At least we can thank the good baseball lord it's not planned to be a gay/lesbian strip club. Maybe those impressionable little ones need a little het'rosexual learning after watching all the same-sex making out I hear goes on inside Safeco.

Hey what's with this talk of using conv center tax stream to fund Key arena upgrades to the tune of $75 million?

Who needs sports teams, we might as well spend the $75 million on:
-education
-infrastructure
-health care
--many other more important things.

Whatever you spend it on, that stiulates the economy, too, so let's forget about this notion that somehow handouts to ballclub millionaires are for the broader social good. I haven't seen Taiwan or Ireland or Singapore or China get more productive thru spending their savings on int'l sports teams.

I don't understand why people call sports stars "overpaid". There is a market for people with skills at playing sports. Teams pay what they feel is a fair price foe these skilled players. They do it with money that fans of the sport pay to see the players perform. Just because they aren't performing brain surgery doesn't mean their services aren't worth millions of dollars a year.

I am so fucking pissed about the convention center taxes being diverted for that crap. We produce income for hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, tours, etc etc when we book conventions to come here. Its not an exaggeration to say we are losing a ton of business because we don't have an adequate sized facility right now.

And remember who works at these places; the poor. We can not afford to take away the few job opportunities that hotels provide so we can have a sports team. With tourism dropping off a cliff right now the bread and butter is going to be conventions from here on out.

Are you seriously fucking wasting blog space whining about the fate of a sleazy strip club and getting mad at a huge local business for opposing it? God forbid local mobsters have noplace to launder money and exploit women, while servicing the most desperate and pathetic excuses for "men" in the city.

Hey Mariners:

Quit searching people and confiscating their drinks when they go into the ballpark and maybe we can deal.

@2

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/fai-lacks-cash-to-pay-for-stadium-1436182.html

From the article:
"Since construction began in 2006, the total spend on Lansdowne Road [Irish soccer stadium] has been just over €70m, which has been entirely covered by the Government.

This means the Government has only €121m left to contribute.

As for China, well, I couldn't find an example but I remember something about this kid named Phelps. Seems important.

No, fuck you guys and your fucking sarcasm. They have a fucking point, and I am almost inclined to agree with them.

@3 - I'd be right there with ya, if professional sports teams didn't take any and every opportunity to hit the taxpayers up for funds. If their business model is so great, they should be able to support themselves. If they can't support themselves - which they don't seem to be able to do - then perhaps some of their expenses, such as payroll, are overinflated. But rather than trim their ridiculous payrolls, they come begging for us to build them stadiums and then knock them down and build new ones.

Shame. I think a strip club would really class up the stadium area.

Per Shysterball, they should call the club "Third Base".

What point is that exactly, @8? As Dominic quite correctly points out, opposing a strip club in the vicinity of the ball field, while simultaneously inundating teh kiddies with ads for booze, sugary sodas, fatty snack foods and what-not doesn't strike you as being just a teensy bit hypocritical?

I think the Mariners are really more concerned about the revenue that will be siphoned away from them by the club, than they are about any harmful effects it might have upon "The Youth Of Today", none of whom will be able to enter it in the first place.

Pro sports and strip clubs are two sides of the same coin. The sex industry represents an important form of economic development - it's legitimate entertainment, and the venues associated with it pay millions in taxes, creates hundreds of jobs and attract thousands of out-of-town spenders, many of whom naturally overlap with baseball fans. I simply don't accept the premise that professional sports is a more "moral" form of entertainment than looking at naked ladies.

The co-existence of pro-sports and strip clubs (plus bars, music venues, art galleries, etc.) exemplifies our intellectually exciting and tolerant city, and we should encourage more diverse entertainment options, not fewer.

@12, for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of equivalency argument you're making here. Are you saying that advertising and selling alcoholic beverages, soda and fried food is the same as exploiting abused and mentally ill women as a product to be displayed to greasy subhuman men, that the wine shop and donut stand at Pike Market are in the the exact same business as the Deja Vu, advertising its beautiful and ugly women on display like meat across the street?

