The St Petersburg City Council Public Services and Infrastructure Committee (PSI) met Thursday morning in part to address a concern about the bikini bars that have recently appeared in St. Petersburg.
Council member Jeff Danner referred the discussion, which sought to define the difference between a nude club and a bikini club in order to best regulate the new bikini clubs in the area.
After four different bikini clubs have cropped up in St. Petersburg over the past four months, “the concern is the concentration [of clubs],” Danner said. “A concentration will have a negative effect.”
The council members discussed the difference between bikini bars and nude clubs to figure out how to regulate the bikini bars in this city. Dancing is protected first amendment speech and when the dancers are wearing as much clothing as that of a sunbather on St. Pete Beach, it is quite hard for the city to regulate.
“It’s not so much what goes on inside as outside,” said Council member Leslie Curran. She mentioned that the problem with these clubs is the advertising outside of the club. She gave an example of the downtown St. Petersburg bikini club Bottom to the Top (B2T), that she said would have girls dancing outside to lure people from the street into the club.
Danner mentioned that to regulate bikini bars in the city it must be proven that the existence of the club is producing negative secondary effects. Bikini clubs require the same zoning permit as a nude club but lack the restrictions that nude clubs require, such as a distance requirement from schools.
Studies have been conducted on the secondary effects of nude clubs in other cities, but none in St. Petersburg and none on the effects of bikini clubs.
“How can one have an impact and one not? If we want to try to regulate dancing in the city we need to spend money for research,” Danner said.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2010.