Last dance

A dozen men, clutching dollar bills, are scattered around the oblong stage. They wait expectantly for Jasmine’s gaze as she strides towards them in high heels (and little else), collecting tips from the shadowed faces. The music is loud. The air is heavy with perfume. It’s an hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve at Visions Night Club.

“It’s literally my first night doing anything like this ever. I’m going out on a limb and trying something I’ve been curious about,” says Jasmine after leaving the stage. “Not sure if it’s for me but here I am. It’s been a trip and super weird so far.”

By chance, Jasmine’s trial run in the adult entertainment business coincides with what might well be the end of Visions Night Club’s four-decade run in Madison. It’s been at its current location at 3554 E. Washington Ave. since the mid-1970s.

“I showed [Visions staff] my ID and that was my audition. I don’t know what I was expecting,” says Jasmine. “I’m not sure what a regular night is like here. But there’s definitely a strange vibe going on. These heels are also kicking my ass.”

The heat was on Visions for most of 2019. After a shooting at the club in December 2018, the city spent months investigating before taking steps to shut the club down. Visions managed to hold on to its liquor and entertainment licenses by agreeing to close for 90 days starting on Jan 1, 2020.

“This is the last night of Visions as far as I’m considered,” says the woman tending bar. “It’s kind of up in the air whether we open up as Silk or not. And if we do, whether I have a job or not.”

Visions’ owners want to sell to Silk Exotic, which owns several strip clubs in Wisconsin, including two in downtown Milwaukee and one on the outskirts of Middleton. So Visions could reopen under the Silk brand and new management in April if Silk succeeds in getting licenses from the city to serve alcohol and for adult entertainment; the city council will have the final say on that at its Feb. 4 meeting. Most residents who live near the club do not want to see Silk or Visions operate a club there.

But Visions has its fans here tonight. Michael has paid monthly visits to the club since it opened in 1976. What keeps him coming back?

“The women,” says Michael. “I hate to see this place go. It’s like saying goodbye to a good friend.”

The music stops for a 10-second countdown as 2019 clicks over to 2020. Cheers ring out and champagne is passed around while “Auld Lang Syne” plays. Then it’s back to the regular din of pop hits.

“We made it! Who would have ever thought we’d start the new year like this?” says Jasmine before hurrying away. “I got to give a private dance to a smelly old guy now.”

The Dangle pioneered modern day adult entertainment in Madison. Brothers Alphonse and Thomas Reichenberger started the downtown bar at 119 E. Main St. in 1966. They bought Visions in 1978, which Tom ran until his death in March 2019. (Read our 1982 story on the final night of The Dangle here).

Vince O’Hern, co-founder and former publisher of Isthmus, was a bartender at The Dangle before starting the newspaper. He says the Reichenbergers took over a piano bar that had few customers.

“I don’t know exactly where he got the idea. But Tom had a waitress who agreed to get up and dance on the piano. Take her top off,” says O’Hern. “It started a sensation.”

As it happens, a pivotal meeting about launching Isthmus took place on The Dangle’s stage on a Sunday when the bar was closed, O’Hern adds.

Al Reichenberger retired in 1995 but still lives in Madison and knows the details of the family business. He says The Dangle was “one of the most famous bars in the country” in the late 1960s.

“The city never liked The Dangle, to put it simply. We were part of the anti-war protests in Madison. We were anti-establishment. Part of the counterculture,” says Reichenberger. “We were the first bar in Wisconsin to go topless and then nude. We also won litigation that we could go nude and topless as a First Amendment right. That’s what helped make us famous.”

The Dangle also spurred competitors. Reichenberger estimates there were up to 12 nude bars in Madison at one point. All went out of business before The Dangle.

In 1982, the Reichenbergers struck a deal with the city that ended years of litigation: the brothers would close The Dangle by  year’s end and the city would allow Visions to stay where it is under a nonconforming, conditional-use designation.

“There are certain people in this town that just don’t want an adult entertainment establishment. It’s always been like that. But they haven’t been able to shut us down,” says Reichenberger. “We were successful because we always ran it like a business. You had a set of rules and were strict about it. That’s what we did.”

Reichenberger says management intervened if “there was even a hint of prostitution” and didn’t allow drugs to be sold by its staff or patrons. He compares operating a strip club to running a theater.

“You got to make sure people are on time and where they need to be,” says Reichenberger. “It’s like a show that never stops. It’s about providing entertainment.”

Isthmus made several attempts to talk to former Visions dancers but was unsuccessful. In the early 1980s, Reichenberger says dancers at Visions were a mix of “girls from UW, housewives who worked a couple nights a week” and dancers he calls “professionals.” But for most, it was more of a gig than a career.

Now, says Reichenberger, more dancers are doing it full time at a couple adult entertainment venues in the region or are in town for a few weeks and looking for work. All the dancers work as independent contractors.

He acknowledges the strip club game has devolved since the Summer of Love era. But don’t blame Visions, says Reichenberger. It’s the clientele.

