Clubs

It was only a matter of time before the strip clubs and cabbies went to war. Las Vegas' fortunes, which have fallen along with the nation's, can be measured in shorter lines at the airport, sparse crowds at the roulette tables and lighter traffic on Interstate 15. But the recession has also strained the "green handshake" culture, where businesses trade cash and favors for recommendations from doormen, concierges, limo drivers and cabbies.

The campus banquet room is reserved, the gelato ices are on tap and the students are hoping for red, white and blue balloons over the archway. But for the first time in years, the Republican club at Biola University, a conservative evangelical Christian college, doesn't know whether its election party will be a celebration or a wake. "It would be really great if McCain pulls it out, but if not, our party is going to be over by 8:15 p.m.

The Body Shop, a landmark strip club famed for giving Sunset Boulevard nude dancing and hundreds of struggling actresses work, was shuttered Wednesday after a dawn fire burned through its roof. A cleaning crew discovered smoke billowing from a side door of the West Hollywood building when they arrived at 6:45 a.m. No one was inside when the blaze began in the attic, the owner said. The kitchen, dressing room and office were seriously damaged.

Lori Richardson perused the book shelves, picking up one book for consideration and then another. At first glance, there was little that appeared to tie the widely varying authors and genres together. But a closer inspection revealed shelf tags and signs promoting local book club selections. Richardson, a book club member herself, was looking over some of the selections of the more than 60 reading groups registered at Village Books, a 27-year-old landmark in this northern Washington town.

Oprah Winfrey turned to an old acquaintance for her first new book club choice since the James Frey scandal a year ago, announcing Friday that she had selected Sidney Poitier's "The Measure of a Man."

Michele Raucci, a successful financier, needs just the right car when he's off to a swank party or a weekend of truffle hunting and wine tasting. Something to match his outfit, his mood. Maybe a red Ferrari F430 one day, a sporty Lamborghini the next. He's in luck. Raucci belongs to a new club in Milan that caters to the whims of the wealthy, offering them the option of borrowing instead of buying the latest model automobiles, sleek yachts, villas, helicopters and fine art.

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.

It's not often this urbane metropolis gets compared to a small town with repressive mores. But that's the sentiment among a band of local dancers, who last week lost a fight to overturn a Prohibition-era law that bans social dancing in New York outside of specially licensed venues. "It is right out of that movie 'Footloose,' " said Paul Chevigny, a New York University Law School professor who represents the dance advocates.

THE house is so quiet you can hear the clocks tick, except on those weekends when the mothers come in from around the country. Then the clocks are drowned out by all the chatter as everyone takes turns in the kitchen. Emogene Cupp, 87 -- her boy Bobby stepped on a land mine near Da Nang and was buried on his 21st birthday -- makes a pea salad that is out of this world.

WAS there life before Rehab? I'm really not convinced. It's hard to remember what Vegas' beautiful night-life elite did on scorching Sunday afternoons before the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino dropped this bit of genius on us in 2004. I certainly don't think they were going to church.