Council Rules Strippers Must Stay 4 Feet Away

Shoreline’s City Council has approved an ordinance requiring exotic dancers at cabarets to stay 4 feet away from the customers.

Dancers cried foul, saying it would put them out of business. One club owner threatened to sue.

The 4-foot rule was among a list of adult entertainment laws adopted Monday night by the council in this suburb north of Seattle.

“They’re trying to drive us out of business,” said Elizabeth O’Day, a dancer at Sugars, a Shoreline strip club. “My income is going down, down and down and it’s getting harder to survive. I’m proud of being a dancer.”

“The 4-foot law is not something that clubs can work with, but something to push the clubs out,” said Frank Colacurcio Jr., who owns Sugars, the only adult entertainment club in Shoreline. “It will probably shut me down.”

Colacurcio said he may file a lawsuit against the city of Shoreline. Sugars also is pushing an initiative that could radically change the new city’s government.

The measure, to appear on the ballot next spring, asks voters whether they want to elect freeholders to create a new city charter. Some of those freeholders could be sympathetic to adult entertainment and could propose less restrictive regulations.

The new law is intended to curb fondling and “lap dancing,” said Shoreline police, who say table dancers sometimes perform acts of prostitution in the dark corners of clubs.