Wrestling Ban May Continue

Until its zoning laws can be rewritten, the Simi Valley City Council is expected Monday to extend a temporary ban on restaurants and bars that feature mud, pudding or whipped-cream wrestling.

If approved by a four-fifths vote, the moratorium, in place since Sept. 4, would be extended for up to 10 1/2 months as Simi Valley retools its ordinances restricting salacious adult businesses.

The short-term ban was prompted by a request from Schooner’s Restaurant owner Tim Drury to allow bikini-clad women to mud wrestle at the restaurant and bar. For a few bucks, audience members could slip in the ring with the women. City Council members were worried that the activity might not stop at wrestling. Drury has since dropped his request.

The mud-wrestling moratorium, written by City Atty. John Torrance, bans all contests or exhibitions in restaurants or bars that involve at least two people in physical contact where the contestants apply a foreign substance to their bodies and perform on nonsolid surfaces.

Extending the moratorium gives city staffers time to figure out if limits on mud wrestling would best be covered by the city’s adult entertainment ordinance--which is being reworked because a federal court judge deemed it unconstitutional--or by an ordinance that deals with activities allowed at drinking establishments.

Discussions of adult businesses have made for a somewhat seamy summer in Simi Valley.

The city currently has another temporary ban on all strip joints, adult bookstores and other adults-only businesses while staffers rework the zoning law deemed unconstitutional in late August. The city is appealing the judge’s decision, which involves a years-long battle over a proposed X-rated nude dance club.

The city’s only current adult entertainment, Snooky’s bar on Donville Avenue, boasts women dancing in bikinis.