“It’s a different kind of crowd. There’s a criminal class in Madison now. Bad actors walking around with guns and drugs,” says Reichenberger. “We didn’t have to deal with those people before.”

Reichenberger says it’s a problem at every nightclub, not just the ones for gentlemen.

“Visions didn’t change,” says Reichenberger. “The world did.”

The city of Madison will start 2020 with no strip clubs operating within its borders for the first time in 50 years. Some would like to keep it that way, including former Ald. David Ahrens, who represented the area from 2013 to 2019.

“Visions is a hub for drugs. Probably prostitution,” says Ahrens. “What can I say? It’s a pit.”

Phoenix, who asked to go by that pseudonym, lived in one of the apartments above Visions for a few months in 2019. He describes the experience as “quite hellish,” particularly due to the loud music late into the night. The rent was dirt cheap, though: $250 a month.

“You learn to keep your head down. But biker gangs. Prostitution. Drugs. Those are common at strip clubs. Visions is no exception,” says Phoenix. “I will say, it is perhaps the last and only place in Madison with that kind of rent. I can’t imagine the people who live there have any other option. I didn’t.”

Over 400 people, many from the surrounding neighborhood, signed a change.org petition started by Ahrens in January 2018 demanding that the Alcohol License Review Committee revoke Visions’ liquor license. Former Ald. Mike Shivers, who represented the east-side neighborhood from 1971-1993, signed it. He says Visions has “long attracted a bad element drawn by nude entertainment.”

“People who live around Visions have seen everything. A couple years ago, there was a woman giving a blow job at the end of my driveway at 10 in the morning,” says Shivers. “If it weren’t for Visions, it’d be a nice neighborhood. It’s not exactly the epitome of a community builder.”

Ahrens says the 2018 shooting inside Visions “was just the final straw.”

“The bottom line is the business is based on the degradation of women. That’s what they do,” says Ahrens. “This shooting is not a one-off incident. I’m mystified why we have allowed [Visions] to exist for as long as it has.”

Just before closing time on Dec. 9, 2018, police were dispatched to Visions after receiving a call about a large fight with injuries and reports of gunshots. Police later determined an argument between two men — one allegedly a member of “a motorcycle gang, possibly the C.C. Riders” — escalated. One of the men was stabbed multiple times in the head. He then shot his aggressor in the chest. A Visions employee and a patron were also injured by gunfire.

Like Ahrens, the city attorney’s office was fed up. In August 2019, assistant city attorney Jennifer Zilavy filed a 56-page complaint seeking to revoke Visions’ liquor and entertainment licenses. It documented 60 infractions, including the unapproved construction of private dance booths, the purchase of alcohol from unlicensed sellers, and dozens of other incidents going back to 2012 that Zilavy said violated the city’s prohibition against maintaining a “disorderly or riotous, indecent, or improper house.”

“It really has nothing to do with the fact that [Visions is] a strip club…. After the December 2018 shooting, I thought I should look into the [police] calls for service a little deeper. When I did, what I saw concerned me,” says Zilavy. “Also, during that time I was contacted by a woman who alleged she had been sexually assaulted at the club while she was a customer.”

Jeff Scott Olson, Visions’ attorney, argued that alleged violations more than two years old were too old to act on. A sub-committee of the Alcohol License Review Committee agreed, throwing out 48 of the 60 counts outlined in the city’s original complaint. But even for the remaining charges, Olson says the police who testified at the eventual revocation hearing didn’t “ascribe any fault on the part of Visions or its employees.”

“The police said that Visions employees had done everything right,” adds Olson. “I think the city began to feel like they might not secure a revocation decision and ought to negotiate a compromise which would allow them to achieve something.”

An agreement signed Nov. 1 between Visions and the city allowed the club to retain its licenses provided it improved security and shut down for the first three months of 2020. City Attorney Michael May tells Isthmus he thinks the settlement was “the best option we could get.”

David Brown, Visions’ longtime manager who holds some corporate stock in the business, calls the city’s efforts “a witch hunt.” He says crime is a problem for several businesses in the area because it’s “a crappy neighborhood.”

“There was a shooting at Kwik Trip at 2 in the afternoon. Guess what? There is no Visions, then. We’re closed,” says Brown. “It’s embarrassing that a city this size doesn’t have multiple strip clubs. If it were up to some, we’d have zero.”

Olson provided Isthmus a list of the number of police calls for service between Jan. 1, 2018, and May 13, 2019, to businesses that serve or sell alcohol near Visions. Kwik Trip, right next door, had 224 calls during that period. Across East Wash, Pedro’s had 69 calls. Club LaMark on Stoughton Road had 58 calls. Visions had 77.

Brown says accusations that Visions allows drugs and prostitution are “lies, lies, lies.”

“They make Visions sound like it’s a bunch of hookers and all this other stuff. If those crimes really happened, why do we have our liquor licenses renewed year after year after year?” asks Brown. “If I’m running a prostitution ring, do something about it!”

