Washington, D.C.- For some Southeast D.C. bars and other businesses with a largely gay male customer base, there really is no place like home.
Gay entertainment businesses slated to be pushed out by a new baseball stadium in the area may not be allowed to move to another part of town under a little-noticed provision in a 2001 city law regulating nude dancing in bars and nightclubs.
The law, introduced by Councilmember Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6), was intended to lift a restriction that barred nude dance clubs from moving to a different location. But one of its provisions appears to prevent such businesses from moving outside the specific zone in which they are currently located.
In the case of some O Street clubs, that provision would prevent them from moving beyond a six-square-block area currently designated for warehouses and light manufacturing. Four of those blocks are reserved for the stadium and the remaining two blocks are designated for stadium-related development.
"As I have been saying for nearly a year, the law needs to be changed to allow the gay businesses to move to another part of the city," said veteran D.C. gay activist Frank Kameny [pictured].
Efforts by Kameny and other activists to persuade D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and the D.C. Council to change the law were overshadowed last week when Williams asked the Council to postpone voting on the lease for the stadium.
Williams postponed the vote after it became obvious that a majority of the Council would vote against the lease.
Gay D.C. Councilmembers David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) were among members saying they would vote against the stadium deal because of escalating building costs.
Concern is growing
"As far as I'm concerned, they can delay it as long as they want," said Cliff Witt, a manager at the O Street gay bar Secrets. "I hope they delay it to death."
Secrets is one of six gay businesses that have operated in the Half Street area of O Street, S.E., for more than 20 years, in what Kameny and other activists have referred to as a unique "gay" entertainment district. The businesses include two nightclubs featuring nude, male go-go dancers; a bathhouse; an adult movie theater featuring male burlesque dancers; and an adult video arcade.
Zoning laws and restrictions on bars or nightclubs offering nude dancers make it difficult for the O Street businesses to find new homes, owners and employees have said.
Williams already has invoked the city's eminent domain law to evict the clubs from their O Street location as early as Feb. 1. If the Council refuses to approve the stadium-lease agreement at its Jan. 2 session, the eviction date is likely to be postponed.
Stadium-related development also is expected to displace three popular nightclubs three blocks north of the O Street clubs.
Nation nightclub, at South Capital Street, between L and K streets, S.E., which hosts the Saturday night gay dance party Velvet Nation, and Wet and Edge nightclubs, which share a building at Half and L streets, S.E., are slated to be displaced by office buildings or hotels.
A real estate developer who purchased the building where Wet and Edge are located told the two clubs they must leave by September 2006, according Ron Hunt, an owner of the clubs.
Graham chairs the Council committee that oversees legislation concerning zoning and liquor law matters. He said he is sympathetic to the plight of the club owners and would consider legislation to help them move.
The councilmember said his staff has had difficulties reaching club owners, including O Street businessman Robert Siegel, who owns most of the buildings where the gay clubs are located.
Seigel has said the Council and Williams have not followed through with promises to help the businesses move.
