Visiting Topless Bars--It’s All in a Night’s Work

You might be able to spot Bob Rodriguez or Len Bachman among the customers at a topless bar. They’re the ones who are sipping beer and intently studying the dancer--without a gleam in their eyes.

Well, maybe with a slight gleam.

“At first you say, ‘I’m getting paid for this?’ But after a while it gets old,” Rodriguez said as a scantily clad dancer turned her back to her audience and rolled her hips suggestively.

“We see the same girls,” Bachman added. “We know the motions they’re going to go through. It almost gets to the point where you aren’t looking any more.”

Rodriguez, 34, and Bachman, 31, are investigators for the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and one of their duties is to make sure that topless dancers don’t reveal too much.

Life isn’t all half-naked women and beer on the expense account for members of the ABC’s small force of officers. Much of their time is spent trying to keep alcohol out of the hands of teen-agers and obviously drunken adults and cracking down on rowdy bars and unlicensed liquor operations.

Once in a long while they even run across a moonshiner.

Seedy Taverns

It’s a dangerous job that involves spending lots of nights in seedy taverns and run-down parts of town. They never know when things will turn violent.

“A lot of people have an impression that the ABC is out there drinking and having a good time,” Rodriguez said. “That’s not true.”

Bachman broke his wrist two years ago when six men jumped him and another ABC agent as they were leaving a bar. The other investigator suffered a broken nose.

Another time, Bachman and a partner were hauling an 18-year-old out of an East Los Angeles bar when a group of patrons pulled knives. The two officers pulled their guns, and the knife-wielding customers fled. The teen-ager also got away.

“Had we not been carrying pistols, I have no doubt that they would have stabbed us,” Bachman said.

“A simple case can blow up in your face,” said Rodriguez, a former prison guard who, so far, has not been injured on the job.

Organized Crime

There are 147 ABC investigators who oversee more than 70,000 liquor licensees out of 23 district offices. Their duties include enforcing the state’s liquor laws and checking out the financing, premises and character of potential licensees.

“We’re always looking out to make sure they are not into organized crime in any way, shape or form,” said John Soderlund, a supervising special investigator at the ABC’s Sacramento district office.

A felony crime record can mean a license rejection, but not always. Depending on the crime and the applicant’s effort at rehabilitation, the license may be granted, said Soderlund and another supervising special investigator, Lee Sanders.

A licensee who violates state liquor laws can lose his license and even end up in jail. But those ultimate penalties are rarely used. Typically a first-time offender gets the choice of a license suspension or a fine, Soderlund and Sanders said.

The Sacramento district office has eight investigators who oversee licensees in six counties: Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado, Placer, Alpine and Amador.

On a recent night, there were four investigators working in two teams. Soderlund dispatched one pair to Placerville, leaving Rodriguez and Bachman to patrol Sacramento.

Good Old Boys

Rodriguez is stocky; Bachman is tall with fairly long hair and a beard. Both were wearing casual clothes. In their state-owned pickup truck with camper shell, they looked like a couple of good old boys out for a night on the town.

Because of the small number of investigators, Rodriguez and Bachman said, ABC agents spend most of their time checking out complaints: the call from the mother who says her 16-year-old son has been buying liquor at a nearby convenience market, the complaint from a wife who says her husband gets roaring drunk night after night at a local pub, the calls from people who report loud noises and a series of crimes at a bar.

On this night, Bachman and Rodriguez took photos of customers lingering outside a south Sacramento liquor store. There had been complaints that people were drinking, gambling, fighting and selling stolen merchandise and drugs outside the store. Soderlund wanted evidence of the problem to show to the store owner.

If an owner fails to get rid of such hangers-on, he can be slapped with a fine or have his license suspended under a new law that makes liquor licensees responsible for public nuisances outside their doors, Soderlund said.

After snapping the pictures, Bachman and Rodriguez drove to a run-down convenience market at which, a mother said, her teen-age son had been able to buy liquor.

The two officers pulled in front of the store, put up the hood on their truck and pretended that they had battery problems. As they waited, two teen-age boys went into the store. The officers followed and watched as one of the boys, a 17-year-old, paid for two large bottles of beer and three big bottles of malt liquor. He was not asked for identification.

The two boys were stunned when the officers stopped them outside the store, checked their identification and told them they were under arrest. They relaxed a little bit when Soderlund, who had watched the arrest from across the street, told them they were getting only citations, not a night in jail.

Bachman and Rodriquez cited the 17-year-old and the store owner. They gave the 19-year-old youth a break because he did not actually buy the liquor and did not have any cash on him to contribute to the purchase. They could have cited him for possession, Soderlund said.

The 17-year-old, he said, would probably be placed on probation by a juvenile court if he had no prior problems with police.

More than a dozen teen-agers pulled into the market’s parking lot in the half-hour or so it took the officers to write their citations and joke with a sheriff’s deputy who drove up. The word was out among teens that this was the place to buy, Soderlund said.

Many of the youths came out of the store empty-handed. Others were carrying only candy or soft drinks.

“We’re fun busters,” Soderlund said. A few minutes later he added, “When you’re out driving with your wife and kids, you don’t want them (the teen-agers) coming at you drunk.”

Back on patrol, Bachman and Rodriguez checked the identification of youthful customers outside a couple more convenience stores--finding no more underage drinkers--between visits to a two topless bars.

Bottomless dancing is banned by ABC rules, and Soderlund thinks that topless dancing is dying out. But it has been making a comeback around the state capital since the courts struck down an anti-topless ordinance in Southern California, ABC officials said.

Topless dancers must stay six feet from their audiences, Rodriguez said, and they cannot expose their genitals or pubic hair. Often the dancers wear panty hose under bikini bottoms, to make sure they don’t show too much, Rodriguez added.

It was fairly quiet at the first bar. The two dancers didn’t even take off their tops. At the second tavern, three women danced semi-topless, wearing only “pasties,” and the crowd was more enthusiastic.

The officers sipped beer and joined the rest of the audience in applause. No citations were issued. Everyone was well behaved, considering that it was a topless bar.

It was about midnight. Bachman and Rodriguez still had 2 1/2 hours to go before their 10-hour shift was over. They were working a four-day, 40-hour week. Soderlund dispatched them to check out reports of bars selling to obviously intoxicated patrons and selling after the 2 a.m. closing time.

When they get a night off, there’s one place they not likely to go. At least in Bachman’s case.

“I don’t even like to go into bars” during off-duty hours, he said. “It makes me almost feel like I’m working.”