Hunts Point Rising
How a community said no more to seedy strip clubs
Hunts Point District Manager Rafael Salamanca, Jr. was waiting, checking and re-checking his email for the judge’s verdict on whether to close down Club Eleven, a local strip club.
It had been four months of litigation between the State Liquor Authority attorney and the owners of the club. Salamanca, who attended every hearing, was uncertain of the outcome. For one, the defendant was being represented by Stacey Weiss, a veteran attorney, who had the reputation of being able to get the seediest strip clubs out of legal trouble. And in the past, the SLA had ruled against the community’s suggestions, allowing other strip clubs to remain open, despite a myriad of violations.
The judge’s ruling would set in motion two distinct trajectories.
Revoking Club Eleven’s liquor License would inevitably ensure the business’s demise. This ruling would mark the first time the community has been able to shut down an existing strip club.
Penalizing the club would prove that despite political and communal backing, the adult establishment industry in Hunts Point would remain a controversial fixture in the community.
Salamanca sat at the head of a boardroom table, ready to attack.
To his left, Inspector Phillip Rivera of the 41st NYPD precinct. To his right, Kevin Wolfe, district representative for State Senator Jeffrey Klein. Across the table sat the owners and managers of a local club, Ebony Lounge on East 163rd Street. Over the past year, the club had amassed a string of violations, including an assault outside of the premise and alcohol sales to a minor.
“For the record, I want to be clear that whatever happened in this community in the past is in the past. We’ve turned that page,” said Salamanca, locking eyes with Florizel Hendricks, the lounge owner. “We are writing a new story. This community board has taken a different stand from previous years.”
The square-mile peninsula that makes up Hunts Point in the Bronx is home to five adult clubs, magnets for “johns” from outside neighborhoods and boroughs who are looking for sex. Tensions between these seedy strip clubs and residents are at crossfire. Last April, state legislators amended the alcoholic beverage control law, instituting a “three strikes” policy on serious violations that revokes the license of any establishment selling alcoholic beverages.
In addition, a pending bill would require a State Liquor Authority liaison to attend community board meetings when a business renews or applies for a liquor license. Fed-up Hunts Point residents and officials, who felt powerless to shut down these places, spurred the bill, citing prostitution and multiple deaths linked to the local strip clubs. If the bill passes, community boards will have the upper hand in blocking adults clubs from entering their community, or closing down seedy clubs. A power the Salamanca and residents have been waiting for.
Salamanca, 32, a longtime Hunts Point resident, is leading the anti-strip club crusade. He and Community Board 2 members believe the legislation will shift power in their favor.
Five piles of disheveled papers litter Salamanca’s desk. Tacked to his corkboard is a button that reads, “I <3 NY,” next to photos of his parents and fiancé. His office overlooks East 163rd Street, where he spent much of his youth wandering with his parents. He is wearing a tailored suit that bulges at the waistline, the result of 15-pound weight gain since he took the job.
As a child, Salamanca followed his mother Glenda to work at Urban Health Plan in Hunts Point, spending hours running around the office and coloring in Highlight magazines. At 18, he got a job there, working as a clerk alongside her for seven years, along the way earning his associate’s degree. He still has two more semesters before he can receive his bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College.
His phone rang. “Community Board, Ralph speaking. “Ok –Ok –Ok. He continued for two minutes. Within an hour the phone interrupted five times. The duties of a District Manager
Salamanca left his previous job as director of the Community Healthcare Network in Brooklyn, where he felt limited in his ability to provide adequate health care services to the 55,000 residents of Hunts Point. Being District Manager, he said, gave him power, authority, and clout. Salamanca oversees planning and zoning development, meaning anything from proposals for a new playground or office space built in the neighborhood ends up at his desk.
“What motivates me? My family,” said Salamanca, pointing to a picture of his father Raphael Sr. hunched over his son Justin.
“This is my mother,” he said, stroking his finger over a funeral announcement.
“Her personality is so different from mine. Everyone tells me I’m very dry, I’m very serious. My mom got along with everyone. She had a certain presence, she does,” he said, pulling a Kleenex from his drawer to blot his tears. “She did.”
“One of my favorite parts is being on the streets. I love it,” Salamanca said, walking south on Hunts Point Avenue wearing a pinstripe two-piece suit with a sky-blue shirt. He credits his style to growing up in a strict Jehovah Witness environment that adheres to a strict dress code.
Seventy percent of the pictures on his iPhone are snapshots taken during these daily strolls: fractured sidewalks, parking violations and housing infractions. He saves these in a file, or emails them to various departments.