Brown adds Visions has never had a “prostitution arrest” in its long history and it isn’t tolerated.

Captain Brian Ackeret, who has run the north side police district since June 2018, says the area around Visions quieted down last year. Ackeret says he had heard rumors about prostitutes and biker gangs running criminal operations out of Visions. But he calls that type of behavior “more historical.”

“Since the shooting [in December 2018], we’ve been keeping a close eye on them and officers stepped up bar checks.... In terms of businesses in that area, at least in the last year, this establishment has not had a high number of calls for service,” says Ackeret. “I’m very comfortable in saying that this establishment has been complying with all the conditions of its liquor license.”

Brown says Silk Exotic should be allowed to take over Visions.

“After this year, I’m sick and tired of dealing with the city. Silk has deep pockets and the time to deal with the city and make some investments [in the club],” says Brown, who notes that Silk will also have former law enforcement officials working security. “So what exactly is the problem here?”

Ald. Grant Foster, who succeeded Ahrens in 2019, says the problem is “virtually no support from the neighborhood.” He adds there should be a higher threshold for granting new licenses to Silk than renewing Visions’ long-held permits.

“This isn’t a good spot for any nightclub. It’s a residential area and people are living well within 500 feet of it. It’s just not the neighborhood bar,” says Foster, who opposes granting licenses to Silk. “At our public meeting [with Silk on Dec. 17, 2019], one of our residents asked, ‘Other than being not as bad as Visions, what’s the benefit to us?’ They didn’t have an answer.”

Kyle Zubke, director of operations for Silk Exotic, emphasizes that the strip club chain runs “high-end clubs with a great track record.” Silk plans on investing $750,000 to remodel the building — which it will not own — and implement “several layers of security” that are found at its other locations. Zubke says Silk knows it’s incumbent on them to be a good neighbor. 

“We realize there is a bullseye on our back,” says Zubke. “We don’t wait for problems to fix them. We look out for issues, eliminate them before they can become problems.” 

Zubke says he’s aware that there isn’t much support from the neighborhood for the takeover.

“But the reality is if we don’t get the licenses, it’s back to Visions who they have had all the problems with,” says Zubke. “Do you want a Four Seasons or a Motel 6?” 

Brown says he’s not sure what will happen if Silk isn’t granted the licenses it needs. But he vows “not to let the city win.”

“I got the beer. I got the liquor. I got the stage. I’m opening up as Visions April 1,” says Brown. “Why the fuck not? If I do, it won’t be an April Fools’ joke.”

Back at the club on New Year’s Eve, it sure seems like the very last night at Visions. There’s no cover charge — a mainstay at strip clubs — and few IDs are checked at the door. A steady stream of patrons has arrived since midnight, including quite a few people in motorcycle jackets. There are also several former dancers, bartenders and bouncers reminiscing at the bar and taking photos with old friends. One alum arrives and loudly proclaims to the bar, “Visions! It’s the end of an era. Happy 2020.”

One of the dancers is saying goodbye to a quadriplegic man. She has been tenderly helping him drink a beer through a straw for the past 20 minutes. Outside a paratransit bus is waiting to take him home. The driver audibly sighs before she enters the bar to let the man know his ride is here.

As last call nears, the regular dancers at Visions aren’t coming on stage when called by the DJ. Jasmine appears to be the only dancer still working. She says she prefers to be on stage rather than do private dances for customers in the partitioned booths off to the side.

“I haven’t had a break all night but that’s okay. In the basement, where the dressing room is, everything is dirty and busted up. I don’t even want to sit down there,” says Jasmine. “There’s this shower that’s all stained like they’ve dumped mop water in it for years. Just standing water down there in one part. This place must have gone totally down the drain.”

After tipping out the bartender and other staff, Jasmine ends the night with $500 in cash. She says it was physically exhausting but she doesn’t regret it. She might even try dancing at a different club. To her surprise, her first night as a stripper ended with performing the very last dance at Visions, to the Kiss song “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

“Thanks for stopping out at Visions for our very, very, very last fucking night,” booms the DJ after turning on the house lights. “Hope you had a good time. We’re closed.”

But before the crowd could leave, shouting erupts and two men are at each other’s throats. It’s not clear what started the altercation.

“I gotta go,” says one dancer as she heads downstairs. “Last time I was here somebody got shot.”

But people are unable to leave because the men fighting are blocking the exit. They spend 10 minutes shouting insults and are near fisticuffs. One of them is wearing a jacket with a large skull with glowing red eyes — the emblem of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. He’s telling the other man to “get the fuck out.”

“Don’t put your hands on me, bro. I’m a grown-ass man.” the man shouts back.

“So act like it,” barks David Brown, the manager, as he cleans up behind the bar. He appears annoyed but not alarmed by the scene. The fight never comes to blows. It ends with an awkward hug after a prolonged session of staring each down. One patron, in his late 20s, remarks, “Nothing good happens after midnight.

“It isn’t a lie. Nothing ever does,” adds the young man. “So why am I here? Because I’m sad and lonely.”