Lap dancing clubs, are a later development of earlier
strip clubs, where
strippers danced on stage and were paid a wage. In the 1970s, New York's Melody Theater introduced
audience participation and called it "Mardi Gras". The Melody Theater became the Harmony Theater and operated in two locations in
Manhattan for over 20 years until it was closed down in 1998. Also during the 1970s, adult film makers
Jim and Artie Mitchell had been running an adult movie house, called the
O'Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco to feature their films. But in the second half of the 1970s, with the invention of the
videocassette recorder and a proliferation of
video cassette rental stores, the demand for adult movie theaters began to plummet. Realizing that they needed a new business model for their building, the Mitchell brothers sent manager Vince Stanich around the country to explore customer-contact shows in
sex clubs. The Kopenhagen's shows were performed by a pair of naked women in a small room with about twenty men. However the club's most profitable new venue was New York Live, which was a cabaret-style strip club act with women dancing three song sets upon a stage, while usually being totally nude for the final song. Most of the strippers who were not dancing were sitting naked on customers' laps for tips. The amount of tipping rapidly increased and was then marketed as a "lap dance", and its popularity caused lines of men to regularly appear outside the theater's doors. The Mitchells hired new dancers as fast as they could to keep up with demand, and had created another sex-show innovation which gained them international notoriety and generated more money than their film business. Later in 2004, a San Francisco
District Attorney's decision to drop prostitution charges against lap dancers in the city changed the sexual culture of San Francisco and "has the potential to influence the policies of other cities". In some areas of the U.S. and Canada, local authorities began cracking down on lap dancing after reports that some clubs allowed customers to engage in
sexual intercourse or other
sexual activity with dancers during lap dance sessions. Various strip clubs have wide-ranging rules on how customers should interact with strippers.
Canada In 1973, an upmarket
Vancouver bar called "Gary Taylor's Show Lounge" employed
showgirls and strippers as
waitresses who gave a free dance with every drink. The club was raided by the police under the guise of obscenity legislation, but, in 1974, Judge Jack McGivern ruled that dancer nudity was not
obscene, which started a trend of nude dancing in bars. No contact between dancers and patrons was allowed at the club, but Gary Taylor's had a
boxing ring where the girls performed revealing
acrobatics after stripping off and then earned tips. Americans from
Washington state made the trip to the club from the United States, which at the time had stricter laws. In a landmark ruling regarding the 1994 case of Pat Mara and Allan East (the owner and manager of Cheaters Tavern), Judge E. Gordon Hachborn legally defined lap dancing and ruled that it did not contravene Canadian
public decency statutes. A number of conflicting judgements were issued in the years that followed, including decisions to close certain bars in which sex acts took place on the floor of the club and other rulings in which patrons were allowed to touch the dancers, as long as an actual sex act did not take place. This led to the displacement of strip clubs and
table dancing clubs in Canada by lap dancing clubs. In 2005, two Supreme Court of Canada rulings (
R. v. Labaye and
R. v. Kouri) decriminalized private sex clubs in Canada. On 20 December 2013, (in
Bedford v. Canada) the Supreme Court of Canada found the laws prohibiting
brothels, public communication for the purpose of prostitution, and living on the profits of prostitution to be unconstitutional. The ruling gave the
Canadian parliament twelve months to rewrite Canada's prostitution laws; in the meantime, existing anti-prostitution laws continued to be enforced. Current laws on
prostitution in Canada, introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services (including lap dancing) but legal to sell them.
Ireland In the early 2000s, lap dancing expanded rapidly in the
Republic of Ireland, building on an existing
strip pub industry. A number of lap-dancing clubs were opened in Dublin, including one by the English nightclub owner
Peter Stringfellow. Lap-dancing clubs were also opened across the country. Many of Ireland's lap-dancing clubs have subsequently closed as a result of the worsened economic climate and changes to Ireland's licensing laws in 2008. Reputational issues have also played a part in the decline of Ireland's lap-dancing clubs. Police raids took place on Irish lap-dancing clubs in 2003 in search of criminal activity as part of
Operation Quest. Efforts to distance Irish lap dancing from the
sex industry were hampered by the UK's decision in 2010 to classify its lap dancing clubs as sex establishments. Ireland's lap-dancing clubs became viewed as more expensive than their rivals overseas and more restricted in terms of the entertainment on offer. By 2012 there were five or six clubs operating in Dublin, one in Galway and one in Cork. Most lap-dancing clubs in Ireland operate a no-touching rule, and typically do not charge dancers a "house fee" to perform, instead taking a proportion of the dancer's earnings.
