The World Famous Palomino is the only gentlemen’s club in the country that serves up both alcohol and totally nude dancers, both female and male, and allows for totally nude lap dances. The 33,000 square feet of fantasy fulfills the sexual dreams and desires of both sexes with fully stocked bars, completely nude dancers and VIP rooms that run the gamut from a Rock ‘n Roll room to the Blue room with a big bed that’s meant for couples and a girl – these theme rooms have music and lights to enhance your experience and engender a totally good time. There is also an additional small stage upstairs with a stripper’s pole, for girlfriends or wives to put on a private showing for their man in a lounge setting.

The Palomino has survived a unique history in Las Vegas, starting from when the Paul Perry family opened it in 1969. Perry’s son pleaded guilty to killing one of their employees and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Then a Stanford University cardiologist, Dr. Simon Stertzer, bought it as a real estate investment. After the medical community voiced a huge uproar about one of their doctors owning a strip club, Dr Stertzer got rid of it. In 2003, Luis Hidalgo, Jr. took over the club and decided to add the “Palomino Stallions”, a totally nude male revue to compliment his already totally nude females on the other side of the club. Another murder occurred in 2005, when Hidalgo and his son were accused of hiring someone to kill Timothy Hadland, a former employee who was found shot near Lake Mead. Both father and son were sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. In 2006, Hidalgo sold the land the Palomino was on to cover legal fees… and that brings us to Adam Gentile, the son of Hidalgo’s famous lawyer, Dominic Gentile. Adam bought the club and started to make changes immediately. Adam brought twelve years of experience and skills in the gentlemen’s club industry to the Palomino that it had never seen before. He decided to let Playboy TV come into his newly remodeled Palomino to film a reality series called “King of Clubs” which made the gentlemen’s club even more famous. Recently Adam gave SLV a tour of his club to see all the new improvements he’s made and sat with us to answer some questions.

SLV: The Palomino has had a pretty lively history. Tell me how total nudity and alcohol became legal?
GENTILE: The Paul Perry family opened it and developed it in 1969. Paul was friendly and sociable and got it done before there was a law on books saying you couldn’t. He managed to get it “grandfathered” in and it wasn’t until later that they put the “sunset clause” in, where it could only go until a certain year (2019) and not be grandfathered in forever.
SLV: There were no other strip clubs that got grandfathered in?
GENTILE: None of them had tried it. North Las Vegas, where the Palomino is located, is a different city, and that means we’re acting under entirely different laws. It’s actually pleasant because I have to deal with the North Las Vegas Police Department instead of Metro, for the most part. The North Las Vegas Police don’t let me get away with more stuff, but they talk to you. Instead of trying to find an excuse to get mad at you, they’ll ask: “Are you doing this?” and I’ll say: “No, would you like to look?” They come in and really help us out when we need it. There’s times that we need police, ‘cause some guy isn’t going to leave unless we destroy him, and they have a badge, so we’re glad to see them. For the most part, they’ve been nothing but wonderful!
SLV: So tell us more about the club’s history.
GENTILE: Paul Perry died in 1993, and from there on out, the tragedy of this club just started to down-spiral. Following Paul Perry, Gail Perry, the widow, took over and she didn’t like the business. She put no money back into it and pulled it out with both hands. I heard she gave it to charities, which is wonderful, but the business started spiraling down. Then there was the whole debacle with the son and the General Manager that occurred. The current GM saw it was going downhill and wanted to purchase it, saying: “Look, if you’re not going to run it, let me buy it off you, because I know how to run it.” Obviously he’d been doing it for awhile and I think he could have done it. The son, in the wonderful logic that drugs bring on, thought the GM was going to buy it out from under him and thought: “I know how to stop him – I’ll shoot him with a shotgun.” It worked… he didn’t buy it, because he was dead. Perry’s son went to prison, and that started the whole bad thing.
SLV: Then there was a cardiologist that purchased it.
