Let’s see what’s happening over in Waynesville these day— oh.
A note here: Occasionally I get requests to look into North Carolina-related stories that are NSFW (Not Safe For Work, if you’re wondering what that means). I want to acknowledge that yes, dear readers, I have received them. One of you is curious about the selection process behind the video offerings in the private rooms at a fertility clinic. If I ever launch Rabbit Hole After Dark, I will get to the bottom of it. But for now, I’m going to keep this newsletter somewhere in the vicinity of family friendly, while recognizing that we’re all adults here. I hope. Kids, avert your eyes.
All of which is to say that when stories about strip clubs make the news, I’m not so much interested in the actual goings-on inside strip clubs, but rather the issues surrounding them. For example, remember when a bunch of strip clubs banded together to sue Governor Roy Cooper so they could reopen during the pandemic? No? Well, it happened. They lost. But one side effect of the case, entitled Tallywhacker v. Cooper (!), was that we got to see the parent company names of clubs across the state. Hence, a club called Cheetah, for tax and corporate expense account purposes, has a parent company entitled “Southern Pines Golf Distributors, LLC.” If you show up at Cheetah looking to buy a new set of Ping Zings, I am sorry to say that you will be quite disappointed.
Hence, in Waynesville, I’m not so much curious about the potential strip club itself per se, but rather the paradox it presents: Haywood County has banned strip clubs and adult video stores since 1998. And yet, heeeeeere’s your sign. What gives?
Waynesville, for the record, is a lovely town in far western North Carolina that’s home to the Folkmoot international festival and Frog Level Brewing. It’s also home to a memorial from 1923 that claims to sit on the site of the last shot fired in the (long sigh) “War between the States.” That, um, may not actually be rooted in fact. Then again, the monument now sits in someone’s front yard surrounded by a chain link fence, so it’s not exactly a big draw for tourists anyway.
Anyhow! I digress! Back to “The Hoochie Hut”! If you’re squinting to see the text on the sign, it basically says that a strip club and 24-hour adult superstore is coming soon (the designer went with an alternative spelling for “coming”). It went up a few weeks ago. Soon after, WLOS-TV in Asheville covered it in the most local news way possible: By interviewing a Quippy Local Man.
Here are the highlights:
Rich Black, who lives feet away from the sign, has some concerns.
I’ll bet he does!
“It’s not appropriate,” Black said. “I’m glad I don’t have kids here. They had some fun with the word ‘coming’ and that’s just not appropriate I mean, really? Come on!”
Counterpoint:
“The only thing that would be worse for lowering your property value would be if you have a bad school district,” Black said. “It would be better if this was a sewer plant instead of a strip joint!”
Property values! The most American of values!
About that, though. This whole thing seems to be a fight between neighbors. Dustin Smith, the owner of the property, also owns Triangle Auto in Waynesville, and has parked some extra cars on the property in question here. According to the woman from the nearby homeowners’ association, a neighbor asked Smith what was up with all of the cars, and Smith responded with… that sign. “He got so mad that we think this Hoochie thing is a retaliation on his part. He posted on Facebook several weeks ago saying he was going to put this poster up to get back at the person who complained,” she told The Mountaineer.
The Mountaineer also contacted the Haywood County attorney, who said that such businesses are banned. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the infamous Haywood County castration dungeon of 2006 here, which was also illegal and prompted the local district attorney to say "It's incredible the amount of ways that people can find to run afoul of the law, that's for sure.")
For what it’s worth, Smith says he’s going to build a fence around the property, and it doesn’t appear that he’s going to test the legality of the ordinance. Two weeks ago, he recorded a video of himself chuckling while watching the WLOS story, then posted it publicly to his Facebook page with the caption “check out how I trolled the HOA, it’s been broadcasted nation wide!”
He also made this his header picture on Facebook:
In the comments, he said he’s ordered t-shirts and coffee mugs. You win some. You lose some. But you don’t pass up an opportunity to sell merch.