A stripperless strip joint? Texas club wins fight to reopen — with major restrictions
In all honesty, the club DID say it was a restaurant, right?
On May 1, Club Onyx in Houston was temporarily shut down after reopening under Gov. Greg Abbott’s phase I plan to reopen Texas businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While adult entertainment venues were not included in this part of the plan, Eric Langan, who owns Club Onyx’s parent company Trumps Inc., maintained the fact that the club is also a restaurant.
“We have a full-service restaurant,” Langan told the Houston Chronicle. “Everybody in there is ordering food. You have to order food to come in, that’s part of the deal. Yes, we have strippers here. That’s the entertainment.”
Well, now it is a restaurant, but minus the strippers.
On Monday, a federal judge approved a temporary restraining order, allowing the club to reopen, but only as a restaurant, according to ABC 13 in Houston. “According to a judge’s order filed May 8, Club Onyx cannot provide additional entertainment, even if the employees are fully clothed,” ABC 13 says.
KHOU 11 reported that Onyx stated that it was no longer featuring “nude” entertainment, as disclosed in recent court documents, and that “the dancers are required to wear full top and full bathing suit bottoms.”
But now, even that is deemed unhealthy.
On May 1, Langan was told he would be charged with a class B misdemeanor only hours after reopening the club’s doors.
“I just find it funny that they’ll arrest a taxpaying, law abiding citizen for a Class B misdemeanor ... but they won’t press charges against people breaking into cars right now,” Langan told ABC13. “I mean, what has the city come to? I mean I live in Houston, Texas. I didn’t know I moved to San Francisco, California.”