A Prince of Petworth reader writes in with some finger-wagging for the Mount Vernon Square Neighborhood Association's plan to hold a "Haunted Hos Halloween" happy hour at Louis' Rogue, a strip club at 5th and K Streets NW:

Am I getting old or is this one of the dumbest moves ever. Maybe they are being ironic but I don’t know how you go to a strip joint ironically.

Other commenters on the MSVNA site registered their discontent as well. One wrote, "This is a sad and pathetic statement about this organization's priorities."

I talked to Rob Amos, president of the MVSNA, and he had a simple answer for why the event was being held at that particular location: "It’s no different from any other establishment in our neighborhood."

Amos adds that members of the association have been curious about Louis' Rogue and have wanted to visit it for some time. The response to the event had been largely positive, he says—"until the posting on Prince of Petworth."

Amos says a statement from MVSNA is forthcoming.

The MSVNA has released a statement, check it out below the jump.

Last week, the District filed a civil suit accusing Jones, a legendary D.C. gangster who "went straight" and now runs Miracle Hands Inc.—a nonprofit that purports to serve the "city's most underprivileged and neglected communities," according to its website—of renovating a strip club with $300,000 in District HIV/AIDS funds.

Jones, in turn, filed his own lawsuit in federal court yesterday, accusing the city of discriminating against him and his organization for being black—and also of defamation.

The defamation part of the suit takes issue with a press release sent out on Aug. 30 announcing that the city was taking Jones and his non-profit to court. "Miracle Hands, Inc., and its executive director, Cornell Jones, improperly diverted from the District’s HIV/AIDS program," it said.

In the $1 million suit against Jones and Miracle Hands, D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan says that starting in 2006, Miracle Hands received city money to open a job training center for residents with HIV/AIDS in a warehouse at 2127 Queens Chapel Road NE. Instead, in 2010, the warehouse became a place for guys to stare at boobs, when glitzy strip joint Stadium Club opened there.

But Jones' lawsuit, filed by Maryland-based lawyer Jimmy Bell, claims there's no there there. His name has been dragged through the dirt by bigots.

According to court papers, though Miracle Hands used HIV/AIDS funds to retain an architect who drew up plans for renovating the warehouse Jones eventually sold to the owners of Stadium Club, there wasn't any actual construction, since plans for the project moved to another warehouse before that could happen. The suit says all renovations were done at 2145 Queens Chapel Road NE, a spot that was selected after Miracle Hands realized rehabbing 2127 would be too expensive. It also says that the city got its classes: Miracle Hands hired teachers to run job training courses at 2127 while 2145 was being fixed up.

By 2008, the suit implies, those classes were derailed by racism. Miracle Hands was promised some $500,000 in funding to get their center up and running, but the organization was stiffed when the city rerouted the money to non-blacks.

"From March 2007 – March 2008 the Defendant refused to provide the Plaintiff Miracle Hands the agreed upon funds to finish the rehabilitation at 2145," says the suit. "The Plaintiff’s representatives met with representatives of the Defendant to no avail. The Plaintiff’s representatives were informed that the money was now going to another organization whose founders and people ran the organization was outside of the Plaintiff’s protected class. They were not African American."

Nathan's office didn't respond to a request for comment

If Miracle Hands provided the services it was supposed to, that should be easy enough to prove. The claim that they've been victims of discrimination, though, would seem thin, since the Miracle Hands saga played out under two black mayors. That said, a National Institutes of Health study released in August revealed that black scientists weren't getting their due despite the organization taking pains to avoid discrimination, meaning race bias can be a fickle and complex force.

In any event, if Jones hopes to gain support for his side of the story, he'll want to keep his own offensive biases in check. As The Washington Times reported, angry about the city's allegations, during a radio program, Jones referred to two openly gay District politicians as “a couple of gay guys who sometimes get to acting like little faggots.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

What's a more depressing happy-hour hangout on your average Thursday: A sports club at 5 p.m., or a strip club at the same time? At Fast Eddies/Archibalds, the double threat located at 1520 K Street NW, we find out!

UPSTAIRS: Fast Eddies, sports bar. At 5 o'clock, a guy in a suit is alone at the bar, save for a Miller Light, a plate of french fries, and the bartender, who sits on the wrong side of her job to plug quarters into the video poker machine. A couple women sit in the back with coats draped over their shoulders and six-inch heels strapped to their feet. A row of televisions above the bar show no sports in this sports bar—just some muted talking heads and an infomercial for the no-break, no-bend, money-back-guarantee "SlimClip." (You put dollars in it). When a regular comes in asking for a vodka martini, dirty, the bartender reclaims her station to tell him to reconsider: She can't make it dirty, and besides, the shot glass is bigger than the martini glass anyway. He gets a straight shot of vodka and sits down.

DOWNSTAIRS: Archibald's can make it dirty. Depression? Recession? Marriage? Not at Archibalds, where all the women all naked, garterbelts are overflowing, and everyone—especially the eccentric man in the vest standing very close to that dancing woman—is smiling. One middle-aged patron, who has a stripper in his right hand and a wedding ring on his left, only appears depressed when he has to say goodbye.

Archibald's is a "gentleman's club," and its bustling economy depends on the strange gender dynamics at play. Like any bar, there are about equal numbers of men and women here. The only difference is that when a woman talks to a man, he's expected to provide her a regular stream of cash. Also, boobs.

All the women here—the women in the schoolgirl uniforms passing drinks, the ones shimmying on stage one and two, and myself—are getting paid. When I enter, the bouncer doesn't even think to card me. Later, he asks for my ID and admits that he had mistakenly assumed that I worked there. Despite the very overt female presence, some of the men here say that they actually come to avoid women—their wives and girlfriends, of course, but possible dates, too. I sit down at a table with four collared-shirted businessmen who are taking turns rising, trotting over to the main stage, and depositing a dollar bill in the band wrapped tight around the stripper's thigh. I apologize for ruining their game. "Don't worry—My game just keeps on going," one of the men tells me. Later, he admits that the real game hasn't even started yet. The four men are just making a quick stop at Archibald's before happy hour. Soon, they'll head to Clarenden, where they'll actually try to pick up women.

When the main-stage stripper has finished removing her clothes and then putting them back on, she stops at our table and introduces herself as Tabbitha. She tells me I've come to the wrong place if I'm looking for an average strip club—Archibald's employees are "prettier and nicer" than most D.C. clubs. "I've heard that Camelot is supposed to have the most beautiful girls, but I've been there, and I just don't think that's true anymore," she says. Plus, Archibald's women skimp on the attitude. "We just don't deal with the diva thing here," she says. "The dancers, the customers, everyone is very, very nice, and that's really important to me. There's no weird stuff. There's no funny business. It's just a nice place."

One of the businessmen puts his arm around Tabbitha and slips her a bill. "What, you want change?" she says, rifling through her stack of ones. The man laughs like a boy. His friend leans over and informs the table: "You know, some of the girls even meet their husbands here," he says—indicating that not all of Archibald's clientelle come here to escape average life.