San Bernardino seeks to bounce strip club
In case anyone is confused, Ryan Welty likes to point out that the Flesh Club is not a Christian Science Reading Room, nor is it a church or high-minded civic organization.
"We are not a sympathetic member of society," the club owner concedes. "There are naked ladies in there. It's a very sexually charged atmosphere."
That's putting it mildly, San Bernardino officials say. They allege the strip club is little more than a front for a brothel. Patrons go there for sex, they say, not to see a show.
"I don't think any city would tolerate that, and neither will we," said San Bernardino City Atty. James Penman.
But proving it is something else. For 12 years, San Bernardino has targeted the Flesh Club, and for 12 years the club has escaped largely unscathed. The latest legal effort, a criminal prosecution, to close the place is scheduled to wrap up in court this week.
The red brick club sits in the middle of busy Hospitality Lane -- arguably the nicest commercial street in an otherwise struggling town -- with a big sign proclaiming "Flesh Showgirls, Total Nude, Open 7 Days."
Its very presence seems to taunt a city that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and launched many covert operations to expose illicit sexual activity within its dimly lighted rooms.
Over the years, according to court testimony, authorities have tried repeatedly to trip up the club:
* Undercover police officers, sometimes in wheelchairs to hide cameras, filmed dancers who appeared to be having sex together;
* A former porn star-turned-private eye was recruited to get a job as a stripper and gather intelligence. After three days she concluded the club was "a house of prostitution";
* A former Flesh Club dancer was successfully persuaded to testify in court last year and boasted of being called the "top ho" for making $1,000 a day. Asked how often she traded sex for money, she said, "I would say for every customer."
As in all spy craft, agents were sometimes compromised.
Duane Minard, a private investigator and former Riverside County sheriff's deputy, was hired to find out what services the club's women would offer for cash.
According to his court testimony, Minard went into a VIP room with a stripper for a private $120 dance. By the time it finished he had shelled out $800 for sex.
