Anti-topless squeeze play:
Local Little Leagues are calling foul on a topless nightspot — Mystique Gentlemen’s Club — that’s trying to get a liquor license reportedly to “expand” its operations at 75 Clarkson St. That’s right near Pier 40 at West Houston St., hallowed home of the co-ed kids’ leagues’ main playing field. The presidents of both the Greenwich Village Little League and the Downtown Little League wrote protest letters to the State Liquor Authority earlier this month right before an agency hearing on the license application. “Each and every day, hundreds of children will walk by this establishment on their way to baseball practices, games and clinics as part of our after-school baseball programs that begin at 4 p.m. for the younger divisions and often end at 10 p.m. for the older divisions,” G.V.L.L.’s Daniel Miller wrote, adding, “We are very concerned that granting a liquor license to a strip club in the midst of the busiest intersection of children’s outdoor activities in Downtown Manhattan will make our family-oriented neighborhood and, most importantly, our children less safe, many of whom walk to and from practice at Pier 40 on their own.” Added Bill Martino of D.L.L. in his own letter to the S.L.A., “Expanding Mystique would expose those kids to sexualized ‘red light district’ imagery, rowdy partygoers and alcohol consumption. Surely there is a better location for such an establishment than right across from a principal youth park and family recreation area.” We happened to be walking down Clarkson St. ourselves a few weeks ago (no, we weren’t planning to go see a strip show!) and noticed that 75 Clarkson St. — which had been a strip joint since a few years before the Pier 40 courtyard ball field opened — was closed and its windows covered with newspaper. It was called the Carousel club in its strip club heyday, if we recall correctly, but the name on the door was now “Santa’s Luncheonette.” We checked next door at the XXX-rated video store to see what we could find out. The cashier there told us she’d heard the plan is indeed to have stripping at the new club — with separate gay and straight nights — but only a few nights a week, and that it would be “a normal dance club” the rest of the time. She said the two partners behind the new hot spot, “Matt and Carlos,” have gotten some good press as “hip young entrepreneurs,” and suggested we check online for articles about them. Well, it turns out Matt and Carlos are none other than Matt Kliegman and Carlos Quirarte, the guys behind The Jane Ballroom, and that the name of their planned quasi-nouveau burlesque club is Westway. They’re known for a couple of things: namely, their places being super-cool “destination clubs” — and also their beards. Describing Westway’s intended vibe, Quirarte told Women’s Wear Daily: “The fact that it is a topless, go-go dance place is secondary. It’s the same way that music is sort of in the background. That’s how we think of it.” Or as Guest of a Guest New York Web site described it, they’re just trying to do an ironic take on “the whole Bada Bing T&A thing.” But the only “Bada Bing” you might hear at Pier 40 is the wholesome baseball chatter when a batter’s up and his or her teammates are cheering for a little “Bada Bing,” as in a base hit. And the only “T&A” the Little Leagues want to know from are T-ball and the A’s. In short, Matt and Carlos could end up looking like real “boobs,” if they follow through with this overly “titillating” plan.
Can’t get no Scoopy satisfaction:
A Rolling Stones fan begs to differ with Sean Sweeney’s dig in last week’s Scoopy’s Notebook that “vandalizing public walls must run in the family” for Keith Richards and his model daughter Theodora, who was busted last week for graffiti and drug possession in Soho. A California woman posting a comment on our Facebook page (“The Villager Newspaper”) as “rubytuesday” writes, “Au contraire, Keith Richards wasn’t arrested for the petrol station incident in 1964. Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones were.” Sweeney had been referring to Page 253 of Victor Bockris’s 1993 “Keith Richards: The Biography,” where Richards is quoted boasting, “We’re still the only rock and roll band busted for peeing on a wall.” When we told Soho activist Sweeney of “rubytuesday”’s comments, he conceded, “Indeed it was a petrol station and I don’t remember who was and who wasn’t specifically arrested. Richards says ‘we’ in referring to the arrest in his bio. But your commenter seems certain.”
