Wednesday, August 30, 2000

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

The Market teen club is officially dead, so to speak.

So dead, in fact, that Superior Court Judge Paschal A. English Jr. declined to issue an injunction Tuesday morning that would have kept the club from re-opening.
Michael Bergin, attorney for club owner Taylor Williams, said his client had no intention of starting the club back up or “operating another business in Fayetteville, as he’ll be arrested on the spot.”

Bergin also pointed out that Williams’ business license to operate The Market had been temporarily revoked. The Market doesn’t have a place to operate, either, since the property owner of its former location has advertised the building as being available for lease.

The Market has been closed since July 21 when it was shut down by a temporary court order based on the “dancing” activities inside the club that were caught on an undercover video. At the time, English said the dancing showed the teens simulating sex with their clothes on.

The city of Fayetteville, which sought the injunction to cease the club’s operation, didn’t present new evidence at Tuesday’s hearing. The undercover video wasn’t played during the hearing, though English told lawyers that he hadn’t forgotten the video’s contents.

“I remember it vividly,” he said.

Bergin argued that the dancing, and the music played at the club, is constitutionally protected by the first amendment right to free speech. The judge pointed out that when the video was played at the previous court hearing, the sound was not turned on.

“They could have been dancing to ‘Jesus Loves Me’,” English said. “What bothers me and still bothers me is what I saw.”

Bergin said the type of dancing shown on the tape is depicted every day on several cable TV channels. Bergin also brought forth a record producer who testified that teens dance like this at schools across the country. But English said firmly that he didn’t care where else it takes place, but it bothered him that this conduct was occurring “less than a quarter-mile from this courthouse.”

After Tuesday’s hearing, Williams said he at first objected to the lewd dancing, and he asked the teens where they learned the style. They told him they saw it on TV.
“I’ve probably had more conversations with those kids than their parents have,” Williams said.

Even though the lewd dancing was allowed to occur, “we stepped in whenever we thought it was getting out of hand,” he noted.

“I didn’t teach them how to dance,” Williams said, adding that he felt he is being unfairly targeted for political motivations.

Williams said he spoke to Fayetteville police, who were working security at the club, about the lewd dancing. They didn’t file charges at the time, he noted.
Weeks before the club closed, Fayetteville officers ceased working security at the club. Until then, Williams said he had four officers on duty each night.

During Tuesday’s hearing, an attorney for former Atlanta Hawk Clifford Levingston, who had been identified by authorities as an owner of the club, argued that he had no ownership role in The Market whatsoever.

Roger A. Kirschenbaum said bringing Levingston into the matter has damaged his reputation. Even after the petition for the permanent injunction was dismissed, Kirschenbaum asked if Levingston’s name could be taken off the case.

English indicated that he could hold another hearing on that matter at a later date if needed.

After the hearing, Williams said Levingston was a friend of his who served as a chaperone at the club but was not an owner of the club.

Williams and Levingston still face criminal charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Both men were arrested on those charges based on the undercover video that was taken since it depicted teens as young as 13 participating in the lewd dancing.

Williams, speaking to The Citizen after Tuesday’s hearing, said he had chaperones present at the club and a parent viewing room was open until the last three weeks the club operated, when he closed it after spotting an undercover officer there.

Williams said that local churches used The Market building for functions free of charge.

The club was attended mostly by local teens when it first opened, Williams said. But an alcohol arrest near the establishment “scared them off,” he said.

At that point, the club began marketing itself to Atlanta teens to attract their business, he added. The result was far more successful than Williams had envisioned, he added.

“We ran a clean shop, a nice club,” Williams said. “The kids enjoyed it.”
But the popularity of the club helped start the beginning of the end, Williams acknowledged.

“We had 900 kids in there with 39 parking spots,” he said.

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