The Seattle Mariners are considering a lawsuit to prevent a new
Déjà Vu strip club from opening a half-block south of
Safeco Field, despite a decision by the city to grant the club a permit. The team has until Christmas Day to sue.
The Mariners argue that the strip club shouldn’t be allowed near the
stadium under a 2007 city law that prohibits adult cabarets within 800
feet of community centers, parks, and certain spots where kids
congregate. (The legislation came in response to a federal court ruling
that an 18-year citywide “moratorium” on strip clubs constituted an
illegal ban.) The city found that the stadium was a “spectator sports
facility,” not a park or community center, and issued the permit on
December 4.
“The city has taken every single one of the Mariners’ arguments and
said they are wrong,” says Déjà Vu attorney Peter Buck.
“A judge no longer has to ponder how the city would respond to these
things.”
As a homo, I had never set foot in a strip club. So, to see the harm
these things are doing to the children, I chose a club near a place
where lots of kids congregate: the Déjà Vu across the
street from Pike Place Market. Standing on First Avenue, I watched a
horse pull a carriage loaded with three kids past a 15-foot-tall pair
of backlit legs in fishnet stockings. But the kids didn’t look. They
didn’t point. They apparently didn’t even notice.
Upstairs, a woman shook her nether-parts in my general direction.
The strippers on the dimly lit stage were bottomless and so was my cup
of orange Fanta (alcohol isn’t allowed in Washington strip clubs).
Large men in larger coats looked on as naked and nearly naked women
made the rounds offering lap dances like friendly waitresses pouring
refills of coffee. I chatted with a blond stripper who had a kid 11
months ago. The crowd was calm, the bouncers were cool, and zero
children were inside. It occurred to me: The opposition to this place
isn’t about the harm it might do to kids inside; it’s about the moral
high ground of adults outside.
And the Mariners are standing on very low high ground. In May,
Mariners manager John McLaren told the AP, “I think they brought a
stripper in the clubhouse” to distract the players from their lousy
record.
So strippers are okay in the clubhouse but not down the block
from home plate.
Meanwhile, during games, Safeco Field is brimming with cups of beer
and draped in a 360-degree assault of ads for booze. “If they are
worried about morality, they should be worried about excessive use of
alcohol in front of children,” says Buck. The Mariners also have no
problem with the women who chug beer and flash their breasts at bars
like Sluggers across the street—and the drunk men who ogle them.
But when it comes to strip clubs—which, frankly, aren’t much
different than places like Sluggers—the Mariners cry foul, not
wanting to admit that the fans who pack Safeco Field are the same folks
who might buy a lap dance after the game.
Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale couldn’t explain exactly how a
strip club would hurt the team or fans. “The city has laid it out very
clearly,” she says, referring to the 2007 city law regulating strip
clubs. According to a city analysis that accompanied that ordinance:
“There is some evidence that the presence of adult uses may correspond
with increased levels of crime in an area, including sex-related crimes
such as prostitution.” But that evidence is based solely on reports
from other cities.
“There was no compelling evidence that the few strip clubs in
Seattle showed a disproportionate level of illegal activity or
citations” for prostitution or drug dealing, says former city council
member Peter Steinbrueck, who sponsored the 2007 legislation.
Indeed, according to a 2006 study of crime associated with Seattle
strip clubs conducted by researchers at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, “Crime does not tend to accompany, concentrate around,
or be aggravated by the adult businesses.”
Nonetheless, any time someone proposes opening a strip club, the
morality police scream that it doesn’t belong in their neighborhood.
But the Mariners’ neighborhood, Sodo, is about as un-neighborhood-like
as Seattle gets. If not there—on the brink of industrial
lands—then where? 
Too true. I personally hate Strip Clubs, so why not place them somewhere I’d also never be caught dead anywhere around… a baseball field.
