Crystal City Restaurant owner Bill Bayne hopes the owners of PaperMoon Gentlemen’s Clubs succeed in their fight to bring hard liquor to Virginia’s topless bars.
Currently, the state prohibits adult clubs from “mixing distilled spirits with erotic performances,” as the Associated Press phrased it. In Richmond yesterday, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments against the statute.
“We all think it’s an antiquated, crazy law,” Bayne said. “We know that we’re losing business because of it, we know that people are perfectly capable of getting drunk on beer or wine or champagne.”
“The only thing [the law] doing is taking customers we would have and distributing them” to clubs in D.C. and other, more lenient jurisdictions.
Virginia has some of the country’s strictest laws governing strip clubs. Performers must wear bottoms and pasties at all times, and lap dances are prohibited.
Those restrictions may seem like an anathema to a club owner whose business is based around women showing skin, but Bayne said he’s much more concerned about customers not being able to order their favorite cocktails.
In fact, Bayne says he agrees with at least one part of Virginia’s stripper laws.
“My personal opinion is… the bottoms — they should be covered,” the father of three mused. “Leave something to the imagination, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”