Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
Applauding A New Strip Club In Heavily Regulated Boulder
By Jessica Peck Corry, 1-04-08
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In highly regulated cities like Boulder, Colo., you’ve got to take freedom where you can find it. And in the process, you may just find yourself cheering on the owner of a sleazy strip club.
Described on the Internet as “edgy, artistic, erotic gentlemen’s entertainment,” Boulder’s newest business establishment, Nitro Club, opened just before Christmas and is raising alarm bells with city officials shocked that that club’s owner, Michael Cobb, didn’t first give them the opportunity to kill the project.
They question whether the club deserves to be located on the Pearl Street Mall, the city’s posh shopping district. They wonder aloud why they never heard of the club before reporters brought its existence to their attention.
“I’m surprised,” Councilman Ken Wilson told The Boulder Daily Camera. “It does not sound like a good idea, or what the city intends for our Pearl Street Mall area.”
Critics have a point about the location being a little strange - who wants to pass pole dancers on the way to buy 500-thread count baby sheets at the boutique down the street? But Pearl Street still has a far way to go before it becomes a close cousin to Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District. Tucked away in an alley, the club has no windows to tempt passersby. It greets guests with only a simple steel door.
It is truly a triumph of freedom that somehow Cobb slipped through Boulder’s cumbersome regulatory process unnoticed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried before. In 1998, he applied for a liquor license for a topless bar he was proposing inside city limits. He was denied in a 3-2 vote made after the city’s liquor board heard angry testimony from other business owners and community activists. One board member said he voted no because the stage the dancers were to dance on was too small. You can believe him if you want to.
But this time around, Cobb outsmarted the city’s system. He didn’t need an alcohol license because the club will not sell booze. He told reporters that customers can pay $495 a year and an additional $45 a month to sit in a private area where they will drink alcohol that they must bring in themselves. This area, a nod to overcoming government prohibition, is appropriately called the “The Speakeasy.”
In Boulder, the city council has taken the time to regulate every aspect of the human existence possible. Everything that is, except for strippers.
Terrorists heading to Boulder should be aware that the city has ordained itself a “nuclear-free” zone. No bomb-dropping here, please. Front porches are a source of city regulation. Be prepared to shell out hefty fines if you put any booze out there for your next party. A keg in public view can earn you a visit from the police.
Own a pet in Boulder? Think again. A few years ago, the city changed all references in its ordinances concerning animal ownership. No longer do you “own” a pet. Now you are its guardian.
And the Pearl Street Mall itself has been the source of much regulation. City council members actually took the time to ban the act of throwing Frisbees on the mall. It appears that knock-off disks were excluded from the ban. I’d love to see this one litigated.
Mayor Shaun McGrath is now saying the council will have a “discussion” about the club’s location. In Boulder, talking can only lead to one thing. Regulation, of course. While McGrath concedes that Cobb’s actions appear to be legal, he said the club’s opening begs “the question of, ‘Do we as a community think that a downtown location for a strip bar is appropriate?’ That’s a conversation we need to have, because we haven’t had that before.”
The news of Nitro Club’s opening has garnered media attention near and far. Dozens of people have commented in support on news Web sites. Like most former Boulderites, I find myself in the strange position of cheering on the owner of a sleazy strip club. But alas, can this freedom from regulation possibly last?
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Comments
If it becomes too oppressive, the citizens should certainly have an opportunity to vote it our of existence.
I presume at some time in the past they voted it into existence..?
Reminds me of the $5.00 pack of Twinkies for sale outside of Idaho Falls, Idaho where I grew up. The Twinkies cost $5.00 on Sunday and came with a free six pack of beer.
This guy's a modern day Freudian Robin Hood.
Could it be I fed a lie?
Does this mean that tax cuts in the face of budget deficits don't really inspire increases in revenue too? What other lies am I being told in order to keep me in line?
Boulder is a prudish pinko pesthole. I never imagined such a thing, but hey, most normal people can't imagine Boulder.
The fly in their ointment is of course the church--more than ever since the evangelicals allied with the reactionaries--who are now camoflaged as neo-conservative Republicans...
I've lived my life with the greed and corruption inherent in our current system--not by choice; but by accident of birth.
