EASTON, Pa. — A Pennsylvania father accused of hosting a teen party featuring alcohol and a stripper pole says he can’t get a fair trial because of media coverage.

Steven A. Russo will ask a Northampton County judge for a change of venue after the judge rejected a plea agreement last month. A hearing on the request is scheduled for Friday.

The 37-year-old Bethlehem Township man was charged with corruption of minors, providing then with alcohol and other charges. He was charged after racy photos surfaced of students drinking and dancing at a stripper pole at his house.

Defense attorney Erv McLain says the story has been so sensationalized that Russo can’t get a fair trial locally.

Russo is currently in prison after being convicted of stalking an ex-girlfriend.

A Myrtle Beach taxi cab driver told police a man he picked up from a gentleman’s club left him without paying the fare, according to a police report.

The driver, a 69-year-old Pawleys Island man, told police that at 5:30 a.m. Friday he picked up a man at the Penthouse Club and the man asked to be driven to Club There, police said.

When they arrived outside Club There and the man saw it was closed, the driver said the man asked to be taken to an area at Watts and Canal streets, according to the report. The driver said the man told him he had to go inside to get money for the $12.70 fare, but instead jumped from the cab and ran away.

The driver said he went back to the club and staffers told him the man was a regular at the strip club, according to the report. Police searched the area where the man was last seen, but did not find him.

Police arrested a 41-year-old Akron man who allegedly robbed a woman early this morning in the parking lot of a local strip club.

Police located Kenneth Johnson of Inman Street in the 1000 block of Nadia Court after receiving a call that a 58-year-old woman was being robbed in the parking lot of the Platinum Horse Cabaret, 1027 E. Waterloo Road.

The victim told police Johnson came at her from behind shortly after midnight and knocked her down in an attempt to get her purse and car keys.

Johnson allegedly took the victim’s cell phone, which officers found in his pocket when he was arrested, police said.

Johnson was charged with robbery.

Source: Ohio.com

plastic surgeon in Croatia has revealed that he refused to perform an operation on a stripper who wanted him to make a third breast for her.

Doctor Sinisa Glumicic told tabloid 24 Sata his client thought she would be more attractive if she had three breasts.

The surgeon said he had been shocked by the idea and refused to perform the surgery.

“She was ready to tattoo a nipple on her third breast”, the doctor from Croatian capital Zagreb commented to the tabloid.

The stripper works in Milan, Italy.

Source: Croatian Times

was just your typical nightclub.

OK, so there was a bed in the middle of the dance floor. And porno movies playing on a big screen — right above the buffet table.

Big Daddy Lou’s Lap Dance Club on W. 38th street was brought to life in vivid police jargon this afternoon, as an undercover vice cop took the stand in a wacky Manhattan prostitution trial where a pair of lesbian sex-act dancers are insisting they’re not that kind of stripper.

“There were also several females dressed in lingerie attire,” Undercover No. 0148 told the judge, describing the June night in 2008 when the two shapely defendants allegedly offered him a $5,000 threesome.

Porn star Alexia Moore and topless dancing partner Falynn Rodriguez say that while they do shake it — in a Thursday night sex show once highly touted on the club Web site — they don’t sell it. They’ve turned down a no-jail prostitution plea and are risking a 90-day jail sentence to clear their names.

UC No. 0148 is testifying in a closed courtroom under high security, due to what court officials described as a “contract on his head” in an unrelated Bronx narcotics investigation.

But according to a transcript of the proceedings, UC No. 0148 told Manhattan Criminal Court Justice ShawnDya Simpson that he was sipping a Vodka and Red Bull when the porn star made her first of several propositions.

“I walked over to the females,” he testified. “I engaged them in conversation.” When Moore asked if he wanted “a dance” with the pair of them, “I said sure.”

“They led me — they both led me to one of the dance rooms,” the undercover said, describing such room as dimly lit, with couches and a bed, upon which he was instructed to lie down.

“They told me they were going to use this bed,” he testified.

Source: SCN Jan 28, 2010

Another lap dancer wiggles free!

The second of two strippers accused of servicing the laps they danced upon was cleared of all charges yesterday, ending a wacky Manhattan prostitution trial.

“I knew I did nothing wrong!” porn star Alexia Moore tearily said after court. “I just had to prove it!”

Back before the 2008 police raid at Big Daddy Lou’s Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street, Moore had been famous for her Thursday-night girl-on-girl lesbian floor shows with dancing partner Falynn Rodriguez.

