Fancy Footwork Used to Dodge Dancing Ban

Operators of a trendy nightspot have done a few fancy steps around a ban on public dancing that local folks demanded long ago to halt boozing and brawling at a honky-tonk hall.

A sunken dance floor off the restaurant at Chasers Bar & Grill has revived a fuss that Riverbank residents fought three decades ago when they got the City Council to prohibit any public dancing “without a valid permit.”

No valid permits have been issued since the ordinance took effect in 1962, but Chasers’ owners hope to get one from the City Council this month.

Meanwhile, they’ve danced around the ban since opening in January by calling the place “Club Fudd” and issuing private membership cards to anyone who wants to dance after a pricey dinner.

“In our opinion, the big stew over this is about as ridiculous as the name Elmer Fudd,” said Michael Dell’Osso, the restaurant’s attorney. “I hope Warner Bros. doesn’t get upset over this.”

Some old-timers worry that a return of public dancing will signal a return to the time and troubles of when Riverbank, about 10 miles northeast of Modesto, was labeled “Dance Town USA.” Big-name Western bands performed at the old Riverbank Clubhouse every Saturday night in the 1950s, attracting scores of outsiders to this farming community.

“It slopped over into the town and caused problems from rowdy people having their brawls and stuff,” recalled Lula Powers, 74. “It was a wild place, and it brought a lot of hoodlums into the town. They had fights like crazy. It was just a brawling place.”

But Chasers, with stained-glass windows of sports figures at the door and a circular fireplace to warm diners, isn’t anything like that old honky-tonk, said Michael Lencioni, the manager. The music, sometimes live and sometimes played by disc jockeys, ranges from jazz to adult contemporary to country and Western.

Chasers wasn’t able to get a dance permit before opening because this community of 8,500 residents only has three council members; two others having been recalled for unrelated reasons. A city attorney ruling that any action must be unanimous until the vacant seats are filled allowed Councilman Charles Neal to stall the permit.

Neal wants the people to decide the issue just as they did with an advisory vote to ban dancing in 1961.

But acting Mayor Madeline Davidson thinks Chasers will get its dance permit when the council is back to five members.

“It’s just a very old ordinance that was passed many years ago when it was needed, and it did the job,” Davidson said.