Strip-Club Owner, Tired of Grind, to Sell
After more than a dozen years, Skip Arthur has decided to stop trading on the unbridled hormones of young Marines: He’s putting his Oceanside girlie club up for sale.
It’s called the Play Girl, for years the North County’s only teen-age strip bar. But the chain-smoking Arthur, whose face is an urban road map of character lines, has another name for the joint.
“It’s a gold mine,” he says, sitting in his downtown Oceanside office, the one with the bars on the windows. “You know how many young guys paid $5 a shot to pass through my turnstiles this weekend?”
Two hundred?
“Naw, guess again,” Arthur croaks, a cigarette dangling from his lips, its two-inch ember hanging precariously, with an ash tray nowhere in sight. Then he holds up a calculator, which shows the figure 532.
“That’s how many, buddy. Do your homework. Figure it out for yourself.”
But, wait a minute, this is Skip Arthur, the slick businessman who for years has battled city red tape to leave his stamp on Vista and Oceanside--owning a massage parlor, adult bookstore and X-rated dance club.
In a cloud of cigarette smoke, he lays it all out for you.
Arthur doesn’t care who buys the club--either some crafty businessman looking to make a killing on the go-go trade or the city of Oceanside, in an effort to continue the cleanup of its infamous downtown area.
Just as long as the buyer meets his $650,000 asking price.
“The club’s been good to me and relatively trouble-free,” he said, his gray hair slicked back like some 1940s gangster. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running a go-go club.
“It’s over. You might say I’m moving on to bigger and better things.”
Reasons for the Play Girl’s success are simple, Arthur says. Running a go-go bar near Camp Pendleton is like owning one of the few hen houses in a town of hungry wolves.
Patrons need only be 18 to enter, a fact that has made the downtown club a hangout for often-lonely, under-age Marines who are too young to get into clubs that serve liquor and enforce a 21-year-old age limit.
And, although they don’t serve alcohol there--only soda pop and near-beer for $2 a glass--the Play Girl is open until 5 a.m. on weekends, clear up to morning reveille.
After his purchase of the business in 1977, the entrepreneur made the Play Girl one of the few all-nude clubs in the county after winning a legal battle with the city to maintain the business as a topless and bottomless bar.
But now, the 55-year-old Arthur has grown a bit weary of watching his girls do their nightly bump and grind. Lately, his eyes have been drawn elsewhere.
There’s greener pastures to plow, better opportunities on which to cash in--including an adult apparel and toy store he plans to open in Oceanside, along with a new line of women’s cosmetics he and his wife want to begin distributing nationwide.
There’s even a hotel on the Oregon coast that’s caught his attention--all of which have made the Play Girl an expendable distraction.
Like some cigar-chomping carnival hawker, Arthur’s business sensibilities have kicked into gear, as if to say to club patrons: “Get lost kid, ya bother me.”
In a recent newspaper classified ad for the “non-alcoholic nude dance entertainment” business, Arthur billed the club as an “absolute gold mine next to huge Marine base.”
The ad has already inspired a half-dozen serious offers, he says--not only from unnamed local interests, but from some Los Angeles-area businessmen who he says will visit the premises this week.
The most serious potential buyers, he says, plan to keep the club exactly what it is--a magnet for young Marines with little else to do than play pool, knock back a few sodas and have a chat with a pretty girl.
But Oceanside city officials say they, too, have been negotiating with Arthur over rights to the property.
In May, the city paid $6,500 for an appraisal in the hopes of razing the building and making the site a cornerstone of its downtown redevelopment. It would be, officials say, another step at cleaning up Oceanside’s image as a sleazy Marine town.
Deal Went Sour
But the deal, Arthur says, fell through after the city demanded to examine the tax documents of not just the Play Girl club, but of Arthur’s other business ventures as well.
“It’s just too bad,” Arthur said, standing in front of a huge neon sign featuring a beckoning, buxom woman.
“I was willing to sell the place to the city, allow them to shut it down, no questions asked,” he said. “But they piddled around, and that’s unfortunate. Because they probably won’t be able to buy it now.”
City Atty. Charles Revlett said, however, that the city is drafting a written offer to Arthur this week in the hopes of working out a deal.
“Based on our appraisal, however, we have a substantial difference of opinion in the value of the property,” he said.
Revlett would not disclose the amount of the city’s offer and said no plans have yet been made for the site--even if the deal went through. But other officials said plans call for leveling the building and replacing it with a city landmark.
Councilwoman Melba Bishop had a bittersweet reaction to the news of the club’s potential sale.
“It depends on what the new owner uses it for,” she said. “If it’s the same thing, what have we gained, what will change?
“But if you’re asking me, ‘Would I like the Play Girl out of Oceanside,’ the answer is ‘Yes.’ I don’t like the distinction of having the only teen-age nude spot in North County. It’s embarrassing.
“We’re just hoping that the turnaround in the city’s redevelopment area will make that type of business obsolete.”
Several Marine Corps patrons said, however, that they fear the loss of the Play Girl would put scores of eager servicemen on the streets of Oceanside each night with nothing to do.
“This side of town would die,” said Bob Henning, a 21-year-old lance corporal who works as the club’s night doorman. “Most of the guys up on base aren’t 21. This is the only place they can come in, see some nude dancers and have some fun.”
As Henning talked, 21-year-old dancer Alicia Davis sat on the bar beside him dressed in black bikini bottoms and bra, hand-feeding him french fries from her hamburger plate.
That’s just what Neil Bischler likes about the Play Girl--friendly dancers. The 21-year-old Illinois native, who wears his hair in the serviceman’s brush cut, frequents the club at least five nights a week, whether he has to hitchhike, take a bus or bum rides from friends.
He sat at the bar, nursing a soda. Nearby, several Marines played pool. Two others nervously asked a dancer named Brandy for change to play video games, blushing when she touched their hands.
As erotic dancers go, none of Arthur’s three girls were seasoned pros. Like Davis, they were newcomers to the trade. They pranced about the runway, gazing into their own reflections, giggling as though providing antics at some risque high-school slumber party.
Still, in the back room, a manager who called himself Bill leaned against the wall in a rickety kitchen chair, marveling at the Play Girl’s business. Although 90% of the patrons are under-age Marines, the club also attracts businessmen, seniors--you name it, he said.
“I just don’t get it,” said the 37-year-old ex-stockbroker, who took over as manager when Arthur fired his entire staff two months ago.
“I’m stunned at the number of people who come in here in a night. When I found out these guys paid $2 for a Coke, it just blew my mind. And some buy four or five a night!
“And Skip doesn’t even advertise. If I bought the place, I’d do a little cleanup and put the word out. Business would triple.”
Bischler explained the club’s draw.
“It’s better than nothing. And it sure beats sitting on the base all the time with nothing to do,” he said.
Its present owner says the 28-year-old Play Girl club has become part of Oceanside’s military history--a business that will be welcome in North County as long as the Marines Corps calls the place home.
“These kids are out there ready to give their blood and get killed for us,” Arthur said. “The least we can do is offer them some quality entertainment when they’re at home. It’d be a crying shame to tear the place down.”
Councilwoman Bishop, however, said she can name a few other things a young Marine could do with his time other than hang around money traps like the Play Girl.
“I’d direct them to the YMCA or several of the churches in town,” she said. “They all have youth programs for young men of all ages.
“I just don’t buy the argument that sitting around watching girls take their clothes off is the only thing a young Marine has to do in this town.
“And I don’t think their mothers would either.”
