KITCHENER

Table dancers can strut their stuff in Kitchener's two strip clubs without any laws being broken -- as long as there's no touching.

Councillors passed a new adult entertainment bylaw yesterday that doesn't ban table dancing.

This was a change from the proposed bylaw brought before council two weeks ago that would have made table dancing illegal. At the time, strip club owners said a ban would put them out of business.

Since then, city staff have met with the club owners. The result is a bylaw that allows table dancing but still tightens rules against restricted areas for watching strippers.

Bill Popazotos, co-owner of the Doll House, was happy table dancing can continue at his club, and unhappy with other parts of the bylaw.

"We got to keep table dancing, which is good, which is essential to the business," Popazotos said.

With table-dancing, a stripper carries a small platform around the club and, for a fee , dances on it next to their table.

The new bylaw also prohibits private or semi-private areas of strip clubs.

These so-called VIP sections, where there is frequent physical contact between dancers and patrons, were already banned, but the new bylaw strengthens the language and definitions.

The bylaw says strip clubs "shall not provide or perform services in any private, enclosed, or visually restricted area including areas to which access is not available to all patrons equally, areas where lighting is reduced so that visibility is obstructed, or areas commonly referred to as VIP areas."

Popazotos said this part of the bylaw remains contentious.

"The big issue now, they are saying maybe the furniture is obstructing," he said. "We are trying to work with the city. They have been pretty good, so far."

Randy Gosse, the city clerk, told councillors that bylaw inspectors recently found the lighting dimmed so low in a section of the Doll House that nothing could be seen.

At Roxxanne's Bar and Grill, Gosse said, an inspector could not easily see into an elevated area of the bar because furniture was placed around three sides of it.

The new bylaw says no dancer shall physically contact anyone else in the club "in any manner other than ordinary and non-erotic physical contact as may be found in any business setting."

But Gosse likened enforcing bylaws in strip clubs to a game of cat and mouse.

Late last, year both strip clubs were hauled before a licensing tribunal after inspectors saw a lot of physical contact between dancers and patrons in VIP sections. The tribunal ordered both clubs to close for two weeks.

The Doll House tore down the walls surrounding its VIP area, and Roxanne's removed the semi-transparent curtains that surrounded its VIP section.

At the meeting yesterday,Coun. Berry Vrbanovic wondered if the city was going too far with its regulation of the clubs.

"Quite frankly, we are trying to micromanage this thing a little too much. That's my take on it."

But Gosse said the city is just responding to the actions of strip-club owners and managers.

"There are still problems in both locations," he said.

Popazotos said it is difficult to control everyone's behaviour in a strip club. Some patrons get drinking and want to hug a dancer, he said.

"We are trying to do the best we can," he said.

The lawyer representing Roxanne's appealed to city councillors to change the bylaw yet again to remove any definition of a "visually restricted area."

This new definition is unnecessarily restrictive," Steven McMurray said.

No area in a strip club can be obscured in whole or in part by any type of barrier, regardless of material, the bylaw says.

Sian Williams, one of the city lawyers who drafted the bylaw, said club owners are always trying to retain VIP sections in some way, and municipalities are always trying to ban them.

As instructed by council, Williams said, city staff consulted the strip clubs when drafting the final bylaw proposal, but that doesn't mean council should acquiesce to every demand of the owners.

tpender@therecord.com