Platinum Pleasures is Hunts Point’s latest endangered adult bar
The lust is quickly turning to dust.
That is what the owners of Hunts Point’s notorious strip clubs are finding.
An administrative judge for the State Liquor Authority in May ordered that Platinum Pleasures’ temporary liquor license be revoked, leaving only one strip club still operating in Hunts Point. The judge ruled that the bar’s owner, Felix Cuesta, failed to meet a deadline to apply for a renewal of the club’s liquor license last year and rescinded a temporary license that a different judge had previously granted.
The owner of the bar just across the Bruckner Expressway from the 41st Precinct station house will now be required to apply for a new liquor license. New licenses are far more difficult to obtain than renewals of existing licenses, and the SLA takes community concerns more heavily into account.
Community Board 2 members and police have continually pressured the state not to renew liquor licenses to strip clubs in recent years, arguing the clubs degrade the neighborhood, attracting criminals and prostitutes.
Revocation of the bar’s liquor license does not mean the club must close, but Cuesta has so far chosen not to reopen without a license to serve drinks.
Calls to Platinum Pleasures were not answered and the club’s answering machine has been turned off.
“If they chose to reopen tomorrow, I’d check to make sure there’s no liquor on the premises,” said Lieutenant Nefty Betances, head of Special Operations at the 41st Precinct. Betances accompanied an agent from the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs earlier this month to hand the owner and his attorney the court order.
“They can serve juice if they want to,” said Betances.
Rafael Salamanca, District Manager of Community Board 2, called the decision to revoke Platinum Pleasures’ liquor license “a big victory for the community board.”
“Two years ago we had four strip clubs, today we have one,” said Salamanca.
Of the four topless bars on the peninsula in 2011, only Club 11 on Randall Avenue remains open. The SLA is expected to issue a ruling on that bar in the coming months. Mr. Wedge, a bikini bar, remains open on Hunts Point Avenue. Its owner, Alfred Rivera, has told the community board in recent years that the club should not be lumped in with area strip clubs because dancers wear bikini tops and security is top of the line.
But safety at Mr. Wedge has remained a concern for residents. In the last recorded incident of violence, a man was shot in the leg outside the club on April 20.
In the last two years, strip clubs El Coche and Club Heat have closed. El Coche’s owner has not sought to renew that Hunts Point Avenue bar’s liquor license since February 2012, and the property’s owner Amtrak has emptied all the stores in the former train station and is negotiating to lease the property to the Majora Carter Group.
Following a series of violent incidents at and around Club Heat near Food Center Drive, the SLA declined to renew its license.
On two late nights in mid-March, a multi-agency task force and officers from the 41st Precinct dropped in on seven clubs, making several arrests and closing five. The city’s Department of Buildings shut down Platinum Pleasures for a day following one of the raids, saying that the club had packed about 100 customers in, although the club has capacity for just 75.
During the raids, the Workmen’s Compensation Board temporarily shut down S & J El Nuevo Bar at 950 Prospect Ave., La Hermosilla Restaurant at 1288 Westchester Ave., and the Ebony Lounge at 921 E. 163rd St., charging that they found more employees working in those bars than the city had reported—or were paying for —to receive Workmen’s Comp. All of the owners were heavily fined.
Three employees were arrested at the Ebony Lunge when cops found they had bags of marijuana on them.
“There was a guy downstairs, rolling pot in the open,” while bouncers and DJ’s were walking around, recalled Salamanca, who accompanied the cops and agency enforcers on one of the March after-hours raids.
Community Board 2’s Liquor Licensing committee now requires bar owners seeking board support to sign agreements that they will meet certain conditions, a provision Salamanca says is important to pressure bars and clubs with troublesome track records to become responsible neighbors.
“I’m a suit and tie guy,” Salamanca said about his night accompanying agents on the March raids. “That bulletproof vest gets heavy after a while.” But, he added, “this is something all district managers should do.”