Art apparently not in eye of beholder at Boise club

BOISE – Art night at Erotic City apparently wasn’t artistic enough.

Boise police raided the bar Monday night for violating the city’s nudity ordinance, which requires that dancers wear at least pasties and a thong unless they are engaging in a performance with “serious artistic merit.”

The gentleman’s club had challenged that ordinance by distributing pencils and sketch pads to patrons during special twice-weekly “art nights,” when the dancers performed nude.

“It’s actually pretty clear in the city ordinance that there are exemptions for dance and theater and artistic merits, but the law also clearly states that the exemption does not apply to adult businesses,” said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. “If it were an art studio and models were actually posing, that would be one thing. But these women weren’t posing. They were dancing.”

Three dancers were given misdemeanor citations Monday, but were not arrested, Hightower said.

Nationally, the line between high art, low art and nude non-art isn’t so clear, said Michelle Freridge, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for the adult entertainment industry.

“Basically, obscenity laws historically have been determined by a three-pronged test: Is it patently offensive, is it outside the community standard and does it have no socially redeeming value. It seems to me that the sketch pads were an attempt to create socially redeeming value,” Freridge said.