OB’s Brau Haus Owner Meets With Safety And Licensing Committee To Discuss 150 Demerit Point Violation For Semi-Nude Dancing That Occurred On Premises

The Safety and Licensing Committee met 05/10/2023. The bulk of the meeting was taken up with a public appearance related to a liquor license violation by OB’s Brau Haus.

At an event put on at the bar by a “promoter”, a woman had engaged in a striptease-like dance, even though the establishment was not licensed for such activities. The promoter was given a citation, did not show up at court, and had a default judgment issued against him. This resulted in OB’s Brau Haus receiving 150 demerit points on its alcohol license which was enough that they are facing a temporary license suspension. In addition to the possible license suspension, which was not a focus of the meeting that day, the representatives of the bar were required to come before the committee and explain what steps they were taking to prevent issues like this happening again in the future.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.

Four representatives from OB’s Brau Haus appeared, Chris, the owner, Frank, the former owner and Chris’s brother, Diago, the head of security, and Steven Jessers the attorney that had been hired to represent them.

Although the purpose of their appearance before the committee was not to debate the merits of the demerit point assessment, Mr. Jesser did note that they vigorously disagreed with the assessment. Their position was that the demerit points had resulted from a “totally unexpected, momentary 22 second event” which they had no foreknowledge of.

As described at the meeting, the promoter and the woman both seemed sober and, when they arrived, and given no indication that they would misbehave that night. At some point during the evening, the woman went around a corner, took of her over-coat, and performed a striptease-esque dance to impress a man who did not seem to be paying attention to her. Per Mr. Jesser, “I took a weekend off in March and went down to Key West and I saw more nudity on the beach at Key West than this young lady displayed.”

Chris and Diago reviewed the practices that they already had in place at the bar, including:

• A fight, even if it’s just a push, results in an automatic 30-day ban.
• A more serious fight results in a 1-year ban.
• On Fridays and Saturdays, the bar has 5 to 6 security officers patrolling the establishment who check bathrooms, check in with customers, check IDs, perform weapons checks, and deal with banned customers.
• For the last 6 years, they have been utilizing a scanner-based system for checking IDs.
• They enforce a dress-code and turn away people who are too scantily dressed.
• They stop people from twerking or dancing too provocatively on the dance floor.

Diago noted that a lot of their patrons worked in the strip club industry and OB’s Brau Haus specifically did not want them promoting their business while in the bar. It was not a look that OB’s wanted to establish.

Chris also said that when people threw an event that had performers such as hip-hop artists or rappers, he told everyone that he didn’t want to see any drugs or guns in any videos they produced during the event.

Regarding their response to the specific incident, they had banned the promoter for life. Per Chris, “We do not tolerate any behavior or actions like this. We take this these matters very seriously. […] I don’t allow for any illegal activities on premise.”

There was some question of exactly what the promoter was promoting and what his association with the bar was. It sounded like he was a social media influencer of some sort who threw parties and did podcast interviews with artists. There had been no contractual obligations between the promoter and the bar, and the bar had not paid him anything. The bar representatives said that this individual had wanted to throw an “ugly sweater party”. They likened it to someone holding a birthday or retirement party at their establishment.

The bar may or may not have created a flyer for the ugly sweater party and promoted the event with that flyer; that part was someone unclear to me. They talked about how for events like that their bar will contract out creating a flyer, but then in this specific instance Chris said, “There was a flyer, but I did not–I did not provide the flyer and I did not, it was not contracted out by me.”

The committee overall seemed to think Chris was taking reasonable steps to manage the bar. Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) asked him if, going forward, he was going to, in the future, check up on the social media presence of the influencers or personalities that held events at his establishment, to which Chris responded, “I would agree with that. Yes. And I do try my best to go through and do those things as well.”

Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) was trying to understand the responsibility the bar had in this situation for something that seemed to have been entirely outside of their control, that was not part of a promotion they themselves put on, and that they could not have foreseen.

The city attorney noted that there was not a complaint filed before the committee and the full scope of the information related to the violation was not before the committee that day. He went on to explain that the language of the code “does impose a bit of a strict liability for some of these things.” My impression was that he was trying to speak broadly and not go into any detail, probably because there were ongoing legal proceedings related to the case. He said, “There’s a lot that goes into 22 seconds, a lot leading up to it, not that night, the time leading up to it. So it’s not a…it’s not a situation where they’re responsible for everything that happens as far as I can see, but there is a high degree of responsibility considering the way the code is worded.”

Chris reiterated that he tried to vet promoters and artists who performed at his establishment, and that he took this very seriously. “And we do vet to the best of our ability, that, you know, we try our hardest to make sure that we have a very presentable image, a clean image, and one that doesn’t allow for illegal things to happen. And at the end of the day, we can only do our best in that regards to stopping things that do happen outside of our control, to prevent them from happening again. And in this situation, I think a lifetime ban would be fitting to prevent this situation that has never occurred on our premises in the 25 years, in our 25-year history, from happening again.”

Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) responded, “[I]t sounds like you definitely are taking things seriously. The banning of the person that was involved. Your security team’s, explanation of how they handle things at the establishment. I’m–I’ve heard enough in regards to what you’re doing to rectify this and what you had done to address the issue that occurred.”

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1099729&GUID=CB7CD7DF-91C3-4E6E-9C78-A6140748EDED