Day: June 29, 2007

In a city that seems to have everything, it's amazing what we'll still be surprised to find. Take for example what CBS recently uncovered going on in the back of a pizzeria. Let's just say it's hotter than the pizza served up front. On the outside, Cordatos looks like your ordinary pizzeria, but inside customers are offered something way too hot and spicy to be found on the menu.

Lap dances. Yes, you read that correctly.

A walk through the restaurant past the pizza ovens, leads to a heavy soundproof door, where inside the back room $10 buys you a few moments of lap dancing by barely dressed exotic dancers, a dance too graphic for most newscasts.

“When you are in the Big Apple anything and everything goes,” one patron said.

The anything and everything on this menu includes extremely close body-to-body contact during the lap dance. Judging from the crowds CBS saw during our hidden camera investigation, it's a popular pit stop just blocks from ground zero, where construction workers and Wall Street traders find a slice of pleasure in the least likely of places.

“The guys go at lunch time,” one man said. “It's not a bad thing either, relieves a little pressure.”

So is this New York City's best-kept secret? Apparently not, especially to members of the NYPD's vice unit. Three years ago, several of the dancers were arrested and charged with prostitution.

While Cordatos is licensed to serve alcohol, dancing falls under the city's Cabaret Law, which requires a separate license, which the pizzeria does not have.

CBS went looking for answers and found the pizza and dancing were a lot warmer than the reception we got. Upon seeing our camera, an unidentified pizzeria worker out his hand over our lens.

During our hidden camera investigation we did not observe any nudity, however a legal expert told us that in some cases the body-to-body contact we captured on camera could be deemed criminal.

Even though several city agencies knew the pizzeria had been cited for the same offenses in the past, records show none had returned to check if any laws were being broken. In fact, the NYPD told CBS it would respond based on a complaint, which to this date has not been made.

---

Big deal. These people would go nuts if they saw the lunch crowd for the buffet at Super Sexe.

Sometimes, I miss Montreal and the fact that you have huge strip clubs and sex shops on the high street and nobody gives a damn.

It'll probably get me in trouble, but I miss strip clubs and the shenanigans I used to get into with the boys.