By Jeremy Walsh
The owner of a Long Island City strip club is warning Community Board 2 that its efforts to stop his liquor license application could result in a far racier club with a younger audience.
Gus Drakopoulos, who grew up in Astoria and runs the Sin City gentlemen’s club in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, said the club itself can proceed with or without the license. Without alcohol on the premises, he said, exotic dancers can dance fully nude instead of topless and the minimum age drops from 21 to 18.
Would Drakopoulos, who said Sin City aspires to be a classier, more upscale establishment than what typically goes in the outer boroughs, be willing to go that route?
“If they leave me no choice, yes,” he said. “We don’t want to, but we have the right.”
The two-story brick building was formerly the site of Smiley’s Flowers, a wholesaling company. Construction plans show the converted building would have 12 karaoke rooms and a main lounge with two cash bars on the lower floor and a service bar on the upper floor, according to application documents. The plans call for a maximum occupancy of 299 people.
Drakopoulos filed the liquor license application in May and CB 2 reacted negatively soon afterward. Board members believed they had convinced Drakopoulos to abandon his plan before meetings were suspended for the summer months, but in September they again received notification from the Liquor Authority that the application was proceeding. Drakopoulos said previous news reports that he was pulling out were “false information.”
He said he met several times with Patrick O’Brien, chairman of CB 2’s City Services Committee.
“They automatically just labeled us according to what they know,” he said. “But strip clubs are not what they used to be from the 1980s where they’re these dingy places and all the crackheads are there.”
He pointed to Manhattan clubs like Scores as his example and said Sin City cleans up the sidewalk around its location and donates canned food, candy and toys to the needy for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“We don’t have problems such as prostitution, drugs, fights, killings, shootings, anything of the sort,” he said. “My local precinct can vouch for me.”
Phone calls to Community Board 1 in the Bronx and the 40th Precinct were not returned by press time Tuesday. Meeting minutes indicate those agencies told O’Brien Sin City was the target of organized resistance when it first came in, but had not caused any problems in the neighborhood.
Drakopoulos, who was formerly in the investment field, said he opened Sin City seven years ago after the markets took a tumble. But federal documents show he was indicted by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission on insider trading charges in 2002.
Drakopoulos pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in 2006.
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jewalsh@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
