Back in 1975, Rick Belcastro was four years old and running wild on the streets of Las Vegas. When the police and protective services caught up with him, they bused him off to St. Jude’s Ranch in Boulder City, a safe haven for abandoned children. What kind of odds would you give this kid, to make a great life for himself and live the American dream: from rags to riches? With an upbringing of living with complete strangers in the guided environment of St. Jude’s Ranch, and a lot of determination, Belcastro has done just that. Two years ago he purchased the Mens’s Club in Las Vegas and renamed it Badda Bing. At age thirty-nine, Belcastro is the youngest man ever to own a strip club in Vegas and have his own permanent hard license. It’s a license that combines a liquor license and a cabaret license and is almost impossible to get. After winning a wrestling scholarship in
high school, he spent his senior year as a lifeguard at the Dunes Casino. That’s where he met his high school sweetheart to whom he is still married today. After the Dunes closed, he became a doorman for a few of the top casinos in Las Vegas and had the best door shifts in town, working from 7 at night until 3 in the morning. He won “Doorman of the Year” for three years in a row. With the body of a wrestler and a warm Italian laugh, Rick Belcastro sat with SLV to share some stories of his years growing up, about owning Badda Bing, and the filming of a new reality show about his daily life in his own strip club in Vegas.

SLV: Tell me about the reality show that they’re shooting about you.
BELCASTRO: Langley Productions that produced Cops, Las Vegas Jailhouse, Street Patrol, and the movie Brooklyn’s Finest, are shooting a reality show right here at the club. They’ll follow me around town a little, too. They were in here last night for about three hours.
SLV: That’s so exciting.
BELCASTRO: They’re going to put a trailer out back and said they’ll be here in the club for about six to twelve weeks.
SLV: I’m sure they’ll catch some wild moments.
BELCASTRO: I hired a valet parker, and this is a classic story. What are the chances of a camera guy coming out here to do a reality show and having this happen? I’m just asking the poor valet guy for a driver’s license and he says: “Sir, I don’t have a driver’s license.” But he’s our valet parker. Only at the Badda Bing!! (laughter) Scotty goes out there to get his car and the valet has the wrong keys! You’ve got to be kidding me! (more laughter) Oh my gosh, it’s like wow, unbelievable! True story.
SLV: Where were you born?
BELCASTRO: My parents are originally from Chicago. We moved out here when I was three. My mother and father got separated or divorced and I was just running in the streets. I remember it like it was yesterday. They went out gambling and never came home. I had five brothers and sisters and I was the youngest. The neighbors would call protective services and tell them that there were kids running around all hours of the night. They came and took us to Child Haven, all six of us. We were bounced in and out of Child Haven five times. (Child Haven provides temporary care for children placed in protective custody by police or the Clark County Department of Family Services.)
SLV: Didn’t you hear from your parents again?
BELCASTRO: No, not until recently. Someone said: “Rick, your mother’s on the phone.” I said: ‘What are you talking about? I don’t have a mother.’ My mother called me about a year ago for some money. She’d seen me in some article. I said: ‘Lose my number. I have nothing to say to you.’ True story, I kid you not. She said: “Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re doing so well,” crying on the phone to me. I said: ‘Who is this?’ “It’s your Mom,” she said, and then I hung up on her. She called back. I told the front desk to stop answering the phone, because some crazy lady was calling.
SLV: Do you still see your brothers and sisters?
BELCASTRO: Yeah, but they all moved away. I’m the only one that stayed here in Vegas. One sister, Tammy, lives in Idaho. She’s the one that helped raise me as a kid and I probably talk to her once a week. One brother is in prison, and another brother lives in Seattle. Everyone went their own way. Thank the Lord, that one of us went sideways.
SLV: You were four years old! How did you end up at St. Jude’s Ranch?