But an undercover vice cop — posing as “Ricky,” an international Mexican fabric trader — had claimed that for the right price, the two would offer even more entertainment.

During a weeklong misdemeanor trial last week, Ricky took the stand to describe reclining with the undies-clad Moore and Rodriguez on a red-draped bed in the club’s Champagne Room — a dim and dowdy little hovel with curtained “walls” hung from 2-by-4s.

Ricky testified that it was there, after a lap dance, with Rodriguez at her side, that Moore offered him a threesome for $5,000 — but at a later date and a never-agreed-upon location, with only the promise that if he e-mailed her through her porn site, she’d “get back to me.”

No such e-mail was ever sent, Ricky conceded in testimony.

Criminal Court Judge ShawnDya Simpson dismissed the case against Rodriguez outright on Friday.

Yesterday, ruling on Moore — whose real name is Cassandra Malandri — the judge declared, “The court finds the defendant not guilty.”

“She’s just an exotic dancer — that’s what she does,” defense lawyer Salvatore Strazzullo said after court.

Moore now says her dancing days are over.

She said she’s going to start “a new chapter, a new beginning — a normal job . . . Anything to do with animals.”

To which one of the photographers camped outside Manhattan Criminal Court quipped: “I’d buy that video.”

Source: SCN Jan 28, 2010

Ron Ross remembers Whistler when he could take his pet chicken into a bar on double-rum night and watch the strippers.

Times have changed since the days when The Boot pub was the talk of the town among the 4,000 or so construction workers who flocked to the area annually as builders struggled to keep up with the resort’s rapid growth.

“Whistler is not a lot of fun anymore,” Ross lamented this week, after hearing exotic dancing has been officially banned by the town’s council, just before the Olympic Games come to town next month.

Whistler council voted unanimously last week to adopt a 10-year-old proposed bylaw that forbids exotic dancing anywhere inside the municipality’s boundaries.

Ross said Harriet, his rum-sipping chicken, enjoyed the show every Thursday until her run-in with a coyote.

Source: SCN Jan. 28, 2010

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — It’s back. The space on Commercial street that was once Little Tokyo Showgirls proudly declares it will open this week as The Platinum Gentlemen’s Lounge.

“Downtown Los Angeles gets another strip club on Thursday,” says the release. The setup follows the same general plan as the previous incarnation, offering an all-nude, nonalcoholic club, “luxurious” skyboxes, VIP lounge, and indoor-garage valet service. It also touts “cappuccino and espresso drinks, as well as light deli fare” and its proximity to Union Station.

First built as a 21-and-over club, the concept was presented to the surrounding communities as a “classy” joint venture with Penthouse. The opening was blocked due to protests from nearby Little Tokyo and LAPD, preventing the project to secure a liquor license. When Penthouse left, the club changed its name to Little Tokyo Showgirls, a move that was less branding and perhaps more about spiting those who had protested.

“In some ways, this is worse,” said Sergeant Kris Werner of LAPD’s Central Division. “You could have 18 to 20 year olds drinking outside the club at their cars.”

While Little Tokyo stakeholders led the opposition to the club, reaction in the Arts District is a little more nuanced. “I paint nudes,” said one local artist. “It would be silly of me to protest a strip club.”

The reopened club has different ownership than those past efforts.

Tonight’s soft opening will have an 8 to 10pm reception that includes a menu tasting, says a polite and hesitant voice answering the phone. The grand opening is tomorrow.

Platinum Gentlemen’s Lounge will be open until 4am on Thursday through Saturday, and until 2am on other nights.

Source: Jan. 28, 2010 SCN

I love strippers. The whole concept is wonderful. When I think about the low lights and the bumping bass and constant motion of a strip club I smile. Maybe it is just because I am a guy but the idea of a dozen or so women in various states of undress writhing and grinding in wanting ways for just my arousal is one of the top five things I can picture for any days plans. I really love strippers. But outside of dating a few in my early twenties, I never really stopped to think about the mental landscape they must live in. Then I read Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman.

This book is a fast firing flash fiction about womanhood, sexuality, exploitation, emotional evolution and the world of stripping. It is the tale of Natalie, a thirty something mother who retraces the steps of teenaged beauty pageantry and stripping to search for the first woman she slept with. The trail takes the reader on a ride through time that reveals a life of emotional abuse, squalor and eroticism.

