The bottle club was busted for selling alcohol and allowing nudity and gambling, Hillsborough deputies say.
By JANET ZINK
Published June 27, 2003
The dancers are gone, for now anyway.
Six weeks after it opened, the Perfume Saloon, a bottle club and bikini bar, closed after an early morning raid by a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office vice squad.
Deputies descended on the bar at 3:30 a.m. June 14 and arrested six people on charges ranging from nudity in a place where alcohol is served to gambling and drug possession.
Lorraine's Neon Moon operated for 15 years at 6656 U.S. 301 as a tavern. Riverview resident James Pyle, 55, took over the establishment last year and turned it into a bottle club where die-hard partiers can drink until dawn.
Among those arrested in the June 14 sweep was Pyle, who was released on bond several hours later.
According to his longtime girlfriend, Teresa Ehlers, customers asked Pyle to bring in some dancing girls and Pyle obliged. He hired women to dance in bikinis in a room adjacent to Lorraine's in early May. He called it the Perfume Saloon.
"He knew there would be plenty of clientele," Ehlers said. "And there was plenty of clientele, no matter what the Chamber of Commerce says."
Pyle, a construction worker who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and doesn't have health insurance, was simply trying to make a buck and provide for their 7-year-old daughter, Ehlers said.
"He's not a dirty old man," she said.
But the change unnerved many longtime Riverview residents, who were alarmed to see the "Girls, girls, girls" sign go up outside Lorraine's. They complained to local law enforcement and government officials.
"I look at Riverview as a small town where you don't see that kind of stuff. I was really surprised it opened," said Bud Hunt, honorary mayor of Riverview and a member of the Chamber of Commerce.
Rep. Sandy Murman, R-Tampa, wrote letters to alert the Riverview Civic Association and Riverview Chamber of Commerce, county commissioners Ronda Storms and Jim Norman, and Sheriff Cal Henderson.
During a three-week period, undercover vice squad members visited the club about six times, Sgt. John Herring said. They found gambling machines, alcohol sales, drugs and bikini dancers flashing their breasts, Herring said. County law does not allow nudity in places where alcohol is served, even if it's not for sale.
Not everyone objects to the arrival of dancing girls in Riverview.
"I don't go to places like that, so it doesn't affect me," said Riverview resident Bill Lindsey, an Elvis Presley impersonator and short-order cook who owns a lawn service business. "If they started popping up all over, there would be something wrong."
Bottle clubs are not licensed to sell alcohol. Typically, patrons bring their own alcohol, hand over a cover charge to enter the club and then pay for setups such as mixers, glasses and ice.
"They give you your rum in a glass of Coke for $4 or $5," Herring said. "The problem is, this place was selling drinks just like you walk into a bar."
Bottle clubs, which admit anyone older than 18 but allow only those who are 21 or older to drink, typically stay open until most people are eating breakfast and drinking the day's first cup of coffee.
Unincorporated Hillsborough County has fewer than a dozen bottle clubs, Herring said. The Sheriff's Office monitors all of them, and last year, deputies raided three.
Since the June 14 raid, Lorraine's has continued to operate as a bottle club, but the Perfume Saloon is closed.
"Until (Pyle) finds out exactly what he has to do to make it legal," Ehlers said, "the Perfume Saloon is not open."
