Getting down and soiled at what was as soon as America’s solely nude automobile wash
by Tim Gilmore
The nude automobile wash was a protest, mentioned Warren Colazzo, proprietor of Fantasy World, towards the year-old legislation. Within the fall of 1987, Jacksonville Metropolis Council, in a vote of 17 to zero, had banned topless dancing at golf equipment that served alcohol. So, Fantasy World went from topless to nude dancing at evening and solely offered liquor within the daytime. Colazzo, a fast-talking, charismatic bodybuilder with a mustache, dyed white hair and a tan like a basted turkey (pictured above) defined his “protest,” by saying. “It’s actual easy. I see a possibility to make some huge cash.”
The strangest truth in regards to the saga of “America’s Solely Nude Automotive Wash” is perhaps the absence of feminine characters. Whereas there are many breasts and thighs and offenses taken, all of the characters within the story—and what characters a few of them are!—are males. Girls’s names hardly ever appeared within the information and their voices, with two exceptions, these of a choose and a driver, stay eerily silent.
The road of automobiles on the Fantasy World parking zone at 749 Cesery Boulevard on Saturday, September 10, 1988, shaped quick and stretched 20 deep. Colazzo had thrown a tarp over the membership’s driveway and entrance entrance, beneath which 5 girls in bathrobes directed every automobile, then disrobed and dipped sponges into buckets of suds.
Two days earlier than the automobile wash started, a Thursday evening, police arrested membership supervisor James “Mad Canine” Mercer and fined 20 Fantasy World dancers. The subsequent day, Colazzo sought an emergency injunction to cease police exercise and deliberate Saturday’s automobile wash. On Monday, U.S. District Choose John Moore denied the injunction and police made extra arrests and Colazzo positioned a misspelled private message to Vice Detective Bobby Deal on the membership marquee: “Bob Your No Huge Deal.”
Colazzo tried once more for an injunction, calling police ways a “marketing campaign of financial terrorism” aimed toward driving him out of enterprise, and on September 23, Moore dominated the proof “doesn’t point out the kind of steady and pervasive ‘sample of harassment’ that may assist the drastic treatment of injunction.” Police arrested Colazzo so regularly that generally he’d bail out and return to the membership earlier than police had left for the evening.
Now Fantasy World deliberate “feminine automobile washes on Saturdays and male automobile washes on Sundays.” As a lady named Lisa Taylor drove underneath the tarp, she nervous about getting arrested. When she drove out the opposite aspect, she instructed journalist Francis Donnelly, “It really works. Our automobile is clear.”
By October, ban supporters nervous it had backfired. Strip golf equipment had solely gotten raunchier. Since golf equipment didn’t serve alcohol whereas dancers went nude, you solely needed to be 18 to enter, not 21. Strip golf equipment operated on Sundays now and extra male dancers carried out than beforehand.
Then on November 6, whereas the Fantasy World marquee marketed, “Solely Nude Automotive Wash within the Nation,” police shut it down, arresting 10 workers. Deal mentioned, “It ought to have been closed down the primary week,” however the state legal professional’s workplace “needed to analysis whether or not it was a violation” of legal guidelines relating to public nudity and disturbing the peace. Police have been unable to search out Colazzo, however charged supervisor “Mad Canine” Mercer, additionally a weightlifter, with resisting arrest, when he fought two detectives to the bottom.
Newspapers in every single place had enjoyable with headlines. The automobile wash had been “scrubbed,” had “gone down the drain.” Police had “put a damper” on it. “Unlawful Buffing.” The Metronews of Birmingham, England mentioned, “Raid Wipes Away Nude Automotive Wash.”
Three months later, in February, Colazzo confirmed up at a Metropolis Council assembly to say he was closing Fantasy World and reopening it as a “class-act high-tech disco” known as Rumors. However the conflict wasn’t over. On Could 16, considered one of Colazzo’s arrests from September got here up for listening to earlier than County Choose Sharon Tanner. For selling a “reside intercourse present,” Tanner sentenced Colazzo to 6 months in jail, six months probation, a $1,000 advantageous and 100 hours group service at a counseling middle for sexually abused girls.
Colazzo mentioned “the issues I did” have been for “my women” and “to struggle this ordinance.” Tanner mentioned Colazzo cared solely “for the almighty greenback,” that he owed “each single lady in Duval County an apology” and argued a correlation between pornography and violence.
4 many years later, Colazzo, now co-owner of Thee Dollhouse in Tampa, says, “Let me let you know what actually occurred.” He says there was no intercourse present, that he was arrested due to an occasion he known as “‘Jacksonville Vice’ Comedy Evening.” He’d embellished “the principle stage like a police station.” The cellphone would ring, the viewers heard faux cellphone calls reporting crimes and the voices of officers saying they have been too busy with Fantasy World to care.
“The place was filled with cops that evening they usually have been pissed,” Colazzo remembers. He says police minimize the wires to all cameras on the membership, so no proof would exist of what had actually occurred as they arrested him underneath false costs.” He maintains that he took excellent care of his feminine workers. “I helped these women to not change into drug addicts and prostitutes. I had folks are available in to assist them with their taxes. I had plastic surgeons are available in assist them get boob jobs.”
He claims he by no means did group service, simply spent 30 days in jail, then break up for Arizona. However he hadn’t completed thumbing his nostril at metropolis officers. The June 1989 situation of Playgirl Journal featured a Jacksonville mannequin named Scott Lockwood as its centerfold; it additionally included a six-page unfold of Colazzo. In some images, he’s shirtless beside his yellow Ferrari. In others he lies poolside in a bikini and sun shades. Then lastly he’s full frontal.
The evident irony of the story stays. It lacks girls as full characters. The ladies appear however shadows. Silent. Discovering girls who labored at Fantasy World 4 many years later appears all however not possible. Newspapers by no means quoted them. This story about strippers who have been largely girls is usually a narrative about males.
Colazzo is 73 now. He’s been married for twenty-four years. In 2022, he was inducted into the Unique Dancer Corridor of Fame in Las Vegas. He wears an unlimited sq. Corridor of Fame ring that glitters throughout with diamonds. When Mike Evans, large receiver for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers comes into his membership in Tampa, says Colazzo, “He at all times says, ‘Your ring is larger than my Tremendous Bowl ring.’” In 2024, the Cane Corse Affiliation of America named Colazzo’s canine Hank “Efficiency Canine of the Yr.”