Kids in the area play sports and can go to a ballgame to be inspired by star athletes who are achieving something, setting records, doing charity and philanthropic work for their community. A strip club is the exact opposite, giving kids of both genders a worst case scenario for how low they can sink in life.

Since SODO is industrial zoned, not zoned for schools, playgrounds and such things... and the kids they are talking about are(presumed) at a game with their parents... and the strip clubs are legal (now that the 20+ years of strip club permit holds is finally gone)... and the strip clubs need to go somewhere which are not zoned for schools, playgrounds and such things... SODO is the perfect place for a strip club.

Parents and Mariners: be better parents, educated your kids about the why's and wherefores of strippers. Mature a little anb be better citizens; drop your NIMBY BS. An industrial zone is the perfect place for bars, sport stadiums, dance clubs, The Showbox, AND a titty bar. Seattle needs entertainments for all people of all tastes, and not just for you narrow minded closed-world-view sorts. shit already people, stay in lynnwood with your sort-of-peopel if you can't stomach the Seattle sort-of-people.

Seattle's uptight. How long until Sally Clark and Mayor Nickels join the crusade against the strip club? I went to high school across the street from a strip club, and I think that my classmates and I, by and large, were not affected by its proximity.

As a publicly funded entity, I think we should have a say in what goes near Safeco Field. And I think putting a strip club there sucks.

Dear Author: Are you serious? Beer (and food, as argued by another reader) advertisement cannot be compared to sexual exploitation and objectification at a strip club. There is nothing wrong with beer and there is definitely nothing wrong with sex, in general. But there really would be millions of children (and adults who aren't so smart) each year that would walk by there and would learn things about sex and about the roles of men and women in our society that I'm sure that you and your average liberal Stranger reader would disagree with. Disregarding the sexual nature of a strip club, do we really want to further perpetuate the social stereotypes of women being subordinate to men? Don't we want to dismantle the Ken-Barbie doll roles so that children can grow up in a world where they don't feel socially forced to adhere to those kinds of social guidelines? Who exactly is being hypocritical here? You or the Mariners?
Children should be given a chance to decide about sexuality and strip clubs later in life when they're mature enough to make their own decisions about how to interpret sex and aren't nearly as impressionable. Beer and sex are unbelievably not the same thing... and I believe that the Mariners have a legitimate claim. Of course, it would also hurt their sales because most parents would probably agree with me and many might choose to avoid the baseball game because of it. So, they have multiple reasons to do this, of course... but I think that there should definitely not be a strip club 400 feet away from Safeco.

dominic is fighting the wrong fight here. There needs to be booze sold in strip clubs.

Is there a Dan Savage stylebook or something? This post-- adolescent tone, anti-prudish content, bait and switch argumentation-- almost feels like copyright infringement.

They don't want a strip club anywhere near the stadium because fans may leave a boring game and spend their money elsewhere.

It will be interesting to watch the effects of the economic meltdown on sports salaries. If people cannot afford to keep season tickets and regular ticket sales drop due to fans saving on non-essentials we should see a drop in salaries as well.

Strippers are cool!

I grew up in what was then unincorporated King County and is now Tukwila. We lived mere blocks away from Pacific Highway South where there were two strip clubs in operation for almost my entire childhood. My high school was a block away from one of them. Trust me, for most of us our kid line of thinking wasn't "are strip clubs bad for women?" it was more "ew gross". If anything, it served as a reminder to do my damn homework so I'd have options in life outside of getting naked or asking do you want fries with that.

Didn't this topic get revisited recently with the city? And the logic was to spread the red light district around to limited pockets of real estate instead of focusing on one neighborhood only. Wasn't there some sort of proposal in Georgetown and everyone got upset right? Well why not Sodo?

Besides, if some guy wants to waste his money on looking at something he can't have, without a cocktail in his hand, it doesn't make him superior, it just makes him stupid and the women who strip are just cashing in on it.

