Escondido Eatery Goes to Court Over Gays’ Right to Dance

Owners of Panchelli’s, an Escondido restaurant frequented by gays, have gone to court against the city to preserve what they see as their customers’ First Amendment rights to dance with anyone, anywhere they choose, attorney Tom Homann said Friday.

Homann said that the city’s refusal to grant the restaurant a conditional-use permit to operate as a bar, with dancing and entertainment, is a violation of Panchelli’s customers’ “constitutional right to dance.”

Homann, a San Diego lawyer, already has challenged Escondido in court over attempts to close an adult bookstore.

“The bottom line is that small-minded bigots who disapprove of gay people are harassing and discriminating against them,” Homann said. He has filed suit asking the court to prohibit the city from enforcing the no-dancing ban.

Issue Isn’t Dancing

City Atty. David Chapman said that the issue “has nothing to do with dancing” and involves the city’s powers of zoning.

The restaurant, on South Escondido Boulevard, was denied a conditional-use permit required to change from a restaurant to a bar, “which is within the city’s powers,” Chapman said.

(The City Council first tied over whether to approve the permit, but turned it down in a second vote on the Police Department’s recommendation.)

Homann, as Panchelli’s attorney, has challenged the validity of the Escondido ordinances on the granting of cabaret (entertainment establishment) licenses and conditional-use permits, both of which are required by the city if the restaurant is to convert to a bar where more alcoholic beverages are sold than food.

The Escondido ordinances “are completely standardless,” Homann said. “That leaves the city with the absolute power; it allows the licensing authority to assume absolute authority over who can dance and who can’t, without any reason.”

Chapman said Panchelli’s has been operating as a bar--serving primarily alcohol, not food--illegally for some time. Such a change in use requires a conditional-use permit, he explained.

The city sent bar management a notice that a cabaret license is required for dancing and live entertainment to be permitted, but “we have not proceeded against them in that matter,” the city attorney said.

Chapman said that previously the city had acted in a similar case against a restaurant on Grand Avenue that had found its food business going downhill and converted to a bar without city permits.

“We closed them down,” Chapman said.

A spokesman for Panchelli’s said Friday that the restaurant had halted dancing among its patrons “for a couple of months or so” after the city notice was received but had resumed dancing recently, “because the attorney told us to.”