This is about economics, not morality. The Mariners corporation does not want to lose the family ticket holders from the East Side that view strip clubs as a sign that an areas is sleazy, run-down and dangerous -or at least something they do not want to walk by. (That is why they live across the lake after all). When the economy tanks, Joe sixpack might not be able to afford season tickets but affluent families still will.
this article is lazy and opinionated. Thanks for wasting my time.
Nothing to do with this article, but why do your friggin comment squares appear and disappear when I try to read them. Drivin’ me nuts!
I think my favorite line is “But that evidence is based solely on reports from other cities.”
very well put. as a stripper (from seattle, live in dallas), i appreciate any and all attempts to defend our (dis)honor. thank you!
If the litter, homeless junkies, crackheads,and downtown funk-smell doesn’t keep families away from the stadium, I seriously doubt one more stripclub will even be noticed by the wide eyed suburbanites enough to keep them away from the stadium. If the mariners really want to keep people coming to their games, they should focus more effort (and that money they’re spending on this suit) one actually winning games- not lawsuits.
For God’s sake, doesn’t the Stranger ever put out a different kind of article?
“(Money-making body) is clearly oppressing (the morally dubious and/or minority group) by (buying their domain name/selling their condos to yuppies/refusing a permit). However, (money-making body) is the REAL hypocrite in this case, because (someone once saw titties, once/drugs are great/strippers are great).”
After all, the strip club in this case isn’t some Ma and Pa Kettle operation that’s being pushed around by the evil gentrifiers. It’s Deja-fucking-Vu, a slick mass-market chain that’s just as profit driven and soulless as the stadium.
So don’t write this crap and pretend it’s in defense of the strippers, or women’s rights, or a blow against the city’s pointless zoning laws.
I’m really getting to the point where I would like to just knock-up an ex-cheerleader, buy a McMansion, a golden retriever, and drive a Hummer. That way I wouldn’t be in a demographic that reads this pointless drivel, then pumps their fists and go ‘right on!’
This shit’s getting embarrassing.
I used to live at the Harbor Steps when my son was 3. We walked past Deja Vu every day. One day as we walked past he asked, “Mommy, how come we never go to that restaurant?” He is scarred for life.
The real obscenity is taxpayer funded sports arenas.
Dom – was waiting for a review of the tits and ass, you mised the real reader interest.
Here or there or somewhere, not much news value in this tit for tat…
Where do we go to see naked men? Oh, now that should be right next door … what happens if the dick gets hard during the act?
Inquiring minds ….
Who knows. If it goes through maybe the Mariners might be able to pick up someone worth watching in a neighborhood trade.
you call that a strip club?
Teaching the kids what hypocrits we are is an indispensible tool in learning and development. We care. We know in our hearts that trivialized sex is demeaning and encroaches on something precious. We know we cannot protect them forever, but we’d like to try at least at the ballpark. Who knows, maybe someday the ozone, as Keith Richards puts it, “will unzip” and we’ll all go out to the ballpark together for one more rally with the folks.
I’d be opposed to them opening another Deja Vu near Safeco too, but not because I hate strip clubs. I love strip clubs! But sorry kiddies, the Vu ain’t where it’s at. Generic, crowded, expensive… Could we make a requirement that any new strip joints at least be *interesting*?
I agree with coop and the other useless douchbags that this article is especially bad and the stranger needs to have a little huddle and figure out why they dont catch these terrible articles.
Hahaha… I don’t even live anywhere near seattle or even washington for that matter but this was pretty funny I think.
On a somewhat related note, a strip club right down the street from my house got busted for prostitution and guess who the door man was? The motha effin mayor of my city. No shit.
Google search “Bare Essence Prostitution Bust Denver”… its pretty hilarious.
Safeco Field is brimming with cups of beer and draped in a 360-degree assault of ads for booze.
Beautiful comment. Glad you pointed that out. Let’s face it: Baseball games are drunkfests which send hundreds of drunk drivers out onto the streets after every game. On the highway, I’d far rather face the fellow who just spent an hour looking at titties than the one who spent two hours crying in his beer over another Mariners loss.
The team should focus on winning a game once in a while, and leave zoning to the professionals.