Sex, Lies, and Videotape
I hesitated to even post this link, because if you haven't been following the Rack & Roll / Manassas Park story for a while, it is so rich and convoluted that it's almost impossible to catch up. Like starting to watch the Sopranos in the sixth season. But Radley Balko has a long update.
Here is the short answer. A group of folks in Manassas Park, VA, both in and out of the town government, want to take the land where the Rack & Roll pool club and bar sits for a lucrative off-track betting establishment. As part of that effort, they have worked to deny the owner his liquor license and his business license. The town has also harassed the club with numerous over-the-top raids, including a full-on 60-man SWAT raid. The town has in the past tried to portray the club as a haven for drug dealing, in part by having police pay the club's bouncer to allow and/or encourage drug deals on the property and then tip police to them.
The owner has been standing up for himself, and has taken to video-taping the premises at all times and recording interviews with employees and customers. A lot of the back story is here, start at the bottom.
In this most recent update, the owner addresses the other major charge being used to pull his licenses -- that he allowed lewd behavior on site, specifically girls flashing their boobs on the dance floor. He has impressive evidence that he threw out anyone he caught doing so, and instructed his other employees to do the same. In fact, the flashing seems to have occurred when the owner was not present, and was led and encouraged and photographed by the club's DJ. Ironically, the DJ is the Manassas Park vice-mayor. So the town is trying to shut the club down for activities opposed by the club's owner but encouraged by the town's own official. Bizarre. Now the town finds itself the proud owner of a file of soft-core child pornography, in the form of pictures from the club taken by their vice-Mayor of topless girls, several of whom may have been under-age (apparently VA law allows under-age patrons as long as they are not served alcohol).
