Nudie bar up for sale

This could be your lucky day—there’s one available right now.

George Mull, the owner of the First Amendment Gentlemen’s Club, confirmed this week that the club is up for sale. He denied the sale has anything to do with the March 10 drugs-and-prostitution raid on the establishment, saying he’s been in negotiations since September with a Nevada adult entertainment company that agreed to buy it.

The deal, Mull said, finally went into escrow last month, but the buyers, Big City Enterprises of Henderson, Nev., got cold feet when they got word of the raid. The company had planned to open an adult books and video store next to the nude juice bar, Mull said.

“They heard about what happened, and that was it,” Mull said. “The deal fell through.”

Mull said he’s already negotiating with two other companies about buying the club. He declined to say who the companies are, or what they might want to do with the establishment if they buy it.

He decided to sell last year, citing the problems inherent in operating a business from 100 miles away. Mull is a Sacramento attorney and said he’s visited the club only three times in the past 12 months—and then only to show it to prospective buyers.

“I’m never there,” Mull said. “It’s been very difficult trying to know how things are going up there.”

He’s relied heavily on his manager, Steve Clark, to keep the place running aboveboard. But Clark was fired last month after he was arrested in the raid for allegedly selling/furnishing marijuana and possessing a firearm. Clark is a convicted felon, a status that makes gun ownership illegal for him. Mull has yet to replace him, although the club has remained open since the raid.

Mull contends that the county’s raid on the club was overzealous, that the sheriff’s deputies who performed the raid planted drugs on his employees, and that the county singled him out for “persecution” after he publicly challenged the Board of Supervisors in a meeting last year.

"The county has been doing everything they can to close us down," Mull said. "It’s probably my fault, since I fought with them so much."