Dice Club on Papineau: yet another neighbourhood peeler joint bites the dust

  The Dice Club, a longtime cozy neighbourhood peeler joint on Papineau near Beaubien, appears to have has died just days after turning 20.
  A variety of bars  -some with serious crime issues - existed on the premises since at least 1970, so that's 45 years of drinking that has died.
  The was ordered shut for 45 days on January 7 after an underaged dancer was found working in the club.
   The strip club could have opened back on Valentine's Day but I'm told that it stayed shut.
   The club also had its license suspended  for 180 days for the same infraction in 2007 and 90 days in 1998.
   There was no other police evidence presented against the joint, no police reports of fights, drugs or insects in drinks, so it appears to have been otherwise competently operated.
  I wrote owner Giovanni Cotroni through Facebook to ask him about the demise of his establishment but received no reply.
  The club opened on November 5, 1994, a time when such establishments were rising in popularity. Back then such places attempted to draw crowds by hosting star performers, indeed the danger Tangerine Dream even shot a porno scene there.
  One discussion forum had both praise and derision for various dancers who have performed there over the years. A neighbour mentioned that dancers were known to stand out in front burning Js and being generally friendly and chatty.
   Some sort of sex hotel upstairs called Hotel Lust appears also to have closed.
   Long ago the Dice Club hosted a discotheque called The Flip Cafe, which was busted in 1971 for having no soap, toilet paper or hot water in the bathrooms, dirty floors, obstructed emergency exit and for marijuana.
  There was also a murder at the site when the disco's 30-year-old doorman Marcel Lafontaine was shot and killed by a man wearing a checkered shirt on Sunday January 1972. Police sought Salvatore Brunetti, aka Binette, 20, for questioning.
   By the mid-90s the club was known as the C-Plus Disco Club or Salon Bar Le Couple.
   It was raided on Nov. 10, 1986 and 58 of the 99 people inside were charged with indecent acts or being found in a bawdy house. Eight days of hearing heard of bar patrons committing indeent acts such as masturbation and oral sex. Their liquor permit was suspended for two years less a day.
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  So are such places doomed? Another neighbourhood strip club called Chez Mado on Pie IX also closed last fall.
  It's possible that strip club are being supplanted by massage parlours, which are likely are far easier to manage, being unfettered by restrictions that come with selling booze. Or perhaps the whole commercial sex industry is taking a downturn due to the aging population and too much estrogen in the water supply, a situation the city vows to correct with a new filtration system within the next few years.
*The timeline might be off slightly, as the Club's FB page appears to indicate that it was open until late January, not clear how this could be given the suspension.