Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Constitutional Law Blogs -> Meeting the Sin Laws

Constitutional Law

: Meeting the Sin Laws

Newsflash: strip clubs run legitimate businesses

By C.S. Wiggins

Do I sound crass? Forgive me, but I'm hardly surprised when stories like this sell ink. In a special report ("The Naked Truth about Strip Clubs"), William Sherman for the NY Daily News reports that "there are about 3,600 strip clubs nationwide," and "from a business point of view, it's all like Las Vegas was in the early '70s. Investors and banks are realizing that like gambling and casinos, adult entertainment and gentlemen's clubs are a legitimate business." (internal quotations omitted). It's a good article.

Today, gentlemen's clubs in the city, and across the nation, are becoming big business and quite conventionally corporate. With profit margins up to 30% they can rake in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rick's is part of a publicly traded corporation, Rick's Cabaret International Inc., with shares traded on the NASDAQ, and accountants, attorneys, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and a business model not very much different than WalMart, except for what's being sold.

Ain't that the truth. I think that America's nightlife culture will continue to spin toward a European openness. So, the not-too-distant problem is not 3,600 clubs today, 2,600 tomorrow. No, I think there will be 4,600 clubs tomorrow, and 9,200 sexual harassment lawsuits the day after tomorrow. There's just too much legitimate business going on inside the clubs to keep business women out. And that's not an entirely non-hostile environment for your average female professional to work in.

Full post as published by Meeting the Sin Laws on July 08, 2007 (boomark / email).