KCTV 5Kansas City strip club tries skirting totally nude law

A local strip club is getting creative to skirt restrictions on nudity.

Since 1972, Bazooka's has featured totally nude dancers in a juice bar setting. That ended in 2010 with a Missouri law that prohibits nudity in a sexually-oriented businesses. Now the club has found a new way to give people totally nude that owner Dick Snow says is in full compliance with the law.

It's called B-TV, like M-TV, with the B for Bazooka's, and the music videos involve strip-tease routines that end in the buff. While the audience watches a semi-nude dancer live on stage, they'll be watching the same dancer, fully nude, on the TV screen.

"The law motivated us to do this," Snow said of the new program, "but it might have happened anyway because they add to the entertainment value and we're always looking for innovative approaches."

Bazooka's longtime choreographer, Megan Johnson, described the move as a negative turned positive.

"I think that the law, in a way, has given us an opportunity to find a different way to communicate," said Johnson, who goes by the stage name Megan DiMoniet, a name inspired by comedian Mel Brooks.

One man behind the Missouri law, however, said Snow and Johnson are way off base on the law and trying to portray a toxic business as innocent fun.

"For them to say, now that we've put up movie screens, that we've escaped the law, that's not going to happen," said Phillip Cosby, the executive director of the American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri. "What the statute enacted is there is no total nudity."

City Prosecutor Lowell Gard said he recently examined a city ordinance that nearly mirrors the state statute and found no violation based on what Kansas City Police reported was happening. That's because total nudity on a video screen is not the same as total nudity on stage.

Gard said police told him bikini-type coverings were standard fare in the places and times required. The city ordinance prohibits total nudity, prohibits semi-nude dancers at clubs that serve alcohol and requires that those with semi-nude dancers close at midnight.

The state law also requires sexually-oriented businesses to close at midnight. Cosby argued that every strip club in the city is violating that part of the law.

"Are they a sexually-oriented business?" Cosby asked rhetorically. "That's the question and by the definition of the statute, yes they are. They are semi-nude."

Yes and no. Much of it comes down to how you read the law and its definitions.

"The law is a terribly muddy mess," Snow said.

KCTV5 investigative reporter and legal analyst Stacey Cameron examined the law and agreed there are elements too vague to enforce without facing an extended legal battle in appeals.

"The law is clear that you can't operate an adult cabaret or adult movie theater after midnight. The law isn't clear about what happens at 12:01," he said, "if they stay open and they change the way they operate their business."

That's exactly what Snow said he's doing. He said the dancers are semi-nude up until midnight. From midnight forward, he said, they wear bikinis or lingerie that covers what a bikini would. For that matter, he said, the videos after midnight are also more "covered up."

It's an example of intentions and legal interpretation at odds with each other.

"Obviously they don't want to comply," Cosby said of Bazooka's and all area strip clubs in Missouri. "But it's the law and eventually law enforcement will enforce it."

Not until a prosecutor is willing to pursue it, Kansas City Police said.

Meanwhile B-TV continues, and Megan "DiMoniet" Johnson is just as determined as Cosby to win the war.

"It drives me to excel," she said of the efforts of Cosby and other like-minded opponents. "I just want to put on bigger, better and stronger than ever."

There was a pause; then with a flip of her hair, with the drama of the performer she is, Johnson added, "The harder they push the harder we push back."

There is one important opinion still unspoken, however. The city prosecutor, after speaking to city ordinance, deferred to Jackson County in regards to the state statute. The two laws are similar but not the same.

The Jackson County Prosecutor's office spokesman said he was not aware of anyone contacting that office for analysis of the law until KCTV5 called, so there is no definitive answer from that office yet about whether the club's set-up violates state law.

Copyright 2012 KCTV (Meredith Corp.) All rights reserved.