Residents won't be seeing nudes and bingo all over again

By CONSTANCE SOMMER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The mid-'90s annexation floods brought the city more than a few new disgruntled residents. It also gave Lake Forest Park, on its new south end, a Deja Vu cabaret and the Elks Lake City Lodge No. 1800.

Erotic dancing obviously was not going to fly in Lake Forest Park. In early February of this year, by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, city residents voted in favor of a referendum upholding a city law regulating nude dancing. The law orders dancers to stay at least four feet from patrons. The law affects only Deja Vu since it's the only nude dancing establishment in the city.

At first glance, the Elks seem like a less eyebrow-raising lot. The club's 2,000 members are, on average, about 68 years old, says Tony Del Mastro, Elks membership chairman. Their 40,000-square-foot clubhouse -- considered a national Elk showplace when it opened in 1965, Del Mastro says -- shows its age in ripped carpets mended neatly with duct tape, and decor (burnt orange and red palettes, Formica) that could use a tug into the late 1990s.

Only a handful of members dotted the cavernous rooms one weekday last month. But Del Mastro says it used to be different -- before it was incorporated, that is, into a city that does not allow gambling.

Old folks used to make a second home out of the Elks Lodge when it offered bingo and pulltabs, he says. Now that those activities are gone, the place is out $50,000 a year, he says.

HELP IS ON the way, though, in the unlikely form of Rite Aid. The drugstore chain plans to build one of its big stores in the expansive parking lot that separates the Elks from Bothell Way _ and it will lease the land from the Elks for $180,000 a year, Del Mastro says.

Just one problem remains: getting people to use the club. "That (the Rite Aid plan) doesn't help Elks membership, you know what I mean?" he says.