Last time I checked, there were no laws on the books forcing women into stripping for a living, so I guess that inability to see "equivalency" works both ways.

And would these the same "star athletes" who frequently get caught with hookers, using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, driving DUI, gambling, abusing their spouses, and generally behaving like overpaid, privileged assholes?

Your beer-sales argument is pretty fucking weak.

@ 25) What's the harm to these kids of an activity a block away behind closed doors? If it exists, which it doesn't, are we supposed to build a city that scours any evidence of sexuality within one block of where kids go? That would be the entire city. Let's turn Seattle into Disneyland!

It's completely hypocritical for the Mariners to try to eradicate sexuality behind closed doors--it's not even sex, it's a strip club--in the name of the children when the place the Mariners hosts kids is jam packed with adult-only activity in plain view.

What's your argument for banning a strip club in industrial downtown as opposed to anywhere else in the city?

@26 I have no problem with banning strip clubs, period, but I guess I grudgingly concede you the point that as long as the sleazy business is legal in the heart of the city, a business in another part of the city has no leg to stand on to complain about it elsewhere.

Strip clubs aren't "sexuality", they are the opposite of sexuality. You're right that as long as they are still legal in city limits, that the Mariners have no right to stop one being placed near their park even if it impacts their business.

I do object to your specious parallel between beer & junk food sales and a strip club business and a claim that the Mariners are hypocritical for not wanting to see the area around the park becoming that much more sleazy.

What I can't go along with is this requirement that the Mariners put up all those billboards telling young girls what a great job stripping for cash would be, and to turn to mom and dad right now and say "fuck you, bitches, I'm showin' off this pussy that God gave me for dollars", right there in the stadium and all. That's just wrong.

Aside from that, so what?

@26: I'm not arguing the point about whether a strip club has a place in Sodo or anywhere else in the city.

The Times article states that the crux of the argument is whether the proposed location of a new Deja Vu violates a city rule that prohibits strip clubs within 800 feet of open space or public parks where children congregate.

That beer is sold at Safeco is irrelevant to this. The real test is whether Safeco Field can be considered a public space in the eyes of the law.

Your glass-houses argument doesn't address this point.

Are all strippers abused and mentally ill, Just Sayin', or just enough for you to be outraged by the audacity of a place for people to watch other people dance naked. Are male strippers as abused and mentally ill?

You might plead that as a woman, it offends you that women everywhere are objectified, and strip clubs are emblematic of that problem(like pornography, I'm sure), but as someone with a sister in the industry, I'm disgusted that you would imply there's anything wrong with her, just for your own prudish holier-than-thou attitude.

So fuck you.

I'm totally in aggreement. Isn't there another strip club in Pikes market ... That families walk by in BROAD DAYLIGHT no less?

And why can't you get a cocktail at a strip club around here?

The sexually frustrated and abused men from Oregon ... at least got a break from the over bearing, undershaved, psychos that try to subdue us. When I moved to Oregon, I never saw so many adult shops in my life! And strip clubs where alcohol was available.

Honestly, they should at least just set up an "adult" district. I mean, wouldn't you rather be discreet about your smut?

The children! The children!!

Ahh...actually isn't it more dangerous for kids to be exposed to the scary play of the Mariners?

dom, why get so worked up? you don't like nekkid women anyway. and yes, comte, it's all about money. given the choice, a man will choose titties over a badlyl performing baseball team.

#33

You have clearly never lived in Chicago. And a man shouldn't have to choose. A man should have access to both and to hard liquor with titties. It's a fucking ass-crime that we can't order whiskey at a baseball game, and even worse not to serve it at titty bars.

a tempest in a D-cup

Some years back I happened on a midwestern Main Street small enough that the (probably only) local strip joint and the local Childrens Museum were housed in adjoining storefronts.

@COMTE...

last time I checked there was no law forcing actors into acting...

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