GENTILE: Well, there was another owner before the cardiologist. Again they didn’t put any money back into the club. Like a lot of other clubs, they think they’ll open their doors and a lot of people will come in. No, that’s not the way it works. Then the cardiologist purchased it as a land play. He was like a gazillionaire and is on the board of Stanford University, I think. The board wasn’t happy and said owning a strip club was bad, so he gave the club itself to Hidalgo, who had no experience in this at all. While the business itself looks easy on paper, it is so not! It’s one of the hardest businesses there is, actually. It’s like Disneyland, trying to keep people happy 24/7. It’s not an easy thing. Hidalgo kind of ran it into the ground, every year doing a little bit less, because he wasn’t trying to keep up with the trends. Eventually, when I came in here to purchase it from him, there was just outside patio furniture as the furniture in here, just to show you how bad it had gotten. Hidalgo got caught up in the tragedy of telling someone dumber than himself to get things done. He apparently told someone: “Our exit boy is talking badly to the cabbies. Would you please try and get him to stop? Please go talk to him.” That person told someone dumber than himself: “We’ve got to get this guy to stop.” Again that person told someone dumber than himself: “Make him stop!” That guy talked to one of his gangster
friends, and the gangster’s interpretation of “Make him stop!” was let’s shoot him in the head. He shot him in the head and it was made to look like Hidalgo ordered someone to kill this guy, when in actuality he just said: “Aw, please make him stop.”
SLV: You’re pretty sure he didn’t order a murder?
GENTILE: I don’t know. But he was found guilty, so apparently I may be wrong. But that’s my theory. Hidalgo and his son both were found guilty. I don’t think it was so much for what they did beforehand, but for how they reacted. Some people in our industry unfortunately have this demeanor that makes them seem like the gangster type, and they react in a guilty way. Trust me, as someone with a vowel at the end of my
name, we’re pretty used to that. It’s one of those things, when you have a lot of attention on you: it’s better to be open and honest.
SLV: Were you aware of all this going on before you bought the club?
GENTILE: I purchased the club in 2006 and then I became aware. Before that, I really wasn’t. I got involved when my Dad did. The only way for Hidalgo to afford the lawyer’s fees, in order to defend the case, was to get the property involved. The way that worked out was they’d give a ridiculous discount on the property for the money they would owe for legal fees. Well, that didn’t include the club. Hidalgo still owned the club. At that point he was going to lose the license and I was the only one we knew with any experience in running strip clubs. I’d run strip clubs for most of my life at that point. I’d started at twenty-one, actually.
SLV: How did you start running strip clubs?
GENTILE: When I turned twenty-one, I was in San Diego, California. I had moved there to be with my mom and to go to college out there. So at twenty-one, I got a job at San Diego’s Cheetahs with Mike Galardi, who owned it. I was a bouncer one day a week and I really liked it. At eighteen, I had snuck into Olympic Garden and I don’t drink, ‘cause that’s not a big thing for me. I’m watching all my other college friends who went in there with me, drinking up a storm and trying to get these dancers’ attention. At that point I realized they didn’t have lunch money the day before, because they were broke college kids, but miraculously they had come up with $100 and were going to get lap dances, so I had one, too. It was an educational experience for me because it didn’t do anything for me, and I realized it was just a job. At that point I thought this business was intriguing. Fast-forward three years and that’s why I got into it. I really liked this business. It’s show business for all intents and purposes. You’re putting on a show and you’re trying to make everyone have a good time. I worked for five years and they transferred me back to Vegas, which was good because I had a little brother that I hadn’t seen much of at that point. They had me open up Jaguar’s and Leopard Lounge. I produced “Men’s Club” at Club 7. In the case of male entertainment, topless males do not require a “sexually oriented business license”. We put the male revue right before the nightclub opened to bring in the girls, so that when the nightclub opened, there were already girls there to attract the guys. While I was producing that show, Sapphire’s was trying to put together a male revue. They hired me and I put a show in over there and I was at Sapphire’s for a year or two. Eventually I sold it to them because this place became available. So, I got a bank loan and purchased this place from Luis Hidalgo.
SLV: Did your father own the Palomino?
