Central City asks judge to stop ‘indecent’ Main Street strip club

Central City is asking a judge to put an end to acts of public indecency at a strip club along its historic Main Street, the latest move in a yearslong debate between it and the club’s owner.

“Rick’s Cabaret is an adult theater … that regularly violates the licensing requirement, the hours regulation, and conduct restrictions,” the city complained to a judge in a Dec. 23 lawsuit.

Owned by RCI Hospitality, a publicly traded company out of Texas, Rick’s Cabaret opened in June at 130 Main St. RCI bought the 3-story brick building from the city for $2.4 million in 2022 and then spent more than $3 million rehabbing, it says.

Central City does not allow so-called sexually oriented businesses within 1,000 feet of schools and homes — effectively a ban in a town of just 800 people. But RCI believed it could sidestep the need for a sexually oriented business license by having its dancers wear latex.

“It works so well, people think they’re nude,” then-CEO Eric Langan told the Denver Gazette.

But Central City says the strippers at Rick’s are not covered in latex — or anything else.

“Entertainers at Rick’s Cabaret regularly expose their buttocks, bare female breasts and often their pubic regions, both on- and offstage,” the city explained in last month’s lawsuit.