BELCASTRO: The whole family went up there. The judge finally said: “You’re all in and out of these halfway houses too much. I’m sending you all up to St. Jude’s Ranch in Boulder City, and that’s where you’ll stay full time.” I’m five years old by now and this bus comes and takes us away. I was kind of scared about going that far away. They said Boulder City, but I didn’t know where that was. It was about a 45-minute drive, but it seemed like 5 hours. They dropped us off out there and showed us our room, but they separated all of us, because it’s hard to take in a big family. At St. Jude’s they have 10 cottages, some for girls and some for the boys. I was the youngest one there. When you turn eighteen, you’re let out. All my brothers and sisters got out and left me there. A family was going to adopt me, so I could continue with my wrestling scholarship, but they didn’t meet the qualifications. My one sister, Tammy, came back and got me when I was 14.
SLV: Were you happy to leave?
BELCASTRO: Yes and no. St. Jude’s really saved my life! You were guaranteed three meals a day, clothes, and you were guaranteed to get an education. I went before the judge and he said he would release me in two weeks. I stood up and said: ‘Sir, can you wait until after baseball season?’ He said: “Let me get this straight. There’s 70 kids in that boys home, and you actually want to stay?” I said: ‘Sir, we got a great chance to win this league undefeated and I want to be a part of it.’ He decided to let me stay. I didn’t really want to leave. I had it made. I made some good friends in Boulder City. Celebrities came to the Ranch all the time. Don Rickles would come often and give speeches. My sister, Tammy, was already married with two kids when she took me in. Once I got out of Boulder City and I was in Vegas, I had all this freedom, and I was used to rules and regulations. I was a punk kid and so my sister threw me out when I was sixteen.
SLV: Did you drop out of school when you left your sister’s house?
BELCASTRO: No. I got an apartment and went to school. I worked as a lifeguard at the Dunes Hotel. The best job I ever had. I would pick up the chairs and bring them out to the guests and get $10 to $20 for a chair and towels. Then they made me a pool manager. I went to Toys ‘R Us and bought thirty rafts. I charged $10 a day or $5 an hour. The pool was packed with all these rafts in there. Panama Jack, the suntan oil guy, comes up to me and wants me to sign a contract to sell his oils. I had so much stuff on my lifeguard desk: oils, sunglasses, that you couldn’t even see my head. I told my lifeguards: ‘You keep the tips, but help me sell my lotions and my rafts.’ Three years went by and then the President, Mr. Wicky, comes down and asks where all the money is going. I said: ‘Sir, it’s going in my pocket.’ He said: “Going in your pocket, huh? Do me a favor and clear all this stuff off the desk, get off my pool deck, and don’t ever come back.” It’s the only job I ever lost. I was making thirty grand a year for four months, so it broke my heart. That’s why I remember that story so well. I went home, put a pillow under my head and started crying. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for my apartment. I was only 17 years old. I went to the Golden Nugget and said I’d do whatever they wanted me to do. They told me to come back that night, that they needed a pot and pan washer. I was washing pots as big as me. I asked one guy how long he’d been on the job. He said: “I’ve been here twelve years washing pots and pans.” I told him it was bad luck. I asked another and the reply was: “I’ve been here fifteen years.” He had bad luck too. Another said: “I’ve been here eight years.” So I thought to myself: ‘Was I going to be a pot washer? You’ve got to be kidding me, man.’ Finally, I went around the hotel and asked how to become a bellman. A good friend of mine got me the job and I held it for nineteen years. From the Golden Nugget, I went to the Mirage and then to Mandalay Bay. The same corporation owns all of these casinos.
SLV: How old were you when you went to your first strip club?
BELCASTRO: Everybody remembers the first time they went to a strip club. (laughter) Maybe nineteen.
SLV: Did you think back then that you’d ever own one?
BELCASTRO: Oh no, but it was every man’s dream to own one back then. Today they say it’s a privileged license, but some days I feel like I’ve been penalized. (more laughter)
SLV: It’s a lot harder work than most people realize?
BELCASTRO: It’s a lot of work! They don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, and a lot of our work is behind closed doors. Young kids think: “Man, I’d love to be in his shoes,” but they’re not looking at the stress that makes this thing run. When you have no investors, and you’re the only guy that owns it, it’s five times as hard. I bet every club out there right now has investors, but when you have investors, it’s worse than marriage. I got my liquor license as soon as the recession hit in April of 2007. Boom, it hit! I had my money spent five different times before I built this club.
