The dancers eventually shed their clothes entirely, and in the decades that followed, Swede's Bar became a back-roads legend in South Dakota. The bar even survived a citywide vote trying to shut it down.

Other small-town strip bar ventures haven't fared as well. Since the early 1990s, as many as a half-dozen attempts to open strip clubs in small towns and rural communities have failed. The most prominent fight in the Sioux Falls area has been between businessman Bob Rieger and McCook County over Racehorses Gentlemen's Club and Adult Movie Theatre, near Salem. But similar skirmishes have been fought about nudity and exotic dancing in Lincoln, Minnehaha, Gregory, Buffalo, Brule and Custer counties as well.

Business people wanting to open strip bars are attracted to rural communities for several reasons. Some hope to escape regulations and competition found in bigger cities. For others, lower property values and proximity to visiting hunters and fishermen are draws.

But instead of profits and crowds, the ventures most often attract protests - from ministerial associations, county and city officials and community members. Often, the effort to open a strip bar is followed by the adoption of county or city laws regulating public nudity and stricter restrictions on other sexually oriented businesses.

Almost immediately, opponents began efforts to shut the business down. Rieger persevered, defeating county officials in court or finding loopholes in ordinances to keep his strip club/juice bar open. The club was shut down earlier this month, but Rieger has gone to court once again to challenge the county's new ordinance on sexually oriented businesses.

"I'm not promoting anything that's illegal," he said. "I think most of the people chasing me in Salem are cowards. It's easy to point the finger at someone like me who does not have a major (business)."

Rieger attempted a similar venture in Kimball in the mid-1990s. And, amid the legal tangles faced by his Salem club, he opened two establishments last summer in Minnesota.

Racehorses Movie Theatre and Library in Revere, 35 miles southeast of Marshall, offers patrons a place to watch older, classic movies, read books, play chess or eat pizza in the library. Exotic dancers perform in the back. It opened July 1.

In Cosmos, 30 miles southeast of Willmar, patrons can watch bikini-clad dancers in a Hooters-like setting at the Tahiti Club, Rieger said. It opened in August.

Mayor Harold Bickner, who was on the town council then, recalled that when Rieger applied for a liquor license, officials worried he planned to have strippers.

When Rieger did offer nude dancing, the council revoked the liquor license. So Rieger converted the establishment, known as The Casino, into a juice bar. Locals then picketed it in spring 1996.

Bickner surmised that Rieger opened his business in Kimball to attract hunters. But he said that without liquor, he thinks the juice bar couldn't attract those hunters.

"He didn't have a liquor license. He didn't have enough business without liquor," Bickner said. "It just got to the point where he pulled out and left."

Melanie Kayl was a bartender and waitress at Club 47 Roadhouse, a mile north of Gregory, for two years before the business folded in January 2004.

Club 47 opened as a steakhouse and lounge in 2002, and the owner brought in dancers the following year to lure in hunters, Kayl said. It was open only from September to December.

"The places over in Dallas ... can house up to 30 to 50 dancers between the two," Kayl said. "This place could have three at the most. There was no competition compared to what Dallas could do."

After Club 47 closed, Kayl decided to lease the building, and opened Rocky's Roadhouse in September 2004 as a family restaurant. Business has been better than she anticipated.

On the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, Stan Wellner is hoping to reopen the Prairie Chicken club, five miles east of Fort Thompson near Lode Star Casino.

Wellner of Chamberlain and his former partner, Nathan Shaull of Highmore, opened three years ago during pheasant season, featuring nude dancers. They also were open during spring fishing and tried to cater to those headed to Sturgis for the annual motorcycle rally.

The partners had a Buffalo County liquor license from 2002 to November 2003. When the woman whose name was on the license left the business, it closed. County commissioners denied their license application in April 2004 because of the small county's inability to provide law enforcement coverage to the area. But the club opened anyway, as the license issue moved through the court system. The two took their battle to the state Supreme Court, but lost.

Shaull has since pulled out, but Wellner said he hopes to work with a tribal member who would lease the building from him, and would like to be able to reopen by spring.

The state has a fairly comprehensive obscenity law, but it pertains to possession or distribution of child pornography, Long said. Adult nudity is protected speech under the First Amendment.

State Sen. Clarence Kooistra, R-Garretson, proposed to the state Criminal Code Revision Commission that adult entertainment businesses should have to obtain sales-tax permits, and that there should be minimum requirements for exotic dancers. Neither was adopted.

In the last legislative session, Kooistra also introduced a failed amendment to public indecency laws that would have dealt with individuals engaging in sex, exposure of genitals and fondling of genitals.

"I think there will be less objection," he said. "There could be two people having sex on the hood of a car at a rest stop along the highway. It's not against the law."

Hudson and area communities raised more than $50,000 in three weeks to help the local economic development board buy a former grocery store after Rieger entered into a contract for the deed with the store's owner. Rieger received $22,500 from the local bank and the owner.

The property agreement came while city officials approved a series of ordinances to ban nudity and regulate strip dancing, prohibit indecent exposure and govern sexually oriented businesses.

When a business owner in Custer talked about pushing out a feed store in favor of a club for bikers during the Sturgis rally, the town's ministerial association and area residents objected.

"We did not know if he was going to. We made it certain that he wasn't going to with the ordinance," said the Rev. Dan Benedict of Custer Wesleyan Church. "All we needed was to hear about the possibility."

Benedict said when concerned residents asked for a moratorium on such businesses, the Custer County board granted their wish and enacted one for six months while they studied the club's potential effect on the area.

Benedict, who consulted with an official from the South Dakota Family Council, spent a few weeks writing an ordinance to prohibit sexually oriented businesses last year.

Then, petitions were circulated to get the measure on last November's county ballot. They received 500 signatures - 150 to 200 more than needed. County voters approved the ordinance 57 percent to 43 percent.

"You wanted to make sure you were defining things properly so you would have as few loopholes as possible," Benedict said. "You have to get real specific."

She became sole owner of the business when her husband died at 72 in August 1996. Her daughter, Lanie Tucek, has helped out the family by serving as manager. Now, Lee plans to sell Swede's Bar, and said she might put it on the market in a couple weeks.

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