“Hola, Mr. Salamanca,” Milli Colon, a 20-year Hunts Point resident called out from down the street. “Will I see you at the blood drive next week?”
“Of course,” Salamanca replied.
A lot has changed in Hunts Point since the early mid-70s, when the community was drug- infested and prostitutes flocked to its corners and the South Bronx averaged 12,000 fires a year from arson.
“What has caused the change?” Salamanca asked. “Community outcry. The community has risen and said ‘No more, we can’t do this.’”
Last March, Salamanca and about 50 residents protested outside Club Heat on Hunts Point Ave., where 33-year-old Monique Rodriguez, a mother of three, had been shot and killed two months earlier.
A patron outside shot Rodriguez after a verbal fight ignited inside. Salamanca led the charge to write to the State Liquor Authority, trying to revoke Club Heat’s liquor licenses. The community’s request was denied after owners of Club Heat petitioned that it had no role in Rodriguez’s murder.
The decision to take a stand against the adult clubs dates back to 2010, when architect Orlando Marin became the Community Board chairman and Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. hired Salamanca as District Manager. Marin departed in 2011 to become the Bronx’s representative on the City Planning Commission, but his replacement, Dr. Ian Amritt, a local health organizer, was committed to working closely with Salamanca to make closing the strip clubs one of their top priorities.
When Salamanca became the first new District Manager in 20 years, he reopened every club’s file. “Ralph has really taken on this responsibility,” Marin said. “He understands the community. He is the community.”
Salamanca believes the best and only legal way to close these clubs down is through controlling an establishment’s liquor licenses. Salamanca spoke openly about his frustration with certain agencies, including the State Liquor Authority; they claim to make decisions on the community’s behalf, contrary to the community’s recommendations.
“Alcohol is the key,” he said. “If they can’t drink, these guys are going to go somewhere else where there is alcohol.”
But Salamanca’s critics argue that his actions reflect his age.
“He’s young and green,” said Alfred Rivera, who runs Mr. Wedge, the longest running adult club in the neighborhood. “The ones with ambition leave when there’s opportunity.”
Salamanca walked up five flights of stairs to his two-bedroom apartment off 163rd St. and Rev. Jones Polite Ave. –where he’s lived since he was 17. He’s the only member of his family who still lives in the neighborhood. His sister moved to White Plains and his father moved back to Puerto Rico.
“I’m home, baby,” Salamanca said, changing up his black pea coat.
“I’m in the kitchen,” his fiancé Jessenia replied.
He sat down in their cramped living room with his stepson Justin, 14, whom he has helped raise since he was six. “Let’s play NBA Jam,” he said, reaching for the remote. Salamanca likes to unwind after work with his Xbox or PlayStation 3.
“Ralph, we got to move into a building with an elevator,” said Jessenia, unpacking groceries — a common argument in their household.
“People can tell me that I live in the hood, I live in the ghetto,” he said. “But I don’t see it that way.” Salamanca has contemplated leaving the neighborhood in search of more space for his family. Although his job doesn’t require him to live in the district he serves, he never plans to move out of Community Board 2 district. Even with his $100,000 yearly salary, he doesn’t want to leave for a middle-class community.
“I think there is an advantage living in your district,” he said. I know everything. I know where not to drive, where there is going to be a pothole when it snows, what problems need to be addressed.”
Salamanca has three main goals for his community. “Get rid all strip clubs go, address the prostitution issue —and then we change the perception of Hunts Point.” he said.
Weiss is infamous in Hunts Point. The 12-year veteran represents more than 100 clubs, bars, and restaurants, including Cub Eleven and Hermosillo, two notorious adult clubs in Hunts Point.
Before retiring from the New York Police Department after 20 years, Weiss was part of the civil enforcement unit at the legal bureau that regulated restaurants, bars and clubs. On her website, next to a martini cocktail graphic, reads: “Get you liquor license WITHIN WEEKS.”
Robert Crespo, chairman of Hunts Point’s Liquor License Committee called Weiss the gun-totting attorney. A few months ago, during a Community Board 2 meeting, Weiss and Crespo burst into a shouting match. Crespo accused Weiss of representing lewd clubs that hurt the community. Weiss retaliated, saying that what she was doing was legal. As the argument escalated, Crespo claimed Weiss pushed away the right panel of her blazer, exposing a gun. Weiss confirmed that Crespo and she had a heated exchange, but denied exposing her gun as a scare tactic. A few residents present during the dispute claim Weiss left the meeting in tears.
Weiss, who also focuses on commercial and real estate law, said most of her work deals with liquor licensing.