GENTILE: We don’t bother to correct anyone anymore, but my father has never owned the Palomino. My father and two of his partners purchased the note on the land that this place and three or four other properties sit on. The Palomino business itself is me. Being an owner has definitely educated me quickly. The first year was tough because there’s a lot of stuff you just don’t think of. When you’re running a place it’s one thing, but when you have to think of all the things that affect the business, it changes your opinion. I must admit that after owning the club for five years, I understand how people could have made the decisions they made, than when I was just a bouncer and thought they were the dumbest people on earth. I don’t agree with their decisions, but I can see how tempting they could be.
SLV: Did you major in business during college?
GENTILE: It was a dual major with Human Sexual Psychology and business management. I knew that sex sells, but why? Why is it that people will go through this huge effort and change the way they are to attract the opposite sex? I wanted to know how to apply this to any business I might choose.
SLV: Now that you’ve been in this business, do you think the classes were full of shit or did they help you?
GENTILE: It helped, honestly. It made you look at it from a logical point of view, and pull apart the emotion. The business isn’t about the sex, it’s about the connection. It’s not about someone coming in and thinking: “Oh, I want to get laid,” but they know deep down they’re not going to. They just want to feel good. It’s about the feeling that you get from it. The reality is that physical pleasure is fun, but at the end of the day, it’s about the connection for that amount of time. In this particular case, you have beautiful young girls that maybe in high school wouldn’t even talk to you, now making you think you’re the sexiest thing on the planet, and that feels good! I started off as a theater major and then switched during my second year. This business seems perfect, because it has a little bit of everything.
SLV: During the first year of owning the club, what was a huge surprise to you?
GENTILE: The surprise about this club was just how bad it was when I took it over. We had drug dealers, pimps, everything coming here. The furniture was horrible and the girls kind of looked like me! It was pretty bad! What surprised me about the business in general was the amount of paperwork. I had watched them do paperwork in the offices at the clubs I worked at, and the amount that must have been done off-site, which I never gave them credit for, was insane. There’s just a lot more than you would think! Everything needs to be accounted for: state, county, city, IRS, licensing, payroll for the girls, making sure the girls have their licenses, how many people went in the VIP room each night to account for the bar tabs, and was there enough money made to make sure the girls are still happy.
SLV: Who keeps tabs of all that?
GENTILE: I do. I have one night off every two weeks. At some point, someone has to know everything. I think that’s where the clubs are going bad right now, because the owners aren’t actually right there. Then the ones that are there relinquish a lot of control to other people. Someone has to have a master plan and be accountable for everything. Now, I’ve delegated some of it, but I still do the math at the end. My mom is my office manager and she really helps me with the accounting, because I trust her. It’s hilarious, because the one thing that owners pay attention to the most is the money, and I have to ask her: “What do we have right now?” It is a business and you can’t just go in and say: “Hey pretty girls, let’s have a party.” Some new owners, who don’t have the experience, come to Vegas and have their grand opening and soon after, their grand closing, because they didn’t treat it like a business.
SLV: Is that the hardest part of owning a club? Most guys would look at you and go: “Wow, you have the dream life.”
GENTILE: It can be, but at the end of the day, it’s just like any other job. It’s tons of hard work, if you want to be successful. I do make money looking at beautiful young girls naked, which is kinda cool, but it’s just one aspect of it. The hardest part is making sure everything gets done.
SLV: How long did it take you to get things cleaned up and get the drug dealers out of the club?
GENTILE: That, I got lucky with. It took about a year. For that first year I was able to bring Brent Jordan out of retirement to help me. He had worked with me at Cheetahs. He has written a couple of books, one called “Stripped”. He helped me clean it up really quickly. You have to insist that even though you want to spend money in here, you’re the wrong person to be in here, and you can’t come in. You have to stick to your guns. Keeping them out, making sure they knew they weren’t welcome and being consistent took about a year.
SLV: What other kinds of people, besides the people who you already turned away, do you turn away?
GENTILE: While I know that some of the girls have their extracurricular habits, drug-wise, you don’t want a drug dealer actually in your club. If they’re going to do it, they have to go off premises, like anyone else. But, soon as that’s in the club, now literally you’ve opened yourself up to: “What’s going to happen in my club? Is this going to be known as the place to go for drugs?” There are some clubs that actually promote such things, but I don’t believe that it’s the way to go. It may make you money, but it’ll bite you in the ass at some point.
