![]() ![]() The plaintiffs allege that they were cheated out of pay. ![]() Parts of Mohney's operations were revealed in a recent class-action lawsuit brought against the Déjà Vu chain on behalf of more than 25,000 female dancers. Prosecutors describe him as a sophisticated operator who keeps his name off documents and stays behind the scenes. He was sent to prison for tax evasion in the 1990s. The Mohney enterprise's maze-like corporate structure has bedeviled lawyers battling him in court. With his son, Jason, and porn publisher Larry Flynt, he recently opened a 70,000-square-foot Hustler strip club in Vegas. ![]() Mohney even has his own museum of erotica in Las Vegas. Mohney, whose operations then were estimated to be worth $100 million, is the central figure in the Déjà Vu chain, with more than 50 lap-dancing clubs that stretch from California to Paris, as well as other sex-oriented businesses. "I've had nothing but positive experiences with him," said Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman, whose 7th Ward covers most of downtown.īut helping to finance many Hafiz enterprises is a partner who has run afoul of the law before.įor more than three decades, the Hafiz family in the Twin Cities has worked with Harry Mohney, a businessman operating out of Michigan and Nevada who was considered by prosecutors in the late 1980s to be one of the nation's largest X-rated entrepreneurs. ![]() His clubs seldom generate the kinds of controversies that pressured the family business out of St. Last year's opening of Target Field cast a brighter light on Hafiz's portfolio of property, much of it within a few blocks of the ballpark.īy most accounts, he runs a clean operation and hits his marks with city regulators. Fashionable restaurants and bars spill out into sidewalk cafes. The nearby North Loop has filled in with lofts, condos and apartments. Much has changed in the neighborhood since then. Paul in 1989, the Hafiz family moved across the river to a down-on-its-heels Minneapolis Warehouse District zoned to group adult businesses together. When his family's adults-only Faust Theater was bought out by the City of St. Since it opened in downtown Minneapolis two decades ago, the all-nude nightspot has shown remarkable staying power.Īt 51, he is the homegrown king of clubs in downtown Minneapolis, with an empire of strip joints (Déjà Vu and Dream Girls), gay bars (the Gay 90's and Brass Rail) and one of the busiest party spots in the metro area: Sneaky Pete's. Like any good boast, this one contains a grain of truth. We recommend passing on the balloon dance and going for the higher mileage, more traditional $20 private dance.Peter Hafiz claims that every man in the Twin Cities over the age of 18 has been inside his Déjà Vu strip club. The reality of a balloon dance is that anyone, sexy maid or not, bouncing on your lap with all her weight not only doesn’t feel sexy, but also fills the air with latex odors and the awkward, intolerable squeak of a balloon rubbed raw. It sounds fun, but as is so often the case in life-and strip clubs-reality never quite meets expectations. One weird dance special of note: The $10 “balloon dance,” in which one of the waitresses (who are typically the most attractive workers at the club) places a balloon on your lap and bounces and grinds on top of it until it pops. Wash, rinse, repeat and before you know it it’s closing time. At regular intervals, an announcement calls all dancers back to the stage for a $1 song special, then it’s back to the floor to collect those singles, which gives the gorgeous waitresses (dressed as sexy maids) a chance to the clean the poles seductively-just in time for the next dancer to hit the main stage. A busy night (usually a Friday or Saturday after 1am) has the mesmerizing enchantment of a swiftly-moving assembly line: Dancers rotate between three stages and then head to the floor to wrangle a lap. It’s massive, full of ladies hustling for private dances and open till 6am. Deja Vu is a strip club in the truest sense of the phrase. ![]()
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