Onward Christian Drinkers : It was like asking a feminist to wait tables at a cowboy bar

You remember the Bear Cabaret. It’s the saloon off the Ventura Freeway which has come to represent to Agoura Hills what money lenders in the temple represented to Jesus, if the money lenders had been exotic dancers. The city fathers (mothers, too) have been trying for several months now to shield its 18,000 residents from temptations offered by the Bear and have finally come up with a way to protect at least one element of its population from sin. Little children will not be allowed to drink at places that offer adult entertainment.

It’s this way. The Bear until recently had been a bar that featured topless dancing by women of abundant physical proportions. Before that, at various times, it had offered its customers Western music, female wrestling and wet T-shirt contests in a somewhat relentless effort to increase the net worth of its owner, Madeline DiTrapani, who is in business to make money, even as you and I.

The city went along with the Western music all right and even managed to tolerate female wrestling and wet T-shirt contests, but when the ladies began to boogie at the bar without the benefit of upper clothing, Agoura Hills declared war by disallowing adult entertainment within 660 feet of any freeway that might be in the vicinity.

Since the only freeway in town is the Ventura and since the Bear Cabaret is the only place along the freeway to offer adult entertainment, it didn’t take Madeline long to determine that she was being singled out by a City Council whose members equated bare breasts with mortal sin. They also did not like the fact that the area was being referred to as Sodom and Agoura.

Like many communities created by walled housing tracts, Agoura Hills considers itself, above all else, Wholesome, and it had become apparent that the Bear Cabaret was not. Unless Madeline were willing to change her disconcerting ways, she was in big trouble.

But bars along freeways do not make money without some special inducement to tempt the passing traffic, and hymns in the juke box just won’t do it. So Madeline, the clever rascal, thought about it for a while and in a flash of brilliance declared that henceforth the Bear Cabaret would be gay. Do you mean happy? No, I mean homosexual.

Well, this created one hell of a dilemma for those who don’t like gay bars any more than they like topless bars. While it is against the law in Agoura Hills to dance topless beyond the walls of your own home, it is not against the law to be gay or to be a gay who likes a little dry white wine now and then in an establishment that encourages that special trade. It appeared as though Madeline had found the golden gimmick. Let the good times roll.

People who own bars, however, are not blessed with the kind of glowing perception God gave theoretical physicists and those who write essay columns. Not content to paint the place pink and let it go at that, Madeline asked the city for permission to permit exotic dancing, either male or female, at the Bear Cabaret, which everyone by now was calling the Gay Cabaret.

It was like asking a feminist to wait tables at a cowboy bar.

The Planning Commission gave her a resounding no last week, but it is not just the no that is important here. The commissioners based their denial on a statute that prohibits adult entertainment within 500 feet of a school. Then they declared (now get this) that an aerobics center a few doors down from the Bear was a school because little children took lessons there. No! Yes.

I’m not sure what kind of convoluted logic, if any, contributed to that strange final decision by the city planners. Declaring an aerobics center a school in the first place manifests a kind of civic madness all by itself, but then how would little children be affected by exotic dancers in a bar any more than they would be affected by the bar itself?

To the best of my knowledge, Madeline did not intend for the semi-nude performers to dance up and down the street, on top of passing cars or in the parking lot. They would have conducted their pelvic virtuosities inside the Bear Cabaret itself, to the hoots, one presumes, of whatever combination of sexes happened by.

One can only assume, then, that the Agoura Hills Planning Commission decided that existing laws were insufficient to keep little children out of bars that feature adult entertainment, and so denied Madeline’s request on that basis.

The only other conclusion one can reach is that the city has involved itself in a shabby and not very subtle effort to put Madeline DiTrapani out of business; with, of course, Madeline’s help. No problem here.

The same logic that determined an aerobics center to be a school can surely be applied to an ordinance outlawing Madeline herself. Madeline, on the other hand, might counterattack by declaring her saloon a church. While the city might take on the Bear Cabaret, I doubt that it would challenge the existence of the Little Chapel of the Bear Cabaret.

They still might not allow exotic dancing, but it would be the only bar in Southern California to open the happy hour with a prayer.