Hello,

Here we see where Mayor Giuliani's self-righteousness crusade has squirmed around to bite him in the butt...a tiny bit. If adults want to go watch naked women and/or men writhe about on the stage at a barroom that is their business...not the government's. Giuliani is (and has been for quite some time) on some bizarre Mussollini-esque power trip where he imagines that New York city and its citizens are his private "living room" where all must bow to his whims....from kangaroo-taxi-courts where allegedly rude drivers are fined amounts equal to a week's pay or more upon the complaint of a single customer for "rudeness"...to the near destruction of the livelihoods of pushcart- peddlers...because he found them esthetically displeasing...this crazed idiot has demonstratd that he has not internalized American values of freedom in any meaningful way.

He is only a second generation American and it is plain that he serves as a demonstration that the sociologists who observed that it takes at least three or four generations for an immigrant family to assimilate into a new culture were correct. I find it ever-amazing that folks who leave their "old country" because they cannot stand it anymore seek so strenuously to import the failed attitudes and cultures that made the old country unlivable in the first place. Giuliani's silliness reminds one that Italy has had more governments than years since WWII and that it is among the most chaotic and corrupt systems in the free world....but it does have pretty art.

Giuliani seems to hope to reduce New York City to being a joke like Italy...all while trampling over Awerican ideals in the process. It is NOT a bedrock American ideal to micromanage everything with the esthetics and personal taste of the presiding bureaucrat being the deciding factor in all things.

I think that Giuliani need to be reminds that New York City is a "mini- America" not a giant 'little Italy". Remember...he comes from that bizarre subculture where an entire off-limits "living" room of each private home can be found garishly decorated, furniture covered in plastic with velvet ropes denying access...all in the name of impressing the neighbors. While it is more than obvious that one can decorate one's own home any way one likes, this is not an ideal to be translated into public policy.

Sincerely,
Caroline

NYC Strip Club Targeting Children

By MICHAEL BLOOD

.c The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani thought he found a sure-fire way to decimate the skin trade soiling the city by banishing all "adult" clubs in most neighborhoods.

But one enterprising club and its lawyer may have found a loophole in the new rule: put the welcome mat out for children.

Ten's World Class Cabaret in Manhattan did just that, and state Supreme Court Justice Stephen Crane ruled Thursday that Ten's "cannot be defined as an adult eating and drinking establishment if it does not exclude minors."

"You could take your 15-year-old son to see the movie `Striptease.' Why can't you take him to see a striptease?" asked Ten's lawyer, Mark J. Alonso.

The mayor did not share Alonso's logic.

"I would suggest that if a parent was bringing a kid into a place like that, we should question whether the parent should have custody of the kid," Giuliani said Friday.

Since opening its doors for children last year, Ten's has had only one minor customer -- a 14-year-old boy who came in with his parents, all tourists from South America, Alonso said. Because of liquor laws, minors must be accompanied by a parent.

Giuliani called the court decision "one of the jerkiest rulings I've seen" and accused the judge of ignoring the intent of the law, which prohibits sex- oriented theaters, bookstores and dance clubs from operating within 500 feet of homes, day-care centers, houses of worship, schools or one another.

The city will appeal.

The adults-only language was included in the law so as not to interfere with what city lawyers called "legitimate theatrical performances and films including nudity or having a sexual theme."

The loophole could open the way for other clubs to reopen or avoid closing, said Herald Price Fahringer, an attorney who represents more than 100 of the clubs and X-rated stores.

"This is, like, nuts," the mayor bemoaned. "These are sick, perverted places. What do you want kids in there for?"

AP-NY-11-07-98 0550EST

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