Despite Decades of Opposition, Proprietor Eludes Last Dance -

It was Saturday night at The Famous McDoogals. Amy had completed her second dance routine, the one without clothing, and climbed atop the oval bar to begin a slow, leonine procession around the counter on her hands and knees, collecting the obligatory dollar bills beneath an elastic garter.

She paused to exchange pleasantries with Janelle, another dancer, who was clad in a blue bikini with white hearts: "Hi, Amy." "Hi, Janelle. I like your outfit." They might as well have been standing at an office copier.

McDoogals, a vaguely Irish-themed club set on a cove south of Baltimore, is the only adult entertainment venue in Anne Arundel County. It has survived for 21 years, outlasting lawsuits, police investigations and legislative maneuvers to shut it down. Bill Steiner, its jovial, bearded owner, wants to open a McDoogals East across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He sued Caroline County, the reluctant host, over the summer after county commissioners enacted a moratorium that appeared to target only him and has since been codified into a permanent ordinance. The county might, however, want to take note of Steiner's history west of the bridge.

Anne Arundel thought it had seen the last of McDoogals nine years ago, when the liquor board revoked the club's license to serve alcohol. Back then, the dancers wore clothing -- but not enough clothing, the liquor board ruled.

But the day after the liquor board shut it down, McDoogals was back. The liquor was gone. So were the clothes. Steiner posted a sign outside the club, mimicking the pitch of a popular fried-chicken chain: "10 legs, 10 thighs, 10 breasts, 1 can of Coke. $12.50."

To back down would not have suited Steiner, 58, a factory worker's son from Arbutus who owned a gas station -- and made his first million -- by 30.

"He's just not the type to roll over," said JoAnn Sunderland, his sister.

McDoogals is one of just a few strip clubs in the Washington and Baltimore suburbs. Regulations range from prohibition to special-use permits and restrictive liquor laws. Anne Arundel's liquor laws permit nothing more risque than an Austin Powers-era go-go dancer. Dancers must not come within six feet of patrons.

McDoogals has skirted those laws for nine years by operating as a private bottle club, exempt from state liquor laws as long as it only serves alcohol provided by customers. They bring their own and check it at the bar in exchange for carnival tickets that can be redeemed at will. The club makes most of its money from cover, $13 to $15 a head, and from the dancers, who pay $30 to $50 each for the right to perform. The dancers make their money back from the "bar crawl" and from $30 lap dances, performed on nine brown couches in a back room.

William J. Steiner Jr. grew up in Arbutus, a town of working-class homes and cheese-steak shops, crisscrossed by freeways, on the outskirts of Baltimore. He was the third child of four born to William "Pop" and Josephine Steiner. Pop Steiner worked the line at Revere Copper and Brass, making bullet casings.

Bill Jr. took the vocational track at Lansdowne High School, graduating in 1966. He went to work as a gas station mechanic. Soon, he had his own station.

"He just had a good head," Sunderland said. Steiner declined to be interviewed, citing the lawsuit against Caroline County.

Steiner learned to buy and rehab houses, and he began investing in taverns and pizza joints. In 1985, nearing his 40th birthday, he took over a struggling Pasadena restaurant called Henry's Inn. He renamed it McDoogals.

Steiner leapt into the public eye -- as the owner of a girlie club who was waging a dark-horse 1990 campaign for county executive as a Republican on a platform of legalizing slots. He lost the primary by an 8-1 ratio.

Along with the attention, Steiner began to attract enemies. In May 1990, the liquor board chairman, Thomas Riggin, wrote to Steiner, saying, "McDoogals is rapidly becoming a less than desirable facility for this county. . . . If you don't clean it up, I will clean it up for you."

A steady cadence of citations and complaints kept Steiner on his toes: health- and fire-code violations in 1989, a 1992 citation for a bolted back exit and an anonymous 1995 complaint from a McDoogals dancer, alleging that performers were relieving themselves in a dressing-room sink.

In 1996, Anne Arundel police opened an investigation into McDoogals. Liquor board inspectors had visited the bar that March and found the barmaids wearing thongs and coming well within six feet of their customers, all in violation of liquor laws. The investigation found 80 violations in all.

Steiner was not going down without a fight. Some of his customers were police officers. Steiner told the liquor board he would subpoena 34 Anne Arundel officers to testify in his defense.

"The A.A. County Police Department has had several Christmas parties at McDoogals," Steiner wrote to the liquor board in May 1997.

But when the day of the hearing arrived, Steiner called no one. Instead, he took the stand and recited a dictionary definition of an obscene word synonymous with "posterior." In the end, he lost his license.

There have been several attempts since to shut down McDoogals. But the club lives on, thanks to the state law for bottle clubs.

A bill introduced in 2005 by Del. Mary Anne Love (D), chairman of the county delegation, sought to change the law so operators such as Steiner would have to operate as if they held a liquor license. The measure died.

Steiner and his wife, Janice, live in an Ocean City condominium, where they await the fate of the federal lawsuit against Caroline County. Their daughter Tia handles day-to-day affairs at McDoogals, as well as the family's Save-A-Life shelter for abandoned dogs and cats, run out of their Linthicum Heights home.

In the meantime, Steiner tools around Ocean City in a red van, waiting for work to begin on McDoogals East.

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