Chinatown Merchants Unite to Fight Nude Dance Club

To Philip and Sandy Young, proprietors of a Chinatown printing shop, the mere mention of bringing nude dancing to their community is chilling.

“It will destroy our community,” Sandy Young said. “You never know what kind of people will come into Chinatown.”

Chinatown-watchers cannot remember the last time the community got as worked up or united as it has over a Nevada firm’s effort to open what it calls an “upscale” erotic dance club in the 200 block of Alpine Street.

The fact that the firm lost its bid for zoning has done little to calm residents. The would-be developer--a company with ties to two adult clubs in North Hollywood--has gone to federal court to overturn the zoning ruling.

In late March, the Los Angeles City Council, in a closed session, voted 10 to 0 to fight the lawsuit after about 500 people, including prominent Chinese American leaders, packed the council chambers to express their outrage.

Speakers condemned the nude club as a slap at the Chinese American community.

“Would you allow this kind of joint to go next door to Canter’s Deli? No! Why? Because it would hurt and possibly destroy the very special spirit of that delightful little neighborhood around Fairfax and Beverly,” said the Rev. Kenneth Yee, a pastor at Chinatown’s First Chinese Baptist Church, the largest Chinese church in the Western Hemisphere.

“To let this joint into Chinatown would be to permit the attack of an Ebola virus, injected into our very body,” Yee said.

Cheuk Choi, principal of Castelar Elementary School, added that “hundreds upon hundreds” of middle and high school students are dropped off every school day at the corner of Alpine and Yale streets, a block and a half from the proposed site.

“If the adult business is established, undesirable criminal elements will surely follow suit,” he said. “Who is going to protect the children?”

Opponents have lobbied city officials and gathered more than 7,000 signatures in an effort to kill the project.

City officials denied a building permit to the club’s promoter, 211 Alpine Street L.L.C., because an English-language school had been approved in the same block. That, the city said, violated an ordinance prohibiting adult entertainment within 500 feet of any religious institution, school or public park, or within 1,000 feet of another adult entertainment facility.

211 Alpine said the rejection was illegal because it had filed its permit application more than a month before the school did. City officials say the school completed the permit process before the nude club.

“Is it constitutional for a city to deny an adult business a permit, where the only ‘sensitive use’ that would defeat that permit application was not even in existence at the time the adult business applied for its permit?” said G. Randall Garrou, one of the attorneys representing 211 Alpine. The case is in the early stages with no trial date set.

A principal of 211 Alpine L.L.C., Michael Criddle, is also listed as an officer of Deja Vu Showgirls and Deja Vu Venus Faire, both in North Hollywood.

Hotelier Peter Kwong Jr., whose family owns Best Western Dragon Gate Inn on North Hill Street, said the unified opposition is a departure from tradition.

“Chinatown has not been known to agree on anything--what with the older and the younger generation disagreeing on everything--but this issue has brought everybody together,” he said.

At stake, opponents say, is nothing less than Chinatown’s way of life.

“Chinese culture is family-oriented,” said Philip Young, inside his shop where his two children, Casey, 9, and Holly, 7, played, their doting grandfather beside them.

After school, Casey and Holly, students at Castelar Elementary School a block away, come “home” to the family business. Until it’s time for them to go to Confucius School, where they study Mandarin and Cantonese, they play or do homework at the shop.

The overlap of work and play is a rhythm of life familiar to generations of Chinatown immigrants, and one that they cherish.

“Chinatown is a lovely little lotus garden that has been transplanted, slowly and delicately nurtured,” said Yee.

Many believe the intrusion of adult entertainment would elicit shame, especially among the elderly and women, causing them to shun the block, hurting hundreds of businesses in the surrounding area.

“Can you imagine, how they would feel, when they walk down the street here, and see a nude dancing club advertised?” asked Choi, a Chinatown resident for 30 years.

The proposed project would not only destroy that special Chinatown ambience, but also “knock down” all the “money, manpower and sweat,” the community has expended through a business improvement district, said the Rev. Yee.

As printer Philip Young walked his two children to Confucius School, he pointed to school buses letting out students at the corner of Alpine and Yale.

“We have a lot at stake,” Young said. “As a community, we have our moral standard. No matter what the outcome of the lawsuit, we are going to be on their doorstep if they’re going to try to come in.”