SLV: While you were a doorman, were you thinking that there was something bigger in your future?
BELCASTRO: Yeah. You always try to think outside the box and when I’d go into a club, I would see that they were charging you to sit down, charging you to do this and do that. When I was a kid I would go out all the time, clubbing and this and that, and it would cost me a fortune. I thought, man if someone were to open a club and would throw in some customer service, instead of tipping to sit down, and tipping for this and that, they would have a hot product. So, that’s what I did. This club came up and I happened to know the people who owned the property, they’re friends of mine, and I told them I was interested in it. They said to go ahead and give it a shot. There were probably eighty people who were trying to get in here before me. I got an inside scoop that the club was for sale.
SLV: So, is your attitude about running Badda Bing based on how you would have liked to have been treated when you were going clubbing?
BELCASTRO: Exactly. I didn’t hire any strip club guys. I hired all casino workers to work here. At the end of the day, they know every trick in the book. You really need customer service today, and in this recession, you need to take it a step further. What makes us different from any other club out there? There’s eighteen strip clubs in town right now, and they all have longevity. They have been there twelve, fifteen, nineteen years. I’m the new kid on the block, and they thought I’d be shut down by now. There’s a club that just shut down, down the street. They were open for four months and they just shut it down. They just couldn’t handle it, and they had four investors. Pennies add up to nickels, nickels to dimes, and dimes add up to quarters. You have to watch your payroll, and everything, or it’ll sneak up and grab you from behind.
SLV: What do you do to make people want to come here, besides your beautiful girls?
BELCASTRO: Customer service is everything. You make people feel like a million bucks. Your doorman out front is your ace. He’s the one that’s going to bring them back. “How are you doing, Mr. Smith?” Make everyone feel like they’re Bill Gates, and you’ll have a customer forever. Don’t shake them down. Let them have a good time in here. Let them have fun! That’s what they want to do is have fun! They come in to see the bartenders or the staff and have a drink. They’re not going to want to come in here if there’s a guy that’s going to shake them down. Then you’ll have lost a customer forever.
SLV: Seeing that you’re the boss, do you hire the girls or do you have a manager do that?
BELCASTRO: I hire all the staff. I don’t get involved with the ladies. My general manager does that.
SLV: He’s a casino person, too?
BELCASTRO: Yes.
SLV: Did he have anything to do with hiring girls before?
BELCASTRO: No. At the end of the day, the girls go with the business. Wherever the business is, that’s where the girls go. The only things the girls know, is what time the tanning salon opens up, and who’s paid the most, and cab drivers. That’s all they know. If you ask them, “Who is the President of the United States?” they don’t know. Seriously, the tanning salon, and what are we paying cabbies.
SLV: Talking about cab drivers, what do you think of the new cabbie law or hasn’t that gone into effect yet? (The law requires no more than $30 to be paid to cabbies for bringing people to a club.)
BELCASTRO: It has gone into effect. I think it’s great if everybody stands by it. The guy that’s backing it up is Dominic Gentile. He’s the number one lawyer in town, and Dominic wouldn’t get involved with something if it wasn’t going to happen. Because Dominic’s involved, I guarantee it will be enforced.
SLV: They tried this before, but then one or two started cheating, and then they all followed.
BELCASTRO: There was about five or six of them and then someone would break ranks. Instead of calling the club to find the true story, they would just listen to somebody off the streets saying, “This club is paying $60,” so the next club would go up to $80. That’s just crazy. You can’t do that!
SLV: What type of promotions do you have?
BELCASTRO: We go to the pool parties at the casinos. The girls are in Badda Bing bikinis with beach balls, so that is a lot of eye candy out there. When they see the girls out there at the pools, they come back here.
SLV: What is your biggest expense?
BELCASTRO: That would be taxes.
SLV: Besides taxes, what would be next?
BELCASTRO: All your overhead—your payroll, your rent, your power. Just to keep my doors open is about $300,000 a month. We were open 24 hours a day, but when City Center’s construction shut down, all the other construction shut down, too. We’re open now from 6pm to 2am.
SLV: Tell me about being the youngest permanent licensed owner of a strip club here in Vegas.
