Bloomfield Avenue bar "On the Rocks" apparently should be renamed "Off Your Rocks" according to undercover agents who witnessed erotic shows choreographed with a personal touch. Bar owners, Rafael Lolos and his wife are facing six charges of lewdness, and possible suspension of their liquor license. At this week's council hearing, where testimony was given and Lolos gave a little show, officials were debating the finer points. From Bloomfield Life:
The spicy language led one audience member to describe it as "the kinkiest meeting I've ever been to."Lolos provided a bit of levity when he demonstrated how On the Rocks dancers perform lapdances, using [township prosecutor Paul] Sant´Ambrogio as a dummy client. As Sant´Ambrogio sat rock still in his chair, protesting the demonstration, Lolos leaned his chest towards the prosecutor´s face without touching him.
John D. Williams, Lolos' attorney, told the council that the officers' testimony does not prove there was lewd behavior at On the Rocks. The type of touching required to insert cash into a dancer's costume is "incidental touching," Williams said.During the hearing, Police Sgt. Michael Sisco (not to be confused with Police Chief Michael Sisco) testified that, while working undercover March 29, he was solicited by an On the Rocks dancer, who escorted him to the bar's downstairs lounge for a lapdance. During the lapdance, Sisco said, the dancer removed her bikini top.
Sisco also testified that during three previous undercover visits, he witnessed patrons (including himself and two fellow undercover officers) touching dancers as they inserted cash tips into the dancers' bikini tops and g-strings.
Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it...
Comments (18)
This gives the concept of "entrapment" a somewhat unexpectedly salacious tint.
And did the officers enjoy their visits to "On the Rocks," the appropriately prurient might now ask. Or was it just business?
How could they not?
Exactly what sort of covers were they under?
Dear Thesaurus: Dont use big words when diminutive ones will suffice. Do you really speak how your write? Clearly people must find you the most interesting person alive. You should get your own show on channel 34. Picture Cathar, in a Hugh Hefner smoking jacket, corn pipe, sitting in front of a Citizen Kane style fireplace with a dog by his legs, polishing his spelling bee trophies, quoting his favorite passages from Houghton Mifflin's Press Release for 100 Words to Make You Sound Smart.
The reality is much simpler. A lot of these words are standard management-speak, transferred annually from teacher to student. When you hear your professor say the word "vertical system of methodologies" enough number of times, you begin to believe that it really means something. A year later, you're out with an MBA, and before you know it, you are confidently talking about "systems of methodologies", which just happen to be vertical. And you advice your clients to build an ecosystem that creatively encourages technology and innovation aribitrage, leveraging cost, and proactively maintains access to your talent pool.
Cathar- If you want to connect with people, it would be fitting to use the language of the common blogger
Ssh, jimmytown,keep it down. cathar doesn't WANT or NEED to connect with people.
Spot, Jimmy, if either of you represent the "common blogger," than he/she also has the most common, lamebrained of minds. Words reside only temporarily in a dictionary, they're meant to be pulled out and visited with occasionally. Used in speech and writing, even.
It thus well behooves me to post in a manner apparently unintelligible by your likes. Meaning by using a vocabulary that generally runs a bit deeper than that found in the collected works of Dr. Seuss.
You are not merely an ordinary idiot, jimmytown, you're a double idiot, compounding your ignorance and stupidity by trying to pass them off as virtues.
Cather,
Don't sell Dr. Seuss's vocabulary short. I read Dr. Seuss to my youngest practically every night. Now, granted, I may not be the brighest bulb on the chandelier, but I do think I have a fairly decent vocabulary. And let me tell you, those Dr. Seuss books are filled with words I've never heard before.
I'm hardly a fan of Cathar (he once called my work lame, long, and clownish, only one of which was true) but ridiculing a person for using words like "salacious" and "prurient?" Jeez, I'd hate to see your bookshelf, jimmytown.
prurient?
Wha?
This article cracked me up!!! After I was done reading it aloud to my 21 yr old son, I had a tear in my eye from laughing.
He said he'd never been there (cough) but am sure his interest is piqued...even if only to play Spot The Cop. :)
Seriously, don't Bloomfield cops have better things to do?
If I was a Bloomfield cop, I couldn't possibly imagine anything better to do than that.
Waiting outside Dunkin Donuts for a fresh batch to arrive would be a close second.
What no "happy ending" massage place to investigate? How about next weeks investigation into if the drinks are watered down?
Scruffycat, I'll gladly apologize post-facto (way post-facto, I'm sure) for being wrong on two out of the three epithets I applied to your posts.
But may I also know which one I used correctly?
Complainerpuss, I'm not selling Dr. Seuss short. I am, however, suggesting that jimmy and spot, in their ongoing efforts to be Baristanet's version of Stan & Ollie here, might need to go back to the good Dr.'s work and reread before they take on something a bit weightier. "The House At Pooh Corner," for example, or "A Child's Garden of Verses."
make fun if you wish, but that is not the kind of establishment that we want or need in our downtown.
if we are to attract a couple of anchor stores of the 'chain' variety, we have to clean up the vile business that are there.
look, obviously this place has their own clientele, but i think that establishments like this should remain on highways where you don't have to walk past it with your 10-year old on your way to buy shoes or groceries or whatever ...
kudos to the cops who did this ... laugh all you want about a tough job but it had to be done and if these guys have significant others, it probably wasn't an easy job for them to do
get rid of the scum businesses in our downtown to pave the way for good ones.
I'd feel much more safe if Bloomfield PD would deploy more of their cops to catch speeders and people running red lights on Broad St than putting them "undercover" into go-go joints to catch guys brushing their fingers against dancer's skin as they tipped them for a set.
Really now, a glancing touch is "lewd" behavior? What is this now, Tehran?
While some of you may personally abhor such establishments, considering the diversity of the backgrounds of the patrons, they are neither aberrant nor "vile". In case you have been hiding under a rock, as perhaps hidinginb-ville has been, men of all ages and all walks of life really enjoy watching scantily-clad young women wiggle their bodies for money!
Their "own clientele" are not some collection of deviants, but just regular guys, many of which you would otherwise consider to be pretty decent fellows. Like cops. That's why the moral hypocrisy of this episode is so offensive. While some Bloomfield cops were "undercover" at On the Rocks, there were plenty of other cops from this town and others getting their rocks off at plenty other go-go joints. You think the cops "undercover" at On the Rocks had never been to a go-go bar before? Right, this wasn't their first time at the rodeo.
laugh all you want about a tough job but it had to be done and if these guys have significant others, it probably wasn't an easy job for them to do
Oh yeah, I'm sure it was really hard. They got to go to a go-go joint and tell the wife that it was all in the line of duty! I can just imagine how many guys will be trying that line on their wives now!