ADULT BUSINESSES

A new adult business license took effect July 1 in Cape Girardeau. The license didn't seem to stir many feathers or turn many heads.

The one business that prompted the new ordinance, a strip-tease bar called Regina's House of Dolls, remains very much in business without the new license. It seems as if the business is just thumbing its nose at the city's authority.

Does this inaction signal that the city's bark is worse than its bite?

Many Cape Girardeans protested the opening of the strip-tease bar. But city councilmen said that, under Missouri statute, the city couldn't prevent Regina's from opening. It has been tried before, and cities have lost in court.

The ordinance added a lot of rules and red tape to the operation and perhaps an encouragement to look elsewhere. But if the deadline passes without any action, what message does that send?

Only one Cape Girardeau business, a video store, and its manager, applied for an adult business license. Police aren't even clear if that store needed to apply for a license.

That could stem, in part, from a convoluted ordinance. The 16-page ordinance is somewhat vague and very restrictive. It not only requires that an adult business get a license, but mandates that all managers, servers or entertainers receive a separate license.

The city has already taken a dancer and the club manager to municipal court for violating other provisions of the new law. A dancer was found guilty of receiving a monetary tip directly from a customer and dancing within 10 feet of customers, two items strictly banned by the law. The manager has been charged with failing to keep dancers at least 10 feet from the customers. His case is pending in municipal court.

There is little doubt this whole affair is headed for a court battle. The club's attorney has maintained from the beginning that the adult business ordinance is unconstitutional.

Let's just get on with it.