When a tiny fraction of the earth's population controls such a large percentage of its wealth I am troubled--not by envy but by an embarrassment of riches...
We are still abuilding our empires on the backs of coolies, peons, serfs, and peasants; and, in the past almost thirty years, have been driving our own petit bourgeois toward membership in what has been called--for so long--the third world...
Kinda like the USSR. Ever notice how when the Orthodox church was destroyed in Soviet Russia, and then later the Soviet state failed, there was a rush of corruption and greed?
There's a reason for that.
We must affirm anew the discipline of the Party, namely:
(1) the individual is subordinate to the organization;
(2) the minority is subordinate to the majority;
(3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and
(4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee.
Whoever violates these articles of discipline disrupts Party unity."
I'm sure those inspiring words will lift everyone in the Boulder commune to rise up against the nouveau ecdysiastic performance art.
What worked for Dan'l Boone just won't work anymore--much as we miss its romanticism...
By the way, I guess those historians did not consider the unexplored frontiers of the mind and space. The communal discipline that you espouse is bulit on the blind acceptance of the religion of consensus and the power hierarchy that edicts it. No independent thinking allowed. You said above, "...unless I can bring some believers around to actually thinking, I'll consider my life to have been a total waste." So how do you intend to buck the Boulder Central Committee and get them to accept the Dance of the Seven Veils?
Jedediah is right about Boulder generally being ahead of the curve in terms of planning and governance. Many controversial policies initiated in Boulder (at least related to land use and zoning) have been replicated throughout the country after it was determined that the policies were effective. I am not sure how the church has been the fly in the City's ointment (more than it has been a fly in any other city's ointment?), that is a statement that should be explained.
Just the same, I appreciate Jedediah's comment because - as expected - it effectively baited Craig Moore into the conversation. Craig Moore, why is it that someone who criticizes the church is labeled by you as a socialist / communist? That is ridiculous.
Craig Moore, why does a statement about evangelicals equal an "attack" on christianity?
Craig Moore, why does an attack on christianity offend you? Get over it. Believe what you believe (hell, even prmote what you believe), but accept that other people may not believe what you believe and may even criticize it - this doesn't make them Stalin or the devil. If you are offended, that is your problem and a reflection of your insecurity about your beliefs. People who are confident in their beliefs are NOT offended by criticism, rather they assess the criticism and respectfully state why they disagree. Instead, you cry about being offended and then label the person a communist? Christ.
Regarding jed's criticism of evangelicals, I don't believe, he was referring to Hindu's, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, or any of the other major faiths.
I wasn't offended by his attack on Christians, I just found it completely unnecessary in the context of the column. Seemed rather bigoted to me.
I asked a Dutch immigrant why he brought his money to my county to buy a farm, when he had the world to invest in. He said the US is the only place where you have the freedom to move your capital: around the country, off shore, where ever you want to put it. And he added, free speech. No thought police telling you what to say or think.
Boulder has to recognize strip clubs are protected free speech.
Strip clubs are generally opposed by two groups--the church and feminists. I know most of Boulder's feminists are relatively confident of their position; so I assumed it was rightwingchristiancrazies who were puffing up about the exposure of excessive ecdysiastic epidermis...
Believe me, all the locals will know exactly what it is. If the fear is that unknowing tourists will wander in off the street in search of a cool beverage just post a sign, "Explicit Material".
If people don't like it they just don't need to go to the strip club. That's the bottome line.
Boulder is a place I went to school, scottyl I'm from Idaho.
Which brings up the matter of the individuality wreckage along old highway thirty between Boise and Ontario...
Crystal Gray.
She's deputy mayor, and in her former role as a neighborhood activist, she single-handedly forced a great restaurant - The Rio Grande - to close and move away from the block near her home. She then single-handedly forced neighborhood parking zones down the throats of all downtown areas. All of this for her benefit - at the expense of others.
If she doesn't like strip clubs, she should NOT GO.
The entry is in an alley, off the main drag, so you'd have to intentionally search for this place to find it.
Those in agreement with Crystal Gray suffer from a secular progressive disease that causes them to morph from free-spirited hippies into repressive victorians - to match the historic architecture.