Strippers-on-a-truck promotion halted in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — Live strippers on the back of a truck is too much — even for Sin City.

A Las Vegas strip club has agreed to stop an advertising promotion that involved hauling bikini-clad exotic dancers around in a truck with clear plastic sides.

Larry Beard, marketing director of Deja Vu Showgirls, said Friday that he’s taking his lawyer’s advice and parking the truck.

“We’re going to respect the opinion of the folks that are against it,” Beard told The Associated Press. “We’re going to be good citizens and take it off the street.”

Beard had told the AP earlier this week that he was prepared to fight county leaders and others who thought the moving truck promotion was unseemly or unsafe.

“The girls are wearing more than the girls at the swimming pool wear,” Beard said this week. “Even though they’re not stripping and taking their clothes off I think people are offended because of the idea that they do.”

The truck rolled for 13 nights along the Las Vegas Strip from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., trying to lure customers to the club. Three sides had windows that weren’t tinted, offering views of the strippers dancing around a stripper pole.

The tactic worked, with business booming since the truck started going out, Beard said.

“We even have cars and limos follow us to the club,” Beard said this week.

The dancers were allowed to perform in the truck because it was classified as a vehicle for hire, which let the dancers ride in the back without seat belts, Beard said.

Public outrage over the truck grew as pictures and videos of the truck surfaced on the Internet and a county commissioner in Las Vegas vowed to shut it down.

Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak said he got calls from citizens who hated it and others who liked it, but he considered the truck a safety problem.

“It’s clearly a distraction,” Sisolak told the AP. “Somebody’s going to turn their head to look at some girl flipping upside-down and spinning on a pole, and take their eyes off the road and could swerve and pop up the sidewalk and plow into a bunch of tourists that are walking along.”

Sisolak said he plans to try to close a loophole in local laws regulating mobile billboards.

Regulations prohibit advertising vehicles that use animation or flashing lights, and Sisolak said he would try to prevent live entertainers from being used, too.

Meanwhile, he’s happy the club owners decided to park the truck.

“Could they have won in court? That would have been a long, costly, time-exhaustive battle,” Sisolak said. “They clearly got a lot of publicity as it stands, which I’m sure made them happy.”