ABOUT TWO DOZEN angry neighbors and anti-sex trafficking activists stood on the sidewalk outside SE McLoughlin’s Acropolis steakhouse and strip club on Friday, September 9, rallying support against a new strip joint planned next door. Just a few steps away, a larger crowd of strippers and supporters of the new club—the second branch of vegan nudie establishment Casa Diablo—also gathered. They held their own pro-strip club counter-protest, waving signs bearing a devilish boobs-and-wings logo adorned with mottos like, “We are creating jobs for families!”
The protest/counter-protest points to a tension in Portland policy: While bar and club owners advocate heartily for their rights as economy-fueling businesses, neighbors often feel the city does not do enough to rein in problem establishments. With that in mind, Portland City Council expressed approval last week for a plan to stiffen the city’s rules for problem bars, known as the Time, Place, and Manner
Ordinance.
But neighborhoods likely won’t see much change unless the city ups enforcement. Even then, loopholes in the rules and the complicated relationship between the city and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) will continue to frustrate people who want a crackdown on un-neighborly establishments.
The Time, Place, and Manner Ordinance sparked a firestorm when city council passed it back in 2004. Portland is the only city in Oregon that takes advantage of a state law that lets cities step in and change a bar’s hours and style of operation if it repeatedly violates city code [“Three Strikes and You’re Sober!” News, Jan 29, 2004]. The law led to an unsuccessful lawsuit from a restaurant owner when it went into effect and many worried that the city would use the rules to shut down bars based on a handful of complaints from whiny neighbors.
But in reality, the law has been used only sparingly. Too sparingly, says Commissioner Randy Leonard, who spearheaded the original law.
Since 2006, according to city records, the city has only used the law to set new rules for the operation of nine bars.
“It has never felt to me like it’s been used to its logical limit,” says Commissioner Leonard, who thinks the Office of Neighborhood Involvement should go after code violations with the same vigor as his fire code squad, which effectively shut down downtown icon Greek Cusina in 2010. [“All Greek to Me,” News, Jan 7, 2010]
The new Time, Place, and Manner rules change the number of nuisance complaints a business can have under it’s belt before it’s a “violation”—from three complaints in 30 days, to three in 60 days. It also adds a long list of serious crimes (assault, sex abuse, illegal drug activity), all of which will score the bar an immediate violation.
“I actually talked a couple times with police officers about the existence of the Time, Place, and Manner Ordinance, and until very recently they didn’t seem to be aware of it,” says Leonard.
In the past two years, the city evaluated complaints at 125 bars, but only wound up asking eight to come in for Time, Place, and Manner hearings: Nine Muses, Bora Bora, Cabaret, OHM, 720 Club, Dixie Tavern, the Crown Room, and Silverado.
There were also four businesses that changed ownership before the process was complete, nullifying previous code violation complaints. While some businesses certainly change hands for legitimate reasons, Office of Neighborhood Involvement Liquor Licensing Specialist Theresa Marchetti acknowledges that change of ownership is a loophole in the city law. Owners who want a clean slate for their business can sell their bar to a friend or relative and still run the operation as a “shadow owner.” Fixing that problem will “probably take extensive conversation,” says Marchetti.
That’s exactly the situation neighbors allege occurred at Casa Diablo, the vegan strip club opening up in Southeast. Casa Diablo’s Northwest Portland location got in hot water with the city for nuisance issues in 2009, according to Marchetti, but then-owner Johnny Zulke sold the business to current owner Carol Lee. Since Zulke remains very active in certain aspects of the business (Casa Diablo’s website redirects to “Johnny Diablo’s” Myspace page, for example), Friday’s protesters alleged in an open letter that he sold Casa Diablo to avoid citation. Zulke says that’s false, and that he sold the business during a company-wide reorganization and it has stayed out of trouble ever since.
One other frustration for neighbors is the bureaucratic divide between the city, which only keeps track of city code violations, and the OLCC, which focuses exclusively on liquor law violations. A bar that overserves customers and leads to drunken driving, for example, may get in trouble with the OLCC, but face no flack from Portland government. A bar whose customers urinate on neighbors’ lawns might get a slap from the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, but not have their liquor license threatened.
As OLCC Director of Licensing Farshad Allahdadi explains enforcement against problem bars: “There’s two different tracks and they’re not parallel and there’s usually no overlap.”
The OLCC’s process can take years to shut down even the bars that get into repeated trouble. Cabaret on West Burnside, for example, was cited for both the city’s Time, Place, and Manner Ordinance violations and liquor law violations in 2008 and 2009 [“The OLCC Hit List,” News, March 17]. Since then, there have been over 35 serious liquor law violations at the strip club, even though the establishment remains open. However, after intervention from both public agencies, owner David Kiraz has sold the club. Its new owner is his brother, Daniel, who plans to convert it into a sports bar.
For fuck sakes, the whole world is BEING BLED DRY and privileged, sheltered folks here in Portland are getting up in arms over this BULLSHIT! Yet another case of ‘First-World’ problems.
When people are peeing on your lawn, the punishment of Guatemalan generals for genocide doesn’t tend to dominate your thoughts, no matter how disproportionate the evils may be.
While I find the idea of a vegan strip pretty dumb (how many people go to strip bars for food anyway, with the notable exception of that steak place – Acropolis?)
((shut up vegan))
I would understand the neighbors not wanting a strip club next to home, (when searching for a home here, I wanted to find a place my mom wouldn’t have to pass strip bars to get to) – but this is right next to other strip clubs, right?