In a commercial, posted online earlier this year, Weiss sits center frame, eyes pierced slightly above the horizon. Behind her, a flat bookshelf, filled with law encyclopedias. In a monotone voice she says: “I can help you navigate through this tangle of laws and regulation and I can defend you when you’re accused of violating them.”
Weiss did just this for a client in January when she appeared before the State Liquor Authority full board. She stepped to the lectern with an inch binder stuffed with annotated documents, wearing a black suit that flared at the midriff. She scanned all five board members.
Her client Chris Nunez, owner of Nick’s Liquor and Wine shop in Harlem was charged with selling liquor to minors, three different occasions, within a six-month period. In 2010, Nunez took over the business from his mother. Because of the violations, the business was at risk of losing its liquor license, eliminating their only source of revenue.
But Weiss had a plan of attack: downplay the problem and hype the business’s clean history. Weiss understood that in NY, it’s harder to revoke a liquor license then to stop a new business from acquiring one.
“His family has been licensed there for 25 years. With no prior problem.” Weiss said, pulling down the mic. “We respectfully request that you can accept the $6,500 offer.” The $6,500 was a self-imposed penalty that would repent the business’s wrongdoing. Too low and the SLA may counter by revoking the license, too high and the client pays more out-of-pocket. The board postponed the decision, mandating Weiss bring in Nunez.
Two weeks later Weiss returned to the courtroom with Mr. Nunez.
“If there is a fourth sale to minor, we may probably take your license,” said the chairman, tilting his glasses down to see Nunez. “We wanted to say that face-to-face so there is no uncertainty.”
“Yes, sir,” said Nunez, the only two words he uttered during the four-minute decision.
Weiss slapped her binder shut, walked away and prepared for her next case.
Community health care workers believe the clubs are gateways to prostitution for many of the young women who dance in them. For that reason, Hunts Point residents want to close them down.
“They work at clubs as a means of making money,” Amritt said, CB2 chairman. He said he knows 15 women who were lured into prostitution as teens in local strip clubs.
“First they work in the clubs and then they are transformed into prostitutes,” he added.
Two months after Rodriquez’s death, Assemblyman Marcos A. Crespo, who represents the 85th District, including Hunts Point, sponsored a bill that would require a New York State Liquor Authority liaison to attend community boards when a business requests a liquor license. If the bill passes, a 30-day extension will be added to the existing 30-day requirement for a community board to meet and bring up its concerns to the State Liquor Authority. The bill passed in state senate and is currently pending in the Senate Rules Committee.
Later that month, Crespo stood before the New York House of Representatives and talked about Rodriguez’s murder in an attempt to convince other representatives to vote for the Liquor Licensing Bill.
“The community board organized and raised the issues about what was happening at this establishment to the State Liquor Authority requesting that they pull their liquor license,” said the 32-year-old representative, referring to Club Heat. “To this day that message had not been heard.”
In early July, five men were slashed and two were shot outside a strip joint, Club Eleven on 1152 Randall Ave. in Hunts Point.
“Great things are occurring here in Hunts Point and these incidents distract,” said Antonio Ceteno Jr., Community Board 2 member, who previously ran the Bronx Community Pride Center.
On Sept. 14, Lieut. Betances of the 41st Precinct led a bust made possible by MARCH (Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots), a program that brings different government agencies to problematic areas.
Betances and his team of six targeted six hot spots for prostitution in Hunts Point and handed out 14 violations. That night, Betances shutdown S & J, a strip club on Prospect Avenue, for fronting as a brothel.
But despite pressure from the community, the strip club owners will not back down without a fight. Al Rivera, the owner of Mr. Wedge, the oldest adult club in Hunts Point, said that these clubs will find a way to circumvent the law. He knows because he’s done it himself. Mr. Wedge has thrived in the same spot for the last 29 years in Hunts Point, which has a longtime reputation for streetwalkers and seedy bars.
Across the corner from Mr. Wedge, on Lafayette and Garrison and a block away on Randall Avenue, two strip clubs have just opened in the last two years. The clubs in the neighborhood are located on streets that branch out from the Bruckner Expressway, the major artery of transportation in Hunts Point.
Rivera said that other adult clubs in Hunts Point do not follow his same strict guidelines. Security is key to Rivera. A string of violations in 2011 closed him down for two weeks, costing him around $20,000. He was given a citation for an unlicensed security guard and a supervisor at his club was charged with touching a female employee inappropriately. Now, he has at least three licensed security guards at all times.
He admitted that dancers in the past would go home with patrons for paid sex. He struggles to make sure that it doesn’t happen in his club. But Rivera now requires all dancers to sign a contract. On top of his table was a copy of the contract, stating if a dancer leaves with a customer during her scheduled work hours, she will be fired.
