CANADA — Strip club owners in Kitchener have had a rough year, mostly because they had a rough year last year. In addition to absorbing a 300-percent increase in licensing fees, the two clubs able to survive in the city have also fought to keep table dances legal. Fortunately for the bottom lines of both club owners and dancers, the city’s councilors have decided to allow table dances to continue – but with limitations. Look but don’t touch is the name of the strip club table dance game these days, now that a new adult entertainment bylaw has been passed. Club owners had begged lawmakers to change a previous, proposed bylaw, which would have banned the dances outright, claiming that such a restriction would have put them out of business.

Dancers will continue to be allowed to carry their mini-stages with them and be paid to dance next to a patron’s table, but they may not do so in private or semi-private areas of the club, where possible touching might happen without witnesses. Given that VIP sections have been illegal, the real change is in the strength of the bylaw’s wording.

Clubs are now restricted from providing or performing “services in any private, enclosed, or visually restricted area including areas to which access is not available to all patrons equally, areas where lighting is reduced so that visibility is obstructed, or areas commonly referred to as VIP areas.”

Doll House co-owner Bill Popazotos isn’t happy with the details of this agreement, insisting to local media that “The big issue now, they are saying maybe the furniture is obstructing.”

City clerk Randy Gosse think Popazotos has more important things to worry about than whether his furniture might make it hard for customers to watch a table dance. According to Gosse, inspectors found the lighting at the Doll House so low in one section that they couldn’t see anything. On the other hand, the only other club in town, Roxxanne’s Bar and Grill, has fallen afoul of precisely Popazotos’ concern, with an inspector finding an elevated area of the bar out of the line of sight due to furniture surrounding it on three sides.

In addition to remaining in the light, dancers may not touch anyone in the club “in any way other than ordinary and non-erotic physical contact as may be found in any business setting.”

Although some accuse the city of micromanaging a problem that doesn’t exist, Gosse insists that it is merely responding to the actions of club owners and managers constantly in search of a loophole. “There are still problems in both location,” he informed The Record.

What inspectors consider inappropriate amounts of physical contact between dancers and patrons, Popazotos characterizes as the result of overfriendly customers filled with Dutch courage. Even after removing the walls of its VIP area, Popazotos says that personal behavior can be difficult to control, since some patrons drink and hug. “We are trying to do the best we can,” he assures.

Steven McMurray, attorney for Roxxanne’s Bar and Grill, considers the new bylaws to include an “unnecessarily restrictive” definition of “visually restricted area,” given that absolutely no barriers of any type may be allowed to obscure any part of the club’s view line.