The $2,000 an-Hour Woman

This was how Jason, who has always considered himself nothing if not “ultraromantic,” saw it. However, as he slid from his grade-school-style red plastic seat in preparation to kneel, the harsh voice of a female Corrections officer broke the mood, ringing throughout the dank visitor’s room.

“Sit back down,” said the large uniformed woman. “You know the rules.”

Such are the obstacles to true love when one is incarcerated at Rikers Island, where Jason Itzler, 38 and still boyishly handsome in his gray Department of Corrections jumpsuit, has resided since the cops shut down his megaposh NY Confidential agency in January.

There was also the matter of the ring. During the glorious summer and fall of 2004, when NY Confidential was grossing an average of $25,000 a night at its 5,000-square-foot loft at 79 Worth Street, spitting distance from the municipal courts and Bloomberg’s priggish City Hall, Jason would have purchased a diamond with enough carats to blow the eye loupe off a 47th Street Hasid.

That was when Itzler filled his days with errands like stopping by Soho Gem on West Broadway to drop $6,500 on little trinkets for Natalia and his other top escorts. This might be followed by a visit to Manolo Blahnik to buy a dozen pairs of $500 footwear. By evening, Itzler could be found at Cipriani, washing down plates of crushed lobster with yet another bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue label and making sure everyone got one of his signature titanium business cards engraved with NY Confidential’s singular motto: ROCKET FUEL FOR WINNERS.

But now Jason was charged with various counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, money laundering, and promoting prostitution. His arrest was part of a large effort by the NYPD and the D.A.’s office against New York’s burgeoning Internet-based escort agencies. In three months, police had shut down American Beauties, Julie’s, and the far-flung New York Elites, a concern the cops said was flying porn stars all over the country for dates. Reeling, pros were declaring the business “holocausted” as girls took down their Websites and worried johns stayed home.

Many blamed Itzler for the heat. In a business where discretion is supposed to be key, Jason was more than a loose cannon. Loose A-bomb was more like it. He took out giant NY Confidential ads in mainstream magazines (the one you’re holding included). In restaurants, he’d get loud and identify himself, Howard Stern style, as “the King of All Pimps.” Probably most fatally, Itzler was quoted in the Post as bragging that he didn’t worry about the police because “I have cops on my side.” After that, one vice guy said, “it was like he was daring us.”

Only days before, Itzler, attired in a $5,700 full-length fox coat from Jeffrey, bought himself a Mercedes S600. Now the car, along with much of the furniture at Jason’s lair, including the $50,000 sound system on which he blared, 24/7, the music of his Rat Pack idol, Frank Sinatra, had been confiscated by the cops. His assets frozen, unable to make his $250,000 bail, Jason couldn’t even buy a phone card, much less get Natalia a ring.

“Where am I going to get a ring in here?” Jason said to Natalia on the phone the other night. He suggested perhaps Natalia might get the ring herself and then slip it to him when she came to visit.

“That’s good, Jason,” returned Natalia. “I buy the ring, give it to you, you kiss it, give it back to me, and I pretend to be surprised.”

“Something like that,” Jason replied, sheepishly. “You know I love you.”

That much seemed true. As Jason doesn’t mind telling you, he has known many women since he lost his virginity not too long after his bar mitzvah at the Fort Lee Community Jewish Center, doing the deed with the captain of the Tenafly High School cheerleader squad. Since then, Jason, slight and five foot nine, says he’s slept with “over 700 women,” a figure he admits pales before the 20,000 women basketball star Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain claimed to have bedded. But, as Jason says, “you could say I am a little pickier than him.”

Of these 700 women, Jason has been engaged to nine, two of whom he married. “It was really only one and a half,” Itzler reports, saying that while living in Miami’s South Beach he married “this hot Greek girl. She was gorgeous. The first thing I did was buy her this great boob job, which immediately transformed her from a tremendous A/B look to an out-of-sight C/D look. But her parents totally freaked out. So I got the marriage annulled.”
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Posted by Matt at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Source: YNOT.com
DAYTONA BEACH, FL - U.S. District Judge John Antoon may well have cleared the path for all-nude exotic entertainment at Daytona Beach nightclubs that serve alcohol, thanks to a recent ruling that struck down that city’s anti-nudity laws.

According to Antoon, the prohibitions against nudity in public places, including those that sell alcohol, violate both the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The decision has made Fort Lauderdale defense attorney Daniel Aaronson very happy.

“We won on every single issue,” he proclaimed after the victory, which may directly affect his client, Lollipops Gentleman’s Club. Aaronson now has the go-ahead to seek repayment of Lollipops’ legal fees, which are in excess of $100,000.

