Reno council moves forward on plan to bar strip club lap dances, private booths

The Reno City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with new laws that would dramatically change the way strip clubs operate, including barring lap dances and private booths.

Councilman David Bobzien was absent.

Kamy Keshmiri, who owns three of the city's five clubs with his brother Jamy, reacted angrily to the vote, accusing the council of trying to regulate him out of business without proving that strip clubs create crime and blight in Reno.

"They are just trying to wipe out the whole industry is what they are trying to do," Kamy Keshmiri said. "They want people to come to Reno and not have any fun. They are addressing a problem where there is no problem."

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The council has been on a three-year effort to better regulate Reno strip clubs, believing the clubs are a detriment to downtown revitalization. Council members also want to ensure dancers aren't being exploited in the clubs and that drugs and prostitution problems are curtailed.

Keshmiri denies such activities happen in his clubs.

In addition to the operating restrictions reviewed Wednesday, the council is pursuing new ordinances that would force the four existing clubs in downtown to close and move to properly zoned industrial areas. All of the proposed changes are expected to come to a final vote by the council at the end of the year.

The draft operating restrictions reviewed Wednesday include:

• Prohibiting individual rooms or booths where private lap dances now occur;
• Significantly increasing the amount of light in the club;
• Prohibiting dancers from exposing their breasts when not dancing on stage or rubbing or 'fondling' any patrons;
• Increasing the minimum age for dancers and employees to 21 from 18;
• Requiring all dancers and employees to undergo awareness training for such things as alcohol abuse and human trafficking.
• Requiring video surveillance of all public areas within the clubs and allowing the city to have on-demand access to the footage.

Mark Thierman, a lawyer for the Wild Orchid strip club, argued the required changes would severely curtail a dancer's ability to make money and would likely put the clubs out of business. Dancers make very little in tips while dancing on a stage. They typically charge more money for lap dances at tables and even more for dances in a private booth.

In a lengthy letter attacking the city's proposals on several legal grounds, Thierman described the proposed changes as making "the city of Reno look like the oppressive government in The Handmaid's Tale," a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian regime that severely discriminates against women.

"What we want is to survive as thriving businesses," Thierman wrote. "We don't want restrictions on our business model that we know we can't live with. We don't want to fight with the city council at every meeting or to sue the city in court. We want peace, and you want peace."

Thierman pointed out several legal challenges he could bring against the city's proposed changes. He argued the required video surveillance is an invasion of privacy. And if fondling is legal outside of the clubs, it must be legal inside the clubs as long as the dancer is not in the middle of a performance, Thierman argued.

He also said the new regulations would discriminate against women because they don't apply to traveling male revue shows and because men can bare their chests without repercussion.

Louis Test, a lawyer for Men's Club, took a different tack, pointing out for the council some of the changes that his client wouldn't object to. Those changes include tightening up licensing requirements, requiring video surveillance and increasing the minimum age for dancers.

He wants to work with the city on a compromise that wouldn't hurt the club's business, saying his client wants new ordinances that would "protect the citizens, protect the girls and protect the patrons."