Hold the Pickles, Please

By STEVE LOPEZ

If you stop and think about all the things we do in this country without ever getting out of our cars, we're a pretty sedentary lot. You can bank at the drive-up and grab dinner at the drive-through. For the ambitiously lazy, there's the drive-by shooting. But a suburban Pittsburgh man has taken sloth the extra mile. Who else but an American would open the world's first drive-through strip joint?

Feel free to insert your own joke here, but be aware that "hold the pickles" has already been used in several variations. Nick Fratangelo has heard them all at his club on Route 22, about 45 minutes east of Pittsburgh in the rolling dairy land of Salem Township.

"In the entertainment business, you've always got to have a hook," Fratangelo says about giving customers a drive-through option at the Climax Gentleman's Club. Maybe they're just in a hurry, or they're too shy to park and go inside for the floor show. "Everyone's got a smile on their face when they drive through."

Take Jim Diskin, 43, a telecommunications consultant who drove out from Pittsburgh one night to sneak a peek. He aimed his Ford Escort under an arch of flashing red lights and into the "Nude Drive-Thru Lane," stopping at a booth where a sign says the show is $5 a minute. Diskin handed over a twenty and was waved ahead to a 6-ft. window under a carport. "I love America," he said, and that was before a curtain opened and a 21-year-old flower named Daisy stood behind the glass in a blue-sequined miniskirt. One minute into her act, she wore nothing but a tattoo of a daisy.

No one ever called me a prude, but the window thing is a little creepy. You feel like you're at a school for Peeping Toms, and you find yourself wishing there were a confession window, or maybe a flea dip, at the end of the chute. If they at least rotated your tires, you would feel a little better about yourself. But that's just one take. "I've been to Amsterdam, and this is a better show," Diskin raved as Daisy scored a 9.8 in the floor exercises.

But not everyone is cheering in Salem Township, a deeply religious community with 7,500 residents and two nude dance clubs. Steve Thomas, father of two, says the existence of the clubs was bad enough, but the drive-through, open since April, further degrades women. He and others meet weekly at Pastor Beth Hans' Straight to the Heart Ministry to write protest letters to judges and politicians. Pastor Hans says she's been counseling men who are fighting the temptation of drive-through flesh. "They get off work and go over there, and their wives are home wondering, 'What is wrong with this relationship?'"

Daisy has her own ministry. That's what's wrong.

"We get calls from parents asking why we can't do something about it," says Salem Township supervisor Carmella Salvatore. "Their children pass the club on the way to school, and they're asking, 'Mommy, what's a nude drive-through?'"

Actually, the nudie wars began two years ago. "There were indications that three other adult-oriented businesses wanted to come in," says supervisor Ed Gieselman, who confesses that he frequented the Climax before its drive-through days, a habit he has curbed since taking office. "At the public hearings, I'd say 95% of the people wanted some kind of action."

The result, an antismut ordinance, drew an instant lawsuit from the Climax and the other club, the Beehive. The Beehive later agreed to remove the word nude from its signs and scale back its operation. But Fratangelo resisted, arguing, among other things, that nudity is a protected form of free expression. The legal wrangling continues with no end in sight. "The drive-through is his way of thumbing his nose at us," Salvatore says.

"We don't degrade women; we admire them," says the Hugh Hefner of western Pennsylvania, wearing a custard-colored blazer and smiling devilishly as three drooling future Presidents do the drive-through in a pickup truck. Barbie, a dancer, says she was initially apprehensive about doing windows, but it grew on her. "We even get women and couples coming through. And a lot of golfers."

P.T. Barnum lives. Asked about his inspiration, Fratangelo says it was "just a brainstorming session one day. You think I'll be TIME's Man of the Year?"