The City Attorney’s Office announced Feb. 7 that North Park bathhouse 2200 Club must shut down as of April 30 for violating the city’s adult entertainment regulations, namely allowing sexual activity to occur on the premises. In the meantime, 2200 Club is prohibited from allowing any further acts of sexual activity to take place at the club.

According to the City Attorney’s Office, a civil action was filed against 2200 Club after citizen complaints and two police undercover operations documented sexual activity taking place within the club.

In January 2005, the City Attorney’s Office first issued a warning letter to 2200 Club’s attorney, stating that the bathhouse was “operating in violation of the City’s Adult Entertainment regulations … [as] people are meeting at the 2200 Club to have sex.”

A citizen later complained that sexual activity had not ceased.

Six months later, the first of two police undercover operations confirmed sex was occurring in both the common areas and the private rooms at the bathhouse.

According to Deputy City Attorney Bryan Ziegler, the Code Enforcement Unit in the City Attorney’s Criminal Division filed the complaint under California’s Red Light Abatement Act, which allows for civil injunctions and fines of as much as $25,000 per violation for any business – including bathhouses – that as a primary activity encourage or permit sexual activity. The defendants settled the complaint, admitting no liability. John Smith, president of the 2200 Club, signed the settlement on its behalf.

In January, the Gay & Lesbian Times reported that the club would close at the beginning of the year, yet it’s still unclear to us why the City Attorney’s Office has spent the police department’s severely limited resources to close down a business that has been operating as a bathhouse in its current location for more than 20 years.

Speaking with someone at the City Attorney’s Office, I was told that the office doesn’t make the laws but is expected to enforce them. Because the office received a complaint, it was the responsibility of the city attorney to investigate and take action if necessary. As someone who has been following this story from the beginning, I have a hard time swallowing that this business wasn’t being targeted; Deputy City Attorney Ziegler was on a mission to run this towel-clad Frankenstein out of town.

After the city’s first undercover operation, 2200 Club on Sept. 6 appeared before San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael Smyth, who revoked and then reinstated the club’s probation for renting a single-occupancy room to two undercover officers. The evidence presented to the court did not convince the judge that illegal drugs were being used in the club or that sexual activity was taking place on the premises. Even the city attorney’s informant, Kevin McCarthy (who has placed numerous raving mad phone calls to the Gay & Lesbian Times) couldn’t convince Smyth that illegal activity was taking place beyond the double-occupy violation.

So why didn’t it end there? The city attorney investigated, the 2200 Club appeared before a judge and a ruling was made. Do continued complaints by one raving lunatic with an obvious axe to grind justify spending city resources to investigate nonviolent illegal activity? With the SDPD down more than 300 officers and our community facing an unprecedented rise in violent crime, what logical reason could there be for sending undercover officers into a bathhouse?

I wasn’t born yesterday. Of course men are having sex in bathhouses. No one believes a good game of Marco Polo has kept clubs like 2200, and Club Mustang before it, in business for decades. Why is the city attorney taking issue with consensual sexual activity in the bathhouse now?

City Attorney Mike Aguirre has enjoyed wide support from the GLBT community. But that could change now that he’s turning off the taps at the gay community’s bathhouses.

Russell O’Brien

Editor In Chief