Naked Loopholes Turn Strippers Into Art
 

I came across a short article recently about a strip club owner in Boise, Idaho, who came up with ?Art Night? to get around a city by-law prohibiting total nudity in gentleman?s clubs.

Rather than taking an aggressive (and probably hopelessly futile) legal stance, Chris Teague, owner of Erotic City (a strip club in Boise), found a loophole in the law and used a bit of creativity to take full advantage of it.

The Boise by-law on nudity gives exclusions for ?artistic displays which include dance, ballet and dramatic performances? so every Monday and Tuesday night, Teague distributes pencils and sketch pads to patrons for the club?s ?Art Night? and encourages patrons to sketch the nude dancers as they perform their routines.

?Art Night? has been going on for two months, and surprise, surprise, he hasn?t received any complaints.

I have to give this guy some credit. He found a way to circumvent the local laws to his benefit without making any noise and without attracting any negative publicity.

Okay, so he?s probably not actually doing much for the advancement of art, per se, but I kind of admire his ingenuity.

And really, this story just highlights that question that keeps coming up: Where is that fine line, that line drawn and redrawn in the sand depending on the political tide ? When is it porn and when is it art?

Most of us agree, it?s not the nakedness all by itself that makes porn, porn.

But everyone has to draw their line somewhere, and in Boise, Idaho, city law-makers decided that total nudity in strip clubs was over the line.

However, total nudity for the purposes of artistic display is apparently okay.

The article mentions ?dance, ballet and dramatic performances.?

Dance, ballet and dramatic performances? That covers quite a bit of ground, doesn?t it? Rather than restricting nudity, the by-law seems to open up a lot of other avenues for occasions of dramatic nudity.

What?s next for Boise, I wonder? Nude ballet? How about naked poetry readings? Or perhaps naked theatre? Something tells me they?d draw a sell-out crowd if they renamed Shakespeare in the Park to Shakespeare in the Raw...

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good for the owner

You need to be banned