Reply #8: Here's A Republican Who Owns Both Straight Strip Joints AND Gay Bars! [View All]

[derzauberberg]

From Today's Atlanta Constitution-Journal:

They step and contort to thumping music and jumpy lights, perched atop platform heels better gauged in altitude than inches. They open three-song sets in lingerie and end them in a lot less. The women, hundreds of them, parade across Jack Galardi-owned stages around the country . . . . * * * Welcome to Galardi Nation, a smoky, windowless empire that stretches like a plus-size G-string from Nevada to Florida to the Carolinas, at times numbering two dozen clubs. Five operate in metro Atlanta, including the just-opened Pink Pony South, in Forest Park, with its two-tier showroom and upstairs sushi bar. While his dancers are on full display, the 76-year-old Galardi remains one of the most successful and controversial local moguls you've likely never heard of. * * * Galardi was convicted in 1972 of stealing blank money orders and cashing them on the overseas black market. He served about six months in prison on a five-year sentence. Since then, prosecutors and police investigators have claimed he was involved in drug trafficking with the head of a Nevada motorcycle gang, ignored prostitution at his clubs and associated with organized crime. But Galardi has never been charged with crimes related to those accusations. * * * He's gone broke twice and amassed a large, if indeterminate, fortune ("I don't have as much money as Turner," he smiles). He has four kids and two ex-wives. He's run gay bars, country bars, biker bars. * * * From 1967 through 1972, Galardi was either on the move or cooling behind bars. He promoted an all-girl rock band on military bases across Vietnam (his one-word explanation: "Divorce"); opened a club in Alaska; and was convicted of stealing blank money orders from two U.S. post offices in California. The money orders were cashed, through someone else, for more than $160,000 on the black market in South Vietnam. * * * Galardi moved to Las Vegas with a new wife and stepson and continued bar building. He got into strip clubs when he bought one that had been owned by a former nightclub partner of his in California. The club became available after the man's severed head turned up in the desert. * * * Galardi Nation has taken hits. The most public came in 2003, when Galardi's estranged stepson Michael, a club partner, pleaded guilty to bribing officials in Las Vegas and San Diego. He's serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison. "Mike wouldn't listen to me," says Galardi, never charged in the two-year FBI investigation.

See http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/02/23/galardi_0224.html#