That’s why I don’t get the protest.
This claim by the strippers that they create jobs for families. That may well true, but let’s not forget there are probably many families who make do with less because daddy went to a strip bar and blew a wad on table dances while drunk.
It’s like saying a casino is good for the economy. Just depends on which side of the money you are on.
That’s Entertainment!
What’s wrong with ordering food at a strip club? Furthermore, what’s wrong with Portland attracting a certain type of eco-tourist that thinks it’s cool to go to the only vegan strip club in the country? Obviously, despite being a bit out of the way, the original Casa is doing well enough to expand, and it’s pretty obvious that they are moving into a section of road that can handle a strip club or two. Also, I don’t think it’s up to the OLCC brute squad to enforce arbitrary moral authority, and if it is, then maybe they can start on 82nd (where the strip clubs are the classy shops) instead of going after a business that personifies the quarky weirdness of Portland.
frankieb: Anyone collecting taxes benefits from money being exchanged, or from property that has a higher value. You can be sure that this is central to the way the city cracks down or doesn’t. Of course, anything requiring action is less likely than anything not, so the original calculation is a little skewed, as we can see by the Lenard toilets that have decidedly NOT popped up in the last few years.
If a new church that didn’t have to pay taxes and preaches bigotry were setting up shop in the neibourhood, i wonder how much these people would whine then?
Fyi, one certainly doesn’t need the help of a strip club or bar in order for some drunk to piss in their front year. That one guy who got trashed and pissed in the reservoir at Mt. Tabor ealier this year – were there any strip clubs or bars near by???
Let’s get a few things straight. Portland and Oregon in general would have a lot less problems if they simply had red light districts, areas where sex themed clubs could operate without turning local neighborhoods into condom disposal zones, lawns-as-urinals and anemic masturbator hangouts. However the courts here have ruled showing your boobies a “free-speech” right, so good luck getting the clueless liberals who run this state to use common sense when it comes to this issues. The reality is strip bars attract wankers and lowlifes out of proportion to almost any other type of bar. And I like strip bars. Because I am one such person. But unlike the pro-strip-club crowd, I’m not an idiot. I understand most people are trying to raise their children, especially in low-income neighborhoods, without having to see some guy committing adultery with Candy or Raisin or whoever he just met in a bar on the hood of his mid-life crisis convertible, or for that matter, deal with some white boy douchebag wearing his baseball cap backwards setting off with the local black boy gangsta wannabe in the parking lot because neither can hold their liquor, served to them by some cleavage-heavy woman “working her way through paralegal school.” C’mon, get real, strippers — your businesses attract fights, crime and immature men who can’t talk about women without calling them “bitches.” They’re not great places that enhance life. Their relief valves for sexually frustrated males, period, where women basically sucker customers out of money by pretending to like them. Okay, I gotta get back to the club, Venus is about to take the stage and she likes me, she really, really likes me!!!
DamosA, it’s clear you don’t have kids and have never had to actually try to raise them in a neighborhood riddled with prostitution and other crap that comes with strip bars. Sure, there are churches I don’t like, but most of their sex abuse at least takes place inside an office or during a camping trip by the youth club, and not in cars in front of old ladies houses or in parking lots. Strip bars mostly attract morons and people who don’t know how to behave in public. Yeah, there’s always gonna be the nice businessman and the genuinely classy stripper with the heart of gold. But 90 percent of the clientele and workers are losers who lie, cheat and steal. I know, I’ve worked with these people, they’re often unpleasant, foulmouthed drug-addicted shitheads who lack self-control and actually think Nickelback’s a great band. And that’s just the deejays.
Sure thing, Getreal. It’s ALL THOSE DAMNED LIBERAL’S FAULT. Wharever YOU say, dude. I’m sure the next Republican governor would make red light districts for the state his/her TOP priority.
And for the record, i never claimed to have kids. Actually, i’ve expressed on several occasions already my immense distaste for children and breeding them in general. But that doesn’t mean i know nothing about raising kids. I DO have a younger sister. And i think children overall would do far better in a neibourhood with afew strip clubs than a big stinking mega-church on practically every corner.
Wait a minute DamosA, you “expressed on several occasions already my immense distaste for children and breeding them in general.” Well I wasn’t present for these occasions, but had I been, I definitely would have fled as quickly as possible from your noxious presence. And do I feel sorry for your sister (for the record, having a sibling does not qualify you as a parent)! My point is, whether you like the little rug rats or not, lots of people already have them — including strippers. I’m all for the right of strip clubs to operate, but the strip club advocates play down the fact that their bars are loser magnets. more so than any other type of bar. They are places rich suburbanites and poor urban males alike go to act like idiots. And the bars encourage the behavior as do the women for one reason alone — MONEY. They don’t care when the college football player leaves their parking lot drunk and in a mood, or when Candy is giving a handjob in the parking lot to Mr. Bigshot who will take care of her. And kids have to grow up around this shit because people like you have no common sense. Society can’t exist unless it’s a safe place for kids to exist in — just check out your local drug-addled “hood” if you don’t believe me. A red light district keeps the creeps away from the neighborhood and allows horny males the delights of losing their money to women who don’t care about anything except stealing the contents of their fellow dancer’s purse. It’s a win-win, whereas what the strip bar owners are proposing, a world with no limits on them, only results in everyone getting depressed and degraded while a few owners make money (and then drive home to a tony neighborhood with no strip bars).
LordoftheCrabPeople Says:
More strippers=Portland rocks even more. LOTCP approves even though Casa’s owner is an analbead.