United Kingdom The first lap dancing club in the UK was opened in 1995. During the 2000s the lap dancing industry grew quickly, with the
Licensing Act 2003 as the only legislation in England and Wales regulating lap dancing clubs. and officially launched in 2008. It operated a code of practice for its members. According to a BBC report, as of November 2008, the association represented roughly one-third of the industry's clubs. Members included
For Your Eyes Only,
Spearmint Rhino,
Bandit Queen and
Candy Bar. In 2008, clubs were being opened at a rate of about one per week. and For Your Eyes Only and who was the president of the LDA In 2009, Three MPs undertook a fact-finding visit to a London lap dancing club at the invitation of the LDA. The association opposed the provisions of the subsequent
Policing and Crime Act 2009 which reclassified lap-dancing clubs in England and Wales as "
sexual entertainment venues" instead of "entertainment venues", introduced a licensing system for clubs and allowed local authorities to decide the number and location of lap-dancing clubs in their area. Chris Knight, vice-chairman of the LDA, said that the cost of the additional licence required to run a lap dancing club from 2010 could affect many businesses and questioned the right of local authorities to make licensing decisions on "emotive and moralistic grounds". Between 2010 and 2015, there were approximately forty-five refusals of licences for sexual entertainment venues in England and Wales, mainly on the grounds that the locality was unsuitable. The legislation provides for no right of appeal against such refusals, except on the grounds that committees have not followed correct procedure. The number of refusals, together with the costs of licence application, means that there have been few new businesses opened since 2010, with the overall number of clubs declining over time as a number of local authorities implemented a "nil limit" for new clubs. In February 2014,
Fiona Mactaggart (
MP for
Slough) asked the
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions,
Iain Duncan Smith, if he would "make it his policy not to offer job subsidies for employing teenagers as auxiliary workers in adult entertainment establishments". Her question related to employers in the adult entertainment industry being offered an incentive of over £2,000 from the
Department for Work and Pensions for every unemployed young person (aged 18–24) that they hired.
Esther McVey, the
Minister of State for Employment, stated that: "The
Welfare Reform Act 2012 ensured that vacancies which involve performing sexual activities were banned from being advertised on Government websites and a distinction was made in law to differentiate between performers and ancillary workers." The working group, headed by
Linda Costelloe Baker, consisted of academics, lawyers and politicians, and had a working period from April 2005 until April 2006. It commissioned the
market research organisation
Ipsos MORI to examine the public's attitudes towards adult entertainment, completed site visits and took evidence from a variety of witnesses. Respondents to the group's consultation included the
Church of Scotland. The group reported to Scottish ministers on 25 April 2006. The group concluded that lap dancing venues are a form of "commercial sexual exploitation...which encompasses
pornography,
internet sex chat rooms,
sex phone lines,
escort services, prostitution,
trafficking for prostitution,
peep shows, lap dancing,
pole dancing,
table dancing and
stripping". It recommended reviewing the licensing of lap dancing venues and proposed national guidelines to prevent performers from touching or being touched by customers, ensuring that activities are visible at all times, and introducing a minimum age of 18 for everyone involved. A prominent voice of opposition to a lap dancing ban was
exotic dancer Veronica Deneuve who set out to try to involve the stripping community in the discussion to inform such legislation. The
International Union of Sex Workers said that the "recommendations are flawed and would be extremely detrimental to workers and operators in the industry". The Scottish Government accepted a number of the recommendations, but it rejected the idea that licensing boards should be able to determine whether full nudity is appropriate in given locales. It also rejected the idea of a compulsory one-metre no-touching zone between dancer and customer, suggesting that this would be unenforceable. It did, however, propose to enable licensing boards to consider nude dance venues as a separate class of venue. In 2013 the Scottish Government and carried out a consultation on the regulation of "
sexual entertainment venues".
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland's first lap dancing club was opened by
Donegal businessman Jerome Brennan, who already owned lap dancing clubs in
Dundalk and
Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, mainly using dancers from Russia and the Baltic states. In 2002 Brennan opened the Movie Star Cafe, a lap dancing club in
Belfast, with dancers from Belfast and England. The Belfast club was officially opened as a restaurant to circumvent Northern Ireland's licensing laws. The opening of the club was opposed by Rev. David McIlveen, a minister in the
Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, In 2003 councillors from
Belfast City Council expressed their intention to refuse the renewal of the club's licence, A few years later Northern Ireland businessman Lawrence John organised lap dancing at a
Hooters bar, followed by a clandestine lap dancing club in Belfast in 2007. It was the subject of a report on the
BBC Northern Ireland TV programme
Spotlight in 2008 alleging that simulated lesbian
sex shows took place on the premises.
United States Some jurisdictions in the
United States outlaw lap dances and enforce a minimum distance between dancer and patron. In
Seattle, one such minimum distance ordinance was overturned by
public referendum in November 2006. Also in 2006, concerned about reports of
sexual assault and illegal stage fees, San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women recommended a ban on private rooms and booths at adult clubs in the city. However, a majority of dancers at the Commission's meetings and the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors' meetings protested against these efforts, fearing for their income and claiming that these rooms were safer than other venues. As a result, the Commission's proposed ban was not adopted by the city. However, across from Detroit in
Windsor, Ontario in Canada, lap dancing remained legal, even where alcohol was served, and sex clubs were also legal in Windsor. In 2012, the
New York Court of Appeals ruled that lap dances were not an
art form and are subject to
sales tax. ==Labor issues and job conditions==