NYC- An owner of Scores West vowed Thursday to appeal a state ruling that yanked the strip club’s liquor license because some dancers were selling sexual favors.
Calling the State Liquor Authority’s decision “politically motivated and ridiculous,” owner Elliot Osher noted that President Bill Clinton had oral sex in the White House “and they didn’t close the White House.”
Osher and his lawyer, George Weinbaum, said it would be “almost impossible” for the W. 28th St. topless mecca to survive without selling booze. Liquor is a major source of revenue for the club, they said.
On Tuesday, the SLA lifted Scores West’s liquor license on grounds that management allowed and encouraged prostitution at the 10,000-square-foot club. That followed an NYPD undercover sting operation last year in which four dancers were busted for offering pricey sex to cops – $300 to $500 for oral sex and $500 to $700 for intercourse.
In its ruling, an SLA panel called Scores West an “immediate and imminent threat to the public.” Osher denounced that as “a silly joke.”
Scores West can sell drinks until the SLA serves its owners with the ruling. The club is expected to ask the appeals court to let it serve booze while the case is on appeal. Scores East Side was not affected by the ruling.
“We’re the No. 1 club in the city and we’re a target,” Osher said. “There have been shootings in back of us and next to us and those clubs stayed open.”
“We want to go before a real court,” Weinbaum said, deriding the SLA’s three-member panel as “unfair” because witnesses could not be cross-examined.
The SLA action was the latest blow to Scores, once the dominant gentlemen’s club operation in the city with net earnings of more than $500,000 a month, records show.
Revenues at the East Side club are down, and competition from other upscale clubs, such as Rick’s Cabaret on W. 33rd St. and the Hustler and Penthouse clubs on the far West Side have eaten into the operation’s market share.
For example, Scores East and Scores West were unable to pay $3.4 million owed Scores Holding Co. Inc. last year “because of increased legal costs incurred during investigations together with revenue shortfalls,” documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission say.
Scores Holdings Co. Inc. is the publicly traded company that franchises the seven Scores clubs around the country and collects royalties from their operations.
Stock in Scores Holding Co. Inc. was trading at 0.0085, less than a penny a share, at Thursday’s market close. Osher owns the two Scores clubs along with his brother Harvey and Richard Goldring.