting prepared to argue that the proposed ordinance would put their clients out of business. They changed their minds after reading the new draft. "When they started out saying you've got to be 6 feet from the customer, and you end up with the girl being able to grind against his leg, you've come a long way," said attorney Peter Christiansen, who represents Jaguars, the $15 million strip club that recently opened on West Desert Inn Road. Christiansen and several other strip club attorneys said the ordinance will force only minor changes in their clients' day-to-day operations. "We can live with it," said John Moran Jr., who represents The Library Gentlemen's Club on Boulder Highway and Strip Tease on Valley View Boulevard. Several attorneys said the only provision with a substantial impact is the prohibition against anyone under 21 working at a strip club that serves alcohol. Currently, the minimum age is 18. Dancers who are 18 to 20 years old now have three choices: change their profession, work at one of the all-nude juice bars or get a job at an alcohol-serving topless club in the city of Las Vegas. "The only real effect of what they've done is forced the youngest dancers to go totally nude to make a living," said one strip club attorney who spoke on condition of anonymity. Several commissioners said this was not their intent. But Atkinson Gates said she was not sympathetic to the dancers' plight. "They can get another job. They can do something else for a living," she said. "I don't buy that argument." Atkinson Gates said she introduced the legislation because she believed some of the acts commonly performed in strip clubs "are downright wrong, downright prostitution." "You're confusing sex with titillation," Dr. Jeff Arenswald told Atkinson Gates. "You have some repressed sexual ideas." The comment prompted Gates to grab a gavel and yell, "I said shut up!" across the commission's chambers. She later apologized for the outburst. Commissioner Erin Kenny did not attend the meeting, at which Chairman Dario Herrera cast the sole vote in opposition to the new rules. Herrera said restricting what is allowed in county strip clubs could give a competitive advantage to strip clubs located inside the Las Vegas city limits, where the county rules would not apply. Lap dances previously were illegal in unincorporated Clark County, though the prohibition was not enforced because a district judge struck down the rules as too vague. Police officers testifying in support of the ordinance said enforcement would be aided by specifying what is and what is not permissible. They predicted this will quell secondary problems with drugs and prostitution in the clubs." Gene sez: Long before the ordinance was even to go into effect, cops started rousting clubs in the city, particularly the Olympic Garden Club More from the Gene Files: What you'd normally think is a joke, ain't. Las Vegas which came up with a cockamamie lap dancing ordinance a couple of weeks ago is cracking down on it. Six strippers from Olympic Garden Club learned that this week when they got fired for dancing too close to customers. Undercover police sent a notice of noncompliance to the club, when officers observed contact between the dancers and customers. The club's owner says he immediately fired all six dancers. Strippers say they'll protest the regs, when they take effect Sept. 1. Gene sez we spoke to Brown Wednesday afternoon to get an update about a proposed march on the Las Vegas Commissioners' building. Gene: They've already started hassling dancers. Brown: Every little jurisdiction has its foibles. Ours is that the city of Las Vegas is different than Clark County. Actually when you're in Las Vegas, you're in Clark County. Las Vegas the city is really small. Clark County's laws are using some hate speech in their description of dancers. I want to start seeing these studies on secondary effects of dancing ended. You couldn't say these things about any other group. I'd like to see you try to say that gay men spread AIDS. Or make comments about any minority group's lifestyle. Quite frankly dancing is a lifestyle as well. Our organization's idea is that you have to have reasons for passing a law. The reasons would be to promote public health- to stop drug abuse, to limit prostitution. How dare they classify a group. How dare they do it. I think dancers are the last whipping boy and we're mad as hell and are not going to take it any more. Gene: What's the game plan with the organization. Brown: The march and rally? We're going to march to the county commission building. We're going to exercise the second half of the first amendment- the right to peaceful assembly to air grievances with the government. We're going to have an old fashioned Civil Rights march. Quite frankly our civil rights have been violated. We're going to have this march Sept. 1 when this ordinance goes into effect. Gene: Shit's already started at the Olympic Garden. Brown: This is all the doing of one particular vice cop and I can't remember his name off the top of my head. He never states his name and works in an undercover capacity. He's all super sleuth. But this is is whole bailiwick. Metro is a consolidated unit- they serve the city of Las Vegas as well as Clark County. But they're two separate jurisdictions with different judges what not, and different courts. God bless mayor Goodman who defended the dancers and said they're a beautiful part of Las Vegas. Nevertheless, vice cops went into city clubs and began wilding for lack of a better term. They started to arrest any and every girl in the city. Olympic Garden is very much in the city. They're rousting them everywhere and arrested a lot of city girls but club owners like to keep a lower profile. Peter of Olympic Garden is a really good guy, a beautiful human being. He really likes his dancers. They're more than just little money makers. Then they stopped with the arrests. They took a hiatus because they're getting a lot of bad press and it's a beautiful thing. Gene: Sept. 1 it heats up again. Brown: I don't know. There's been a lot of pressure. We've been acting in cooperation with the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance. I would compare that alliance with the ACLU and the ADL. Yesterday the County Commissioners had a sneaky meeting at six in the morning. I went down there and was the only person from our industry who went to the meeting. They discussed the ordinance. The one lady commissioner [Yvonne Atkinson Gates] wasn't there to vote. They decided pretty much to gut the law. They've taken out the silly, silly things like no tipping in the G-string. And they're going to work on the language of the ordinance about how you can dance. Because the wording is pretty much that you can rub on a customer's leg. It's in legalese but you can rub on a customer's leg. One county commissioner pointed out, where does your leg stop? The vice cops are saying you know where your leg stops. Actually, no we don't. And they're probably going to be the ones ruling on where your leg stops. I'm sitting there thinking your penis sits on tops of your legs, so... My frustration is just say what you mean. I've had a semester of law school and I think legalese nonsense is one of the grievous of our nation. Gene: That's the whole gimmick about the law. That's what you as as client are paying for- the translation of all that mumbo jumbo. They created a language that's foreign enough where people don't get it, so you have to hire a lawyer to help you get it. Brown: I completely agree and you've got vice cops writing law which is really kind of scary. A law school is simply a trade school for people who have really useless bachelor's degrees. You do learn something there. And when I hear a vice cops saying, 'I wrote the law the way I want it written!' I'm thinking and you are a fine Harvard scholar, aren't you. They're just asinine. And the vice cops are not interested in stopping the law being broken. They're interested in arresting girls. They made that very clear when I had real teachers tell them you need a class to explain to these women exactly what you mean along the lines of an alcohol awareness class. They were not at all interested in any sort of class. They want to arrest girls. Gene: Are you going to use the upcoming strippers' expo as an attempt to sign on girls. Brown: That's serendipity that we chose the First. And yes, any one who wants to share their solidarity with us, we would appreciate that. Let me put this out to any woman in the industry who's ever danced here- if you have ever been a dancer at all and you want to support your right as a woman not to be defamed, we would so appreciate any support at our rally afterwards. After we go to the County Commissioners we're going to have an after party at Talk of the Town. We're going to have a serious local demonstration at the commissioners' building. The march starts 3 pm at Garces and Las Vegas Blvd. right across the street from Showgirl Video. A march down the boulevard is about half a mile. We were going to make it three miles... Gene: But that's murder on the stilettos. Brown: That would have been like the Bataan Death March. We're putting the call out to any twentysomething who's envious that she didn't get to march at a real life demonstration. Here's your chance.