CB10 fights strip club on Fourth

November 25, 2006
By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

A proposed strip club on Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge hasn’t opened yet, but the local community board is already looking for a way to keep the neighborhood fully clothed.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann said at a meeting on Monday night. “A lot of seniors are very upset about this.”

“This” is a sign posted on the now-vacated Reagle Beagle, a bar between 90th and 91st streets, that advertises the grand opening of Club Shadows on Nov. 30.

The sign shows a silhouette of a curvy woman and promises “exotic dancers.”

After Beckmann gave her report, she was drowned out by groans.

Beckmann later told The Brooklyn Papers that she has tried to contact the club’s owners, but has gotten nowhere.

She added that the club has not applied for a liquor or cabaret license, two possible ways of blocking its opening.

“I’ve asked the local law enforcement to help unravel the mystery,” she said.

Beckmann told the three-dozen audience members that the board would try to block the potential peep show, which cannot be located within 500 feet of a residential zone.

“I have been doing some research,” Beckmann said, “and I think we have what we need” to block it.

On Tuesday, that process began, with someone lodging a complaint against the “nude dancing” club with the Department of Buildings, which can’t investigate until the joint opens.

“The complaint put it on our radar screen and we can certainly inspect it when it opens,” said agency spokeswoman Jennifer Givner.

Beckmann vowed to go further. If Club Shadows attempts to open on schedule, she said she would be there with cops (who enforce liquor license violations), and inspectors from the Department of Consumer Affairs (who will want to see a valid cabaret license).

— with Gersh Kuntzman