For 14 years, the Gold Club has been the destination of choice for a restless segment of the city's huge convention business, clusters of boisterous men footloose in the city and eager to spend those precious evenings away from home in the company of nude dancers and expensive cigars.
Shuttle buses to the club leave regularly from the city's best hotels.
But starting next week, those seeking adventure might just as well detour to the federal courthouse downtown, where arguments in the Gold Club racketeering trial will begin after 18 months of legal preparation. Over most of the summer, federal prosecutors will try to prove that the club was a cash conduit to the Gambino organized-crime family of New York, which they say provided protection in return. The club and its owner, Steven Kaplan, overcharged and double-billed the credit cards of unsuspecting customers, according to a federal grand jury indictment issued in November 1999, adding to the unreported income of Kaplan and the Gambino family. The government also charged that the club's dancers were ordered by their employers to provide sexual services to a long list of professional athletes and other celebrities whose presence at the club helped raise its profile. The team is not named, but it is widely suspected that the reference is to the New York Knicks, who were at the College of Charleston at that time in training for the playoffs.