Call them adult entertainment. Call them nude dancing clubs. Just, whatever you do, don’t call them strip clubs.

“I am not a strip club,” declared Nexus Gold Club owner Ron Hunt in an impassioned speech before Ward 5 residents at Bethesda Baptist Church last night. Hunt prefers the term “gentlemen’s club” to describe Nexus, a glitzy nightclub that offered nude dancing until it was closed by the city last fall. Nexus was one of a series of clubs shuttered to make way for new stadium development.

In a lengthy oration that elicited intermittent boos from the audience, Hunt made grand claims, saying his club “was known as the largest on the East Coast,” and that 80 percent of its patrons arrived via limousine. “This was for the upper-echelon people,” he said, adding, “This club looked like a living room. We cater[ed] to husbands and wives.”

But the neighbors who packed the pews at Bethesda last night wouldn’t hear it. “If these clubs are so wonderful, why don’t they put some kind of subsidy to put them by the [new] stadium,” one resident said.

Others suggested the clubs should be evenly distributed throughout the wards, or perhaps clustered in Ward 1. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has introduced legislation designed to permit one-time relocation of the clubs to similarly zoned locations—all of which are in Ward 5. “The issue before us is a simple issue. It’s a zoning issue,” said Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., who convened the meeting. “No ward wants to be inundated with one type of business.”

Living in Brentwood’s Dahlgreen Courts apartments, tenants say, means living with peeling wallpaper, gaping holes in the walls, leaky plumbing, and treacherous flooring.

After residents formed a tenants’ association last summer, it documented the poor conditions and discovered that the city didn’t have a certificate of occupancy for the buildings. Michael Huke, president of building manager CIH Properties, says the city lost its copy of the 70-plus-year-old document. Tenants believe that certificate was voided when ownership was transferred some 15 years ago.

“The thing is, we just want to live in habitable conditions,” says Vaughn Bennett, the association’s president. To that end, the group arranged visits from mayoral staff and incoming Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas Jr. and filed a legal complaint.

City inspectors have assessed nearly $70,000 in fines since October, but that amount hasn’t been collected. A Dec. 12 letter from the city to the building’s owner, Willis Limited Partnership, explains that the city is giving more time for repairs before the “possible imposition of fines.”

Thomas says he intends to force the landlords to devise a 100-day plan for fixing their buildings. Huke says most of those repairs have been made, but he doesn’t think the city or the tenants played fair. He says vandals ripped up the halls just before inspectors showed up without warning. “There were armies of inspectors,” he says. “We had inspectors coming back daily. We had inspectors inspecting the same things and reissuing violations.”

One thing has definitely been fixed: the missing certificate of occupancy. On Nov. 21, building management applied for a new certificate. On Dec. 8, a new one was issued, along with a $2,000 fine.

The fiction of Ward 5 D.C. Council candidate Harry Thomas Jr.’s field-leading campaign war chest has been exposed in a July 26 response to an inquiry from the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance.

On paper, Thomas is the Ward 5 fundraising champ. According to his June 10 report, Thomas raised $49,545 and had $42,052 cash on hand. Thomas appeared to be leaving his rivals in the dust.

In a July 12 letter his Thomas’ campaign treasurer and wife, Diane Romo Thomas, OCF asked her to provide a little more information about the June 10 filing. “You report several in-kind contributions, but you failed to report these as expenditures,” the office wrote, reminding the campaign that all in-kind contributions must be itemized on the spending side of the ledger. By “several” OCF meant a total of $22,350 of Thomas’ receipts were of the in-kind variety—including $10,000 in-kind from himself.

The July 26 amended report provides a leaner bottom line for Team Thomas. His total remains the same, but once the sketchy in-kind contributions are subtracted as campaign expenditures, his cash balance shrinks to $18,787.

Throughout his years in community politics, Ward 5 D.C. Council candidate Harry “Tommy” Thomas Jr. has understood the value of appearances. In a ward campaign, that means never letting your opponent appear to beat you on any front, whether it’s posturing, debating, or fundraising.

To go toe-to-toe with chief rival Frank Wilds on the cash chase, Thomas has resorted extensively to piling up “in-kind” contributions, or non-monetary donations. Based on June 10 campaign-finance reports, Thomas won the Tommy-vs.-Frank money fight $49,545 to $46,842.

But his victory gives new meaning to the term paper tiger.

When most candidates list in-kind contributions on financial reports, they usually refer to food, office space, or specialized labor. On his fundraising filing, Thomas lists 27 donations as in-kind contributions. That extra “cash flow” created a just enough of a cushion to give Thomas bragging rights over Wilds.

A few of Thomas’ in-kind listings seem legit. Who could argue with a $500 in-kind party thrown by the Solar Eclipse Restaurant and Club?

But D.C. government types were in-kind to Thomas, too: Office of Aging employee Adrian Reed and former D.C. Public Library spokesperson Debra Truhart (who’s also Thomas’ sister) both maxed out.

Spillman Truhart, who in a phone conversation identified himself as Thomas’ brother-in-law, is also in the $500-in-kind club. When asked to describe what services or goods he had given Thomas that could have been valued at $500, he replied, “You must be talking about my wife.” Spillman Truhart was not aware that he was down for $500 in-kind, saying he “did not know anything about it.”

The total amount of in-kind donations to Thomas is $22,350.

When contacted about the apparent contribution padding, Thomas told the Washington City Paper that his filing “is correct”—all of the in-kind listings were for personal services provided for the campaign.

“Everybody has value,” says Thomas, who plugs his campaign as unique precisely because his backers provide labor or other expertise rather than writing a check. Some campaigns call those folks volunteers, but Thomas says the work of his supporters “should be counted as a contribution.”

“Sweat equity is what I call it,” he says. Thomas has apparently worked up a good lather on the campaign trail. He lists a $10,000 in-kind contribution from himself.