BELCASTRO: I’m thirty-nine years old and I went before the County Commissioners and they gave me a hard license. A hard license is godfathered in. To have a liquor license, along with a cabaret license, is a privilege all by itself, but most are temporary licenses. There are only three or four clubs in town that have a hard license. When I first opened, they gave me a temporary license. They could have given me a temporary license for twenty-five years. On the seventeenth, they gave me a hard license. The only license harder to get is a gaming license.
SLV: How long does a hard license last?
BELCASTRO: It’s godfathered in, so it lasts forever.
SLV: If you were to buy another club here, would you still have a hard license for it?
BELCASTRO: Yes. One of the commissioners said: “I heard about you. You’re the doorman who took lemons and made them into lemonade.” They made it very clear to me and told me: “Mr. Belcastro, this is a privileged license. Treat it like one. You worked very hard to get it, so be an example and show people that you’re a young club owner and a lot of people will look up to you. We respect what you’ve done and don’t forget where you come from. Treat it like the privileged license that it is.” It felt good leaving there, knowing what I had.
SLV: Tell us some of the problems you encounter.
BELCASTRO: When you have a topless club and you’re serving liquor, you have to be on your game with the girls. Make sure you’re not over-serving them, or the guests want to do something stupid with the girls. It’s a fine line. When the guys go upstairs for VIP, they can’t touch the girls.
SLV: Who keeps a check on that?
BELCASTRO: I do, and the whole staff does. We have a whole staff meeting here every Tuesday night. We don’t want a bad reputation. If you start letting the girls get out of control, and you let some things go, then it leads to drugs, and it’s a free-for-all. You might as well call it The Chicken Ranch.
SLV: Any funny stories?
BELCASTRO: Oh, I could go on all day. One night there was a transvestite dancing. She had long hair and quite a rack on her. I look on the video screen and see her and I call my manager on his headset. He thinks she’s beautiful and wants me to go up there and meet her, and I say: ‘Brother, that’s not a lady.’ He says: “She’s gorgeous!” and I say: ‘You’re right, but I want you to babysit her and take her around the club and have a few drinks.’ He was going around with her acting like he was a big shot. Everybody here knew that she was a she-male and we were all dying. I finally tell him: ‘Can’t you see the package? Come on! You’re just looking at the rack and the long hair, but what about the pouch right there?’ A thong only covers up so much. Finally I told him that she had to go. ‘Somebody might get a lap dance with her and somebody’s going to go nuts!’
SLV: Tell me about some of the up and coming events you have planned.
BELCASTRO: Every Tuesday night is “Oil Wrestling” from 9pm to 2 in the morning. We’re really going to build it up and have some fun with it. We’ll have porn stars here and we’ll even auction off wrestling matches between the girls and the customers. It’s going to be a great fun time. We’re also planning the “Great Halloween Slumber Party”, a sleepover with girls in crazy costumes and much, much more!
SLV: Do you have any children?
BELCASTRO: Yes, one little daughter. She’s twelve. She thinks I own an Italian restaurant. (laughter)
SLV: Well, in essence, you do.
BELCASTRO: Yeah, I just added on to it a little. (laughter) SLV

ST. JUDE’S RANCH

St. Jude’s Ranch for Children rescues abused, abandoned, and neglected children of all races and faiths who have been taken from their natural parents. The safe haven lies thirty miles outside of Las Vegas on forty acres of land. A charity night called “Nite of Stars” at the Riviera in 1966 included Ed McMahon, Jack Benny, Shecky Greene, Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, and helped to raise enough money to buy the land. An Episcopal priest, who named it after St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Desperate Causes, founded this safe haven. On the property, a family structure is created by having ten houses that are supervised by full-time Family Teachers along with 6-8 kids in each house. Children old enough attend public schools. The “parents” (teachers) provide role modeling, academic support, mentoring and discipline, as each child is required to take care of their room and help with household chores. There is also a Social Worker and Child Psychiatrist there who, along with the Family Teachers, help the children learn social and life skills to start new, productive lives as adults.

Issue 54 featuring: Renee Perez, Capri Anderson with Mia Lina and Kaylani Lei