tremont Underground smokehouses open amid crackdown on smoking, strip clubs Smokehouses fill in for bars, strip clubs

Reprinted from Cleveland.com Compliments of the Plain Dealer on
> 02-03-08
>
> Underground smokehouses open amid crackdown on smoking, strip clubs
>
> Smokehouses fill in for bars, strip clubs
>
> Sunday, February 03, 2008
>
> James F. McCarty
>
> Plain Dealer Reporter
>
> Ohio's crackdown on strip joints and barroom smoking has spawned as many
> as two dozen underground nightclubs that operate in houses across
> Cleveland.
>
> Known as smokehouses, the after-hours hangouts offer what legal clubs
> and bars cannot - places for patrons to smoke while they drink, watch
> strippers after midnight and have sex with prostitutes, according to
> city vice detectives.
>
> So far, the smokehouse owners have been cagey enough to avoid being
> busted.
>
> "These guys aren't stupid," said attorney Skip Lazzaro, who represents
> legal nightclubs in court. "They know that if they want to stay open,
> they have to fly below the radar, avoid complaints and the attention of
> neighbors."
>
> To stir up business and avoid detection, the smokehouse proprietors
> rotate the dancers from house to house and open on alternating nights so
> they don't compete with each other, Lazzaro said.
>
> Lazzaro and vice cops say they started hearing about smokehouses in
> Tremont, Ohio City and other residential neighborhoods last year after
> the state began enforcing a ban on smoking in public places and
> legislators outlawed nude entertainment after midnight.
>
> Detective Tom Shoulders, a 2nd District vice sergeant, compares the
> smokehouses of 2008 to the gin houses of Prohibition in the Roaring
> '20s.
>
> "You put too many restrictions on people, they're going to find
> someplace else to go for their entertainment," he said.
>
> Informants tell police that smokehouse patrons, primarily white suburban
> men, bring their own liquor, cigarettes and cigars.
>
> Doormen collect up to $25, purportedly for a buffet, and may require a
> reference for entry. Some clubs also provide jars filled with condoms.
>
> "They have succeeded in creating this underground, sleazy, cash- only
> business that cannot be regulated, taxed or secured by police," Lazzaro
> said.
>
> Shoulders and his twin brother, Terry, head of the 3rd District's vice
> unit, say they have yet to gather enough evidence to raid the clubs.
> That's because the neighbors aren't complaining, and undercover officers
> have been unable to get inside one.
>
> They have asked landlords to monitor activities in their rental homes
> and urged residents to keep their eyes open for any unusual activity.
>
> Detective Joe Bovenzi, a member of Tom Shoulders' 2nd District team, has
> helped close illegal bottle, drug and sex clubs during his 10 years as a
> vice cop. He recalled a case about two years ago when he helped to bust
> a home in Tremont where the owner had erected a brass stripper pole in
> the living room.
>
> Bovenzi predicted the smokehouses would eventually meet the same fate.
>
> "Someone will be treated wrongly and drop a dime," he said. "Or there
> will be fights or shootings, and we'll move in."