It makes the reader think about the lives of strippers and the esteem issues inflicted on women in a world that tells them that they have to be beautiful. It asks serious questions about the effects our sexuality has on our lives.

Without becoming porn, this book looks truthfully at the world of strippers and gets quite saucy. The shifting point of view keeps the reader feeling like they are flowing in and out of the consciences of the narrator. It forces you to wonder how you would feel if you were 17 and your high school principal just walked into the strip club you work at. It keeps a dark subject light in the right places by reviewing stripper tips, like stripper tip #6: underarm deodorant glows under black light or stripper tip #11: smoking pot in the bathroom only makes the night drag on forever.

Sure there are plenty of dirty words to keep your attention and at least two sex scenes that will make you look around to make sure you are alone while you read it, but better than that is the underlying understanding of the story. It is a story about the scars sexuality can leave on us, and how those scars shape us into the sexy little beasts we become. It is also about the connections that you make in life and how things change over time. It is a story about real life and I am glad I read it
Source: Written: Jan. 28, 2010 scn

BEDFORD – New Hampshire’s first and only strip club has changed hands.

Mark’s Showplace, at 390 S. River Road, today officially became The Gold Club restaurant and gentlemen’s club, a chain based in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

The club, about a quarter mile from the Merrimack line in an industrial zone, got a face lift in preparation for tonight’s grand opening, but the entertainment remains the same, according to Michael Rose, The Gold Club’s vice president and chief operating officer.

Dancers at Mark’s wore g-strings and pasties to get around the law, and those at The Gold Club will have to do the same. Bedford’s ordinance banning nudity still applies.

Mark’s Showplace created big waves when it announced plans to move into this upscale bedroom community in 1999. The town got a temporary restraining order to prevent the club’s opening but eventually had to allow it after Police Chief David Bailey determined that partial nudity did not violate the ordinance.

This time around, according to Rose, 38, things weren’t so difficult.

“The town has been very welcoming to us, actually,” he said.

There is, however, one issue that could present a problem. Town law prohibits adult entertainment venues and other establishments that serve alcohol from staying open past 1 a.m. The Gold Club stays open until 2 a.m. Sunday-Thursday and until 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

The club does not plan to serve liquor past the legal cutoff of 1 a.m., Rose said. On the weekends, it will operate in the early-morning hours as “Club Insomnia,” featuring a “Legs & Eggs” buffet beginning at 2 a.m.

Bailey, the police chief, could not be reached for comment because he is on vacation this week.

Town Manager Russ Marcoux said he can’t speculate on whether the hours or any procedures at the new club violate town law. The police chief has asked the new owners to put the changes in writing, and those will be reviewed when they’re submitted, Marcoux said.

“If there is a problem, I’ll assure you, we will address it,” he said.

Marcoux said the town never had any problems with Mark’s Showplace while it was in business.

“They’ve always been, believe it or not, a good neighbor in this town,” Marcoux said.

The Gold Club will be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. The club has multiple stages, a bar, VIP rooms and a mini-nightclub that can be booked for private parties. Renovations included new paint, carpets, furniture, lighting and sound and video equipment. The grand opening starts at 6 tonight.

The club has technically been under The Gold Club’s ownership since Dec. 14, according to day Manager Mike Pombrio, 24, but the Mark’s Showplace name was intentionally left in place prior to the grand opening.

On Wednesday afternoon, two men hoisted in a cherry-picker outside were changing the sign. Inside, a handful of customers milled about. A single dancer was on stage, still costumed.

The main room is dark with multicolored lights mounted to the ceiling. There’s a bar along the left wall and a big center stage surrounded by small round tables with zebra-patterned chairs.

Mark’s Showplace was modeled after a club by the same name in Portland, Maine. Owner Mark Deane sold the Portland club, which was later renamed, about 20 years ago. About a decade later, he opened the Bedford location.

“I felt there was a need, and there wasn’t one in the area,” said Deane said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Deane, 56, who lives in Portland, sold the Bedford club about a year ago to spend more time with his wife, who had terminal cancer, he said. The new owners then sold it to The Gold Club.

The name of the most recent past owner is unknown, as is the reason for selling.

Deane said business at the club was good. He recalled having a great relationship with most people in town after the initial firestorm died down.

“It was a great business. The people were great,” Deane said. “Their concerns were addressed, and I had a great relationship with everyone from the police chief to the fire chief. Every town official.”

Source: nashua telegraph
Thursday Jan. 21, 2010
By Ashley Smith