The case relied in part upon a previous ruling about whether or not adult nightclubs produce negative secondary impacts in their neighborhoods, including crime, prostitution, and illegal drug activities. When the city had proved unable to show evidence of such effects, the clubs pointed out that convenience stores and other non-adult nightclubs were a greater threat. The presiding judge had concluded that “gone are the days when a municipality may enact an ordinance ostensibly regulating secondary effects on the basis of evidence consisting of little more than the self-serving assertions of municipality officials.”

Now the question is how much can dancers in adult nightclubs remove and still be in compliance with regulatory laws. Although Constitutional issues may have been resolved, city zoning laws still must be factored into decisions – and Daytona Beach currently restricts businesses that display nudity to operating exclusively within an industrial area on the far west city limit. This has led deputy city attorney Marie Hartman, who has successfully fought challenges to the city’s nudity regulations since 1981, to conclude that “regardless of this ruling, they’re still not entitled to remain where they are.”

City officials plan to investigate a possible appeal. Among issues to be considered is a December 2004 agreement with Molly Brown’s and the Pink Pony nightclubs, wherein each agreed to drop a federal lawsuit in exchange for being allowed to have their dancers wear more minimal garments. A provision in that settlement required that all adult clubs be granted the same enforcement of city rules.

Gay Edinger, a Gainesville attorney retained by Molly Browns and Lollipops contends that Antoon’s ruling is the first in the nation where a judge has struck down city nudity laws after a full trial.

“A lot of what happens next depends on how the city reacts,” he pointed out. “My guess is the clubs will probably follow suit with whatever change Lollipops might enact.”

Lollipops has not determined yet whether it will remain topless or expand to full nude entertainment, although Ron Krenn, the owner of Molly Browns, insisted that “full nudity with alcohol is what the city can expect if they do not resolve this now.”

Posted by Matt at 11:43 AM | Permalink

Source: YNOT.com

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – Scottsdale City Council members yesterday decided unanimously to hold a required referendum in September covering new restrictions regulating local strip clubs that the Council passed in December.

The City Council is also considering putting the referendum on the ballot for May, the earliest possible date that the vote could be held.

“My preference is to just get it done,” said Councilman Jim Lane. “The sooner the better. I think the public’s awareness is more heightened now as opposed to a later date.”

Others, including Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross, prefer the September date because the deadline for May ballot arguments is next week, which they say wouldn’t give the public time to consider all the information available related to the issue.

“The election should not be in May,” Manross said. “We would really have to cut corners.”

The council also voted 6-1 against negotiating a compromise with local club owners, which include adult megastar Jenna Jameson, part owner of Babe’s Cabaret. Representatives for the club owners, including First Amendment attorney Richard Hetzberg, who represents Jameson, had urged the council to forge a compromise and avoid the costly, time-consuming referendum process.

“You have nothing to lose,” said Hertzberg. “We think there is plenty of time to work out a compromise.”

“The city and every other affected party could be spared the agony, in a sense, of this kind of municipal election,” added John Weston, a Los Angeles-based attorney who is representing the clubs’ interests in the referendum.

Scottsdale officials, however, see no room for compromise, painting the issue as entirely black and white. Councilman Bob Littlefield said he would not support a compromise, or even a committee to examine the possibility of compromise, because he knows what the strip-club owners want.

“There is no ambiguity there,” Littlefield said. “This is a referendum on lap dancing.”

When the Council passed the new restrictions in December, Babe’s Cabaret and another local club, Skin’s Cabaret, began collecting signatures to force the referendum. In January, they submitted over 8,000 signed petitions demanding the referendum; a minimum of 3,384 signatures are required.

According to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, the signatures submitted by the clubs have at least 5,382 valid signatures out of the total of 8,000.

Council members claim that their new regulations were contained in the city’s original ordinance, and simply had never been enforced. A closer inspection of the original and new restrictions, however, shows that the old restrictions only applied to “nude” dancing, and not to partial-nude dancing.

The city’s new regulations address partially nude dancers, those who wear G-strings and pasties, and thereby applies to both Babe’s and Skin. In fact, in order to totally avoid violating the new regulations, dancers will have to cover almost all of their breasts, and have full coverage of their buttocks.

Club owners have protested that the new regulations would effectively put them out of business, and are a violation of the First Amendment rights of dancers, club owners, and their patrons.

Opponents of the regulations point out that Los Angeles passed similar restrictions, but once local strip clubs gathered enough signatures to force a vote, officials in L.A. overturned the revised regulations.

When told about what had transpired in Los Angeles, Littlefield said, “Maybe we’re going to have a little more spine.”

Posted by Matt at 11:38 AM | Permalink