Rock Stars vs. Diamond Dolls
Two of the Bay area´s all-time favorite minimum-contact sports — litigation and exotic dancing — collided again back in June, when it was announced that a cadre of famous musicians (including Creed´s Scott Stapp, Poison´s Bret Michaels, and Janet Jackson) were suing Clearwater strip joint Diamond Dolls. The technical truth was this: BMI, a company that collects and administers the royalties due whenever a songwriter´s music is played on the radio, by a cover band or, say, during a pole-dance, was suing the Bay area flesh palace for not passing along some of those one-dollar bills to pay for licensing fees. But that really doesn´t sound as newsworthy as ¨MTV Icons Target Topless Tavern over Taken Tunes,¨ or whatever, so there you go. The more attention-grabbing angle garnered pop-culture press worldwide. Diamond Dolls settled shortly thereafter, but not before the story ratcheted up yet another notch for Florida´s reputation as a perennial hotbed of weirdness (and bolstered Tampa´s rep as America´s strip-club Mecca).