During her 21 years at the 41st precinct police officer Aida Haddock has seen the slow degrading of club from respectable to borderline criminal over the past 6 years. “It’s the ownership,” said Haddock standing outside the Community Board 2 building on East 163rd Street after talking to residents about organizing a peace march in response to the violence in the community. “They start out trying to be a proper gentlemen’s club but when the money doesn’t come in — that’s when they lower their standards.”
Haddock said that more than 90 percent of the strip club patrons are not from the area. She added that most come from other parts of the Bronx and neighboring boroughs.
Even with the collection of adult clubs in Hunts Point, crime has gone down. Since 2012, NYPD statistics show 20 charges for sex crimes in Hunts Point, a 20 percent decrease from two years ago.
In the past year, the community has united behind the Community Board 2, protesting in front of these clubs, a concentration of five adult clubs in a neighborhood with nine schools and one playground.
On February 5, Salamanca arrived at Club Eleven’s disciplinary hearing at the Authority’s Harlem office. Today the defense presented its side. Sitting at the defendant’s chair was Leslie Quaynor, owner of Club Eleven. To his left, his attorney Stacey Weiss.
Quaynor walked up to the witness chair dressed in a crisp grey suit and tangerine collared shirt.
The SLA attorney Robert Buckley asked Quaynor about the 41st precinct comments during the January hearing of the club’s recent fights that occurred outside the club. Officers testified that in numerous occasions they had to apprehend patrons and prevent larger brawls.
Quaynor told the judge that 15 guards he employed “keep the peace” inside the topless bar, entrance and during business hours. But he argued the officers from the 41st Precinct who patrol during the 4 a.m. closing time “instigate patrons as they leave the premises.”
Quaynor argued that most fights occurred between the police and patrons outside of the club. “The more presence we have outside the club, the more problems we seem to have, which is kind of weird,” Quaynor testified. Police are “a little belligerent,” he added.
Weiss also stated that the number of incidents have decreased over the year, adding police patrolling has created more problems.
“It seems that when there was a stronger police presence, there were more issues,” Weiss told the judge, and added there were “a lot of inconsistencies” in police reports. She denied allegations by officers that patrons interfere with area traffic, arguing that few cars or trucks travel late night on the industrial block, and that strip club opponents are out to get her client.
“A lot of people don’t like it, but it’s a legitimate business,” Weiss said.
Buckley argued that stating the police were responsible for patrons breaking the law was “not credible,” and added, “this is a weekly occurrence that has not been abated for some time.”
A week later crowding the door frame of Salamanca’s office, Wolfe, Rivera, Crespo stood discussing Club eleven’s previous hearing.
“Her argument is that the problems that Cub Eleven has are coming from the police,” Wolfe said, shuffling through his note book.” She actually said the more police that are there, the more arrest that are made.”
“That’s strange, coming from a former police officer,” Crespo said.
“What I’m thinking, once the judge makes a decision that’s when the public can speak,” Salamanca said pacing the room. “I’m going to be present. I’ll invite any member of the community.”
“Now that everyone is on board what need to happen is to keep it on Ralph’s calendar, so that ralph can represent the community,” Crespo added.
Rivera interjected: “There was another incident there this past Saturday, another fight outside. We made three arrest.”
A chorus of discontent grunts erupted.
A month after closing arguments yielded no answer, the judge postponed his decision two weeks after his March 8th deadline.
The day after the deadline, Salamanca received a message on his phone as he walked to the barbershop down the street from his apartment. It was a text from, Inspector Rivera that read: “Club Eleven owner arrested.”
Around 2 am that morning, the 41st precinct conducted a MARCH raid and discovered that some of Quaynor’s dancers were undocumented and not receiving full pay.
According to Rivera, while police officers trolled the club in search of violations, Quaynor became aggressive, shouting, “You guys are just out to get me.” Polices attempted to clam Quaynor, but the 6-foot-3 owner slammed his fist against the table. Seconds later, three officers restrained, handcuffed and arrested Quaynor.
The following Monday, Rivera contacted SLA judge to take into consideration what had happened 10 hours earlier.
According to Rivera, the judge was baffled, adding he would take it the incident seriously.
Weiss failed to comment on Quaynor’s arrest, simply stating, “This is not over. I will do what is best for my client.”
Club Eleven is closed –for now –signaling the near end of a two-year effort to evade Hunts Point leaders. “I didn’t expect it to end this way,” Salamanca said. “But we still have other battles to fight.”
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