Nude-Dance Clubs Are Nothing New On The Eastside

Bothell had a topless-dance club. Redmond had an X-rated movie house. And Factoria's Bavarian Gardens featured a 400-pound go-go dancer named Big Fannie Annie.

Adult entertainment is nothing new on the Eastside. For years in the early 1980s, topless clubs survived here. Escalating property values and state and local regulations forced them out of business.

Perhaps the most infamous spot was the short-lived Mama Hoopah's, a Bothell topless bar open for six months in 1982 before the city shut it down.

"At the time, it was the ultimate dirty club," recalls King County Police Sgt. John Lindner, head of the vice unit.

When owners James and Pam Dougal opened the soda-pop bar in January 1982, they made no mention of topless dancing in their business application. But they also made no effort to disguise what they were doing, says Bothell Police Lt. Dan Malet - they put a readerboard out front advertising topless dancers.

"There was definitely nude entertainment going on - for customers, at the table," Malet says. Police made arrests at Mama Hoopah's for prostitution, lewd conduct, sale and possession of drugs, and selling alcohol without a liquor license. Fights broke out inside and outside the club.

What made it so "dirty" to many was the amount of contact between dancers and patrons. Today, that kind of touching is routine, Lindner says.

In June 1982, city officials pulled the club's business license, because the owners didn't have a permit to operate an adult dance club. The owners didn't appeal, and that was the end of Mama Hoopah's.

Today, Bothell's adult-entertainment ordinance allows adult entertainment along state Highway 522.

Big Fannie Annie danced at the Bavarian Gardens, a Factoria nightclub that opened in the mid-1970s and closed in 1980 when it lost its lease.

The club was repeatedly cited for allowing dancers to rub against patrons, for other lewd conduct, and for liquor-law violations.

Not long after it shut down, operator Frank Colacurcio Sr. was indicted by a federal grand jury for skimming profits at that club and at Federal Way's Brass Tiger. He was convicted in federal court in 1981 on three counts of income-tax evasion.

Associates of Colacurcio's son, Frank Jr., today run Babe's, the male strip joint in Factoria, and Papagayo's, the topless-dance bar in Overlake.

In Woodinville, Charles Puzzo operated Goodtime Charley's, a topless-dance club, from 1973 until the mid-1980s. The club had a clean reputation, Lindner says: "Goodtime Charley's was enough of a novelty in Woodinville that he did fairly well."

But the club had its moments, recalls Sgt. Rich Krogh, a King County Police administrator assigned to Woodinville. "I remember going to calls there for fights between patrons and employees. There were incidents in the parking lots - fights and threats. I would guess we had one call every weekend."

Krogh doesn't remember any prostitution arrests, but "my guess was there was plenty of prostitution going on." One clue: Expensive cars registered to suspected pimps were dropping women off there.

Woodinville, which became a city in 1992, initially placed a moratorium on adult-entertainment clubs, then passed its ordinance late last year, says Carter Hawley, assistant to the city manager. Adult-entertainment clubs are restricted to the north part of the city, east of Highway 9 and north of downtown.

Redmond was home to a pornographic movie theater for a few years after it opened in 1981. Proprietor Roger Forbes owned a number of other X-rated movie houses in Seattle and Renton.

Last month, rumors circulated that a topless bar might move into Redmond. The city slapped a one-year moratorium on adult-entertainment clubs, which gives it a year to designate areas appropriate for such enterprises.

Kirkland, Mercer Island and Issaquah have never had adult-entertainment clubs. Kirkland's ordinance allows adult clubs only in certain commercial zones, and at least 1,500 feet from schools, day cares or other places used primarily by children. Mercer Island allows adult entertainment in commercial zones.