SLV: How can you tell who to keep out?
GENTILE: Speaking as an ex-doorman: if they’re dressed like a hoodlum (and it doesn’t matter what color they are). We let locals in free, but there are times we do drink tickets at the front door. If they literally balk at it, we say sorry, you can’t come in. That’s a huge tip-off. My doormen know when to enforce that. We also try to keep out someone that doesn’t understand any type of English and that we won’t be able to communicate with at all. It sucks because sometimes we get Europeans who don’t speak any English and we have to explain that it’ll only lead to trouble inside at some point. It rarely occurs, but it’s just one more example. There are other times where you have a group of ten guys come in, not in dress code, and that is a major thing.
SLV: What’s the dress code?
GENTILE: It’s not really that hard. No plain white T’s. No looking like you’ve just rolled out of bed. We’ve had people try to come in with pajama bottoms. Please act like you’re going to a club.
SLV: Obviously your time as a doorman taught you a lot.
GENTILE: You’re right. I think General Managers ought to work the other positions first. If you can’t literally tell someone they’re fired and walk right into the position of the person you just fired and fill it, you’re in trouble. You don’t know what to look for. Are they skimming, are they being good to the girls, am I going off what this person said or just off what the girls said? In one case, I make it clear to the DJ’s to be nice to the girls. Otherwise, they will go home, and I will go up there.
SLV: How about dealing with the girls? How big a headache is that?
GENTILE: It depends on the day (smiling). It’s kind of like having 100 little sisters. It really is! In my case, which apparently it makes this a pretty popular club, I actually care. It’s one of those things that if they’re having a bad day, you have to remind yourself that it’s not just “Bubbles”. There’s a person who came in here to put on the persona of “Bubbles”, and they may legitimately be having a bad day. There’s a lot of drama that goes on between the girls. In my rulebook it says: “No drama allowed!” If the girls are coming here to work, if you allow that to get out of hand, now you have the potential for the girls being more interested in attacking each other, and that ruins it for all people not involved in it. A few girls fighting in the back, ruins the morale of all the girls in the locker room. The girls occasionally have a bad day, and if they’re usually a good girl, I’ll say: “I’ll throw you a free house day. I’m sorry you’re having such a bad day.” Now you’ve cheered them up, they’re going to come in an extra day and probably make a big amount of money. You’re going to look like a hero and it brings that beautiful girl back to your club.
SLV: You don’t have a sister, do you?
GENTILE: No.
SLV: How do you feel you have the personality to treat them like little sisters?
GENTILE: Because I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. It’s that simple. I was born with the ability to empathize, but it really has been developed over the years. Growing up I was kind of a dork and didn’t know how to talk to girls at all. I was the D&D dork (Dungeons and Dragons). I still have the D&D stuff in the basement of this building. Even though I work the floor here, I refuse to take tips. That way, the girls know that no matter what happens, they absolutely know that I’m not making decisions based on ‘so-and-so’ paying me more. Little things like that you just learn.
SLV: How do you deal with the private lap dances and make sure things stay legal?
GENTILE: The naughtiness factor! I don’t care if the police come to check. The reality is that if a police officer wants to cite a club, they can. The laws are so ambiguous, that you could be cited for almost anything. At the end of the day, it’s their word versus yours, and if you have a stripper and a strip club owner versus an officer of the law, there’s almost no chance they’re going to side with you. I’ve had this club for five years and I’ve not had a single citation. I talk to the officers and ask: “What do you not want to go on here?” The key is that you have to follow the spirit of what they say. If they say don’t do this, this or this... don’t do it. I have found that if you do that, they generally leave you alone. You just have to prove to them that you’re serious. How closely do I watch? For the most part, the girls are self-policing. It’s impossible to have a 100% clean club. The amount of man-hours it would take to make sure that someone policed every lap dance, every time, would be ridiculous. I go with the Lochness Monster theory. I’ve heard of the Lochness Monster, but I’ve never seen the Lochness Monster. It goes from something that sounds somewhat amusing, to “Oh my God, it’s a big beast and I must kill it.” I tell the girls: “If you’re doing something stupid, don’t let me catch you.” If the girls don’t want to get caught, they’re not going be caught. I do keep tabs, because I want the girls to be safe. It just takes one 180-pound guy to grab a 110-pound girl; it’s just not fair. Let’s say that guy pulls out something he’s not supposed to pull out, if there’s not a guy in that area to protect her, that’s unacceptable.
SLV: How often do the officers come through here?
GENTILE: About once every two weeks, and I like it. Tell me if you see something you don’t like, so I can correct it before it becomes a problem.
SLV: What kind of rules do you have about the girls drinking too much, and not being able to drive home?
GENTILE: Eventually, you learn if they’ve actually had too much to drink or if they’re just goofy. There are some girls that can’t just hold their liquor to save their lives, and if they get drunk, you’re babysitting. It’s mandatory valet, where they turn in their keys, and if they’re too drunk, we don’t give them their keys. We tell them to take a cab and come back tomorrow and everything will be fine. We try to keep them as safe as possible. We have a unique situation because of the grandfathered law, we have 18 and older girls. We wristband the girls that can’t drink and if they don’t have their wristband on, they go home. Wristbanded girls can’t go anywhere near the bar.
SLV: What percentage of your dancers are under 21?
GENTILE: Probably 50%. We have a great crew of young girls. The secret is that we don’t treat them badly, like they are treated in some other clubs. They take all their money and they treat them more like pimps than club owners. We don’t take their money. The money they make they keep, because they’re the ones getting naked for some stranger. I personally think they should keep their money. The running joke when I first took over this club was: “The Palomino, where old strippers go to die,” and it was true. We have a really good crew now. In some clubs they could make a little more. But the lack of headaches because of the “No drama” rule, and the fact that they do not have to pay out all their money and tip 83,000 guys on their way out, makes them like it here because they’re treated better.
SLV: What are the house fees here on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday?
GENTILE: Anywhere from $10 to $55. It depends what time you want to come in. If you’re here early in the day and you’re here to help us out, I’m not going to gouge you for that. I show them that all the money they pay in house fees goes to improving the club. Worst-case scenario is if you come during prime hours on a Friday night, its $55. We have to charge or they’re no longer an independent contractor.
SLV: Do you still have the nude male revue?
GENTILE: Currently Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It’s from 10:30pm-3am, and there’s a $20 charge. We also have hip hop nights on Wednesdays and Thursdays with an urban feel and big booties. We have the only totally nude male review in the country. We cater to the women who want to go home and go: “Oh, my God!” It’s an extreme show! When they’re naked, they’re in uniform. With Chippendales and Thunder, you can’t get lap dances. You can get a totally nude VIP lap dance. If the guy puts on a good show on stage, he’ll make a couple of hundred dollars. When the females finally do go out to let loose, they go apeshit. A female customer is extremely high maintenance. Considering they don’t spend as much money as the male customer does, it’s a tough crowd. Because they haven’t done it as much and because they tend to get more inebriated, they get out of hand a little quicker. Some think they can grab the guy as much as they want, because “Doesn’t every guy like this?” NO! Contrary to popular belief, every guy up there doesn’t want a stranger grabbing his junk. But they think it’s cool. “Maam, you can’t do that.” Usually it’s one of the bridesmaids that become Attila the Hun and just goes crazy. Then it sometimes gets to the point where they’re told: “Maam, you’ll have to leave.” “Fuck you, you can’t make me leave.” “Oh, yes we can.” Girls have spit on me. People who never considered grabbing…grab. There aren’t a lot of male strippers, so there’s not a lot of turnover. The amount of crap that the female dancer goes through, the constant denial, the constant “Oh, no, you’re not my type,” would crush the average male ego like a grape. Guys can’t put up with that. It’s rough. We’re used to it, but it hurts. The average age for the male dancer is about 30. The younger guys just don’t have the confidence.
SLV: Do you use a lot of marketing ploys?
GENTILE: If you really treat the customers well, they’ll do the marketing for you. We don’t recruit girls. They come here from the word of mouth from the other girls that work here.
