While plenty of casinos feature topless entertainment in their showroom, or a European-style pool, and there is no law that prohibits a Nevada casino from operating a gentlemen's club on premises, the prospect of a Las Vegas resort following the lead of Atlantic City's Taj Mahal, where a Scores gentlemen's club is due to open this October, seems unlikely, for a number of reasons.
As we addressed in a recent Question of the Day (see 5/4/2012), various Sin City casinos have flirted with toplessness over the years, with experiments including pastie-clad dealers (Silver Nugget), live strip teases on the gaming floor (Jolly Trolley), nude magic and after-show topless lap dances (Plaza), and a European-style pool run by a gentlemen's club (Rio). None of the aforementioned forays lasted long, however.
The main issue, as far as we can tell, isn't the exposed flesh, but rather the security issues that tend to come with the strip-club scene. The Sapphire Pool at the Rio was shut down over issues with prostitution and drugs, and several Las Vegas strip clubs have experienced high-profile shooting and beating incidents in recent years. With their precious gaming licenses on the line, few casinos would contemplate taking the risk of incurring the types of violations that could jeopardize their ability to earn gaming revenue.
It all came to a head a couple of years back, when the gravitation back to Las Vegas being an adult playground really reached its zenith. The clubs and the new "daylife" pool-party scene were spinning out of control, and a series of incidents, including an intoxicated drowning at Rehab and the shutdown of Prive at Planet Hollywood for numerous infractions, including illegal drug taking and public sex acts, all served as a wake-up call that led to a clampdown on the more extreme partying going on around town, including the banning of patrons from the stripper poles that were becoming a de rigueur feature of any hip Strip club.
While Sin City is still perceived -- and marketed -- as a place to let loose and indulge in activities that you might not ordinarily partake of at home, it's recognized that a sizeable portion of the visitor demographic (and/or its significant others) is not amenable to strippers, legal prostitution, and the like, and there's no desire to scare off the lucrative conventioneer market, for example.
Anthony Curtis was actually interviewed on this topic for an article in the Las Vegas Sun last year, when the Taj Mahal plan was first announced. He revealed that at the onset of the recession, there was serious behind-the-scenes casino talk about opening strip clubs.
"It looked like it was about to happen. It was getting real close," observed our publisher. But after the Sapphire Pool denouement, talk of casino strip clubs was shelved overnight, and we've heard no further talk of it since.
That said, should the Taj Mahal's experience with a Scores franchise be successful and a working precedent be established, it might encourage other casinos to reconsider. It should, however, be noted that unlike a regular strip club, the dancers at Scores will not be permitted to be fully topless but will be required to wear pasties, and lap dances are to be prohibited, although private VIP rooms offering "table-side" dances to seated customers will be allowed. So, even if the Atlantic City experiment goes ahead as planned, it will not involve the type of full-on topless strip club experience to be found all over Las Vegas, and some of our current casino topless revues sound like a potentially raunchier time.
If strip clubs are your thing, by the way, be sure to check out our acclaimed Topless Vegas eBook -- an indispensible and up-to-date guide to every strip club, topless pool, and adult revue in town, illustrated throughout in full color. It's full of great tips on strip club etiquette and how to avoid getting ripped off, too.
