LA HABRA : Residents Protest Proposed Bikini Bar

More than 75 angry residents confronted businessman Steve Smith on Monday to protest his plan to open a bikini bar in a local shopping center.

“You’re going to attract scum if you bring this bar here!” Sharon Zapata yelled in front of the closed Discount 99 1/2 Cent Store that Smith hopes to convert into “La Habra Polo Grounds.”

Smith said the proposed bar, on the northeast corner of the intersection of La Habra and Harbor boulevards, would feature female dancers wearing bikinis and cater to nonsmoking men 18 years old and older. “It’ll be an upscale, real hip business,” he said. “The dancers will be dressed no different than women on the beach.”

The bikini bar cannot open without city approval. City officials said the Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on whether to grant Smith an operating license at a meeting June 27.

Outside the site, residents hurled fierce remarks at Smith. They shouted, “Pervert!” and “Pick a different town!” and “We don’t want no go-go bar!”

Some held “anti-go-go bar” and “I’d rather have a prison” signs while loudly chanting, “Not in our town!”

“Men will come out of here all hot and that will attract prostitutes to the area,” said Diana Giles, who lives 100 feet away from the proposed bar. “It will bring in an element of people we don’t want in La Habra.”

Others agreed with Giles. They said that hundreds of homes, two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school are within a mile of the proposed bar.

“This is a family place,” Shelly Zeyen said. “We don’t want our children exposed to this type of business. If this opens, I will no longer shop in this center because I don’t want my kids to see the trash.”

School officials said petitions urging the city to deny Smith a business license are circulating at Ladera Palma and Sierra Vista elementary schools and at Washington Middle School. More than 500 signatures have been collected, residents said.

“This is not the kind of business we need in La Habra,” Miguel Mungaray told Smith. “It will bring sex, drugs, loitering, urination in the streets, loud noise and will disturb everybody in the neighborhood.”

Residents argued that a bikini bar would be “morally wrong” and contended that Smith does not care about the community.

Smith countered: “Moral standards are the individual’s choice. . . . And it (the bar) will absolutely pose no threat to children.”

Resident Zona Neighbors said that if the bar opens, “it will mark the beginning of sleaze in La Habra. This city is already decaying and it’ll just turn into a total vice city.”

Monday’s confrontation did not jar Smith.

“This will only help my business when it opens because everyone will know about it and I’ll get a lot of customers,” he said.

Smith said that if the Planning Commission refuses him a permit, he will sue the city rather than appeal the decision to the City Council. He said he first applied for a permit last November, and charged that the city is deliberately delaying his request.

He said the bar would serve as a training facility for the 60 dancers he hopes to hire so they can become topless dancers elsewhere.