Cheetah's
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- This article is about a Las Vegas strip club. For other uses, please see Cheetah (disambiguation).
Cheetah's Topless Club is a "gentleman's club" or topless bar in Las Vegas, best known for being featured in the 1995 movie Showgirls, and also for having been owned by Mike Galardi, a nightclub owner who was investigated by the FBI with a controversial invocation of the Patriot Act. A secondary club called Cheetah's in San Diego also achieved notoriety for having been frequented by some of the September 11th hijackers.
The Las Vegas club was founded in 1991 by Michael Galardi, and employs about 150 dancers at any given time. In 2004, Galardi admitted in a San Diego federal trial that he bribed Las Vegas officials in an attempt to influence strip club regulations. In a Las Vegas federal court, he stated that he paid between $200,000 and $400,000. [1]
The club is currently managed by Charles Wright, a retired professional wrestler best known for his stints in World Wrestling Entertainment as a voodoo witch doctor (Papa Shango) and as a pimp (The Godfather), and was also part of the Nation of Domination under the name Kama Mustafa.
[edit] See also
- Planning of the September 11, 2001 attacks
- Showgirls, 1995 film shot on location
- Operation G-Sting - About the FBI's "Operation G-Sting"
- Charles Wright - General manager of the club
- Ted Binion, wealthy and infamous client
- Missy Monroe, porn actress who got her start at Cheetah's
- Brent Jordan, bouncer from 1991-2003 who wrote a book, Stripped, about working at the club
[edit] References
- Official website (contains adult material)
- Brent Kenton Jordan, Stripped: Twenty Years of Secrets from inside the Strip Club, 2004, ISBN 0-9703441-2-0
- "Cheetah's owner to contest LV fine", January 24, 2004, Las Vegas Review Journal
- "FBI raids Vegas strip clubs, San Diego city offices", May 15, 2003, CNN
- "Time to fix the Patriot Act", April 7, 2005 editorial, San Francisco Chronicle
- "Patriot Act aided Feds in probe", November 4, 2003, Las Vegas Sun