GR’s strip clubs become bikini clubs
GRAND RAPIDS — A sign taped to the countertop explains how the Cina Mini I Adult Bookstore and Theatre plans to comply with the city’s tough new sexually oriented business ordinance:
“Due to harassement from the City of G.R.. As of Sat. Feb. 24, we will be closing our theatres + peeps. Thanx for your patronage. Sorry.”
As of today, the city requires adult theaters to remove the doors from private “peep show” booths in which customers watch pornographic movies.
Strip clubs also are required to keep semi-nude performers at least 6 feet from customers, and on stages at least 18 inches high.
The city’s two strip club operators said they will comply with the ordinance for the most part by keeping their dancers in bikinis that fall outside of the definition of a semi-nude performer.
Though the ordinance was adopted 11 months ago, the city did not begin enforcing it until U.S. District Judge Robert Bell denied a challenge by strip club owners last October.
Restrictions on semi-nude dancing went into effect immediately. The city gave the businesses until today to comply with the building requirements.
“I can’t predict what individual business owners will be doing, but we’ll be checking,” said Assistant City Attorney Catherine Mish. So far, there have been no violations, she said.
City commissioners adopted the ordinance last year at the behest of the Black Hills Citizens for a Better Community, which opposed a new strip club, and the Michigan Decency Action Council, which promised to pay for the city’s defense of the ordinance.
Adult bookstores with “peep shows” face the toughest challenge because the ordinance requires them to reconfigure their viewing booths so they are fully visible from an operator’s station.