SLV: Is there an age where you’re just too old to be stripping?
GENTILE: No. Honestly, I don’t think so. It depends on how you keep yourself. I’ve had some girls here that you’d think were 22 or 23 and they’re 35; if they take care of themselves and don’t give in to the bad habits of drugs, drinking and smoking. Those things will age you and your body will go to shit fast. Sometimes an 18 or 19 year-old girl will come in and you’d think they’d have this perfect body, but they’ve treated themselves like such shit over their first year of doing this that they look worn out already.
SLV: Are paying the cabs a big deal?
GENTILE: It is a big deal and my fellow club owners make it more of an issue than we should. The first year I took over, I didn’t pay a dime to them. Luckily after a number of years, there’s a lot of new drivers out there who are learning about Palomino for the first time and don’t think of it as the club that went downhill. We have a much better relationship with them now.
SLV: Tell me about “King of Clubs”, the show that ran on the Playboy channel.
GENTILE: It was a reality show about the Palomino Club, and I thought it would be good for the club. They made me reenact the first day, the very beginning when I bought the club. There are a lot of customers that don’t want to be near a camera. Understandable. Overall it was really a fun show, but it was very tiring at the time. There were certain times that I’d be going out there and I’m trying to deal with the girls, and opposed to me saying: “Get the fuc… (I’d stop mid-sentence and start again) ..dear…” You’d realize the cameras were always there. It was different, and exciting. It was a fun show to watch. I have a TV show and that’s cool. How many people get to say that? I’m flattered and it was really cool. It was an uncensored show and showed everything; sometimes things I wish they hadn’t shown. Girls were making out in the bathroom one day and they managed to catch that and showed that. Oh, that’s wonderful!
SLV: You were 31 when you got your strip club license. Tell me about the process.
GENTILE: The reason it’s difficult is because there’s a lot of licenses involved. I have to hold four separate liquor licenses, two sexually oriented business licenses and the general state business license. Licensing is very complex. It’s not as bad as a gaming license, where they want to know what bubble gum you chewed as a child, but it’s close. They want to make sure where the money comes from and where it’s going. It takes some time, and longer in my case, because the previous owner was in big trouble, so they wanted to make sure there was no connection there. They wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just taking it over and Hidalgo was still going to be involved.
SLV: Aren’t there a lot of clubs that get temporary licenses and just keep extending them?
GENTILE: That’s true, but if it’s allowed, then they’re not breaking any rules. It’s all about the money. When was the last time you heard about a club being shut down, even for a night? It just doesn’t happen.
SLV: Do you see yourself always being a club owner in Nevada?
GENTILE: Las Vegas is not my idyllic city. I’m not a partier. I actually prefer a quieter lifestyle. Forever? No, probably not. For the time being, my family is here, and this is the place to be if you’re in my line of career. I do strip clubs and I’ve done them for almost half of my life. I like it here, but I think my competition occasionally makes it harder than it has to be because there’s an insane amount of clubs right now in the Vegas Valley.
SLV: What do you have planned when the grandfathered license runs out in 2019? You can’t renew it, correct?
GENTILE: That’s not necessarily true. I want to prove that this club can be part of North Las Vegas, be part of the community and actually give things back by paying taxes and cleaning up the neighborhood. We’re bringing tourists’ dollars to North Las Vegas, and in reality, there’s not a lot to bring people down here.
SLV: What’s your perfect day?
GENTILE: Getting up and relaxing for a little bit and checking my emails. Go to the gym, because it’s peaceful time. I built a fighting/training center in my warehouse in the parking lot where my friend and I train every day. My perfect day would be going there after the gym and basically beating the piss out of each other for an hour. We don’t go for injury, but the stress relief is wonderful. Then change clothes and work a really good shift and hope the day goes really well. Try to keep everything running smoothly and make a little money for everyone. At that point I’d go home and go to sleep. It’s pretty much what I do everyday. The perfect day is where everything goes normally, I have a good time, and no problems. SLV

The World-Famous Palomino is located at 1848 Las Vegas Blvd. N., North Las Vegas, NV 89030 • 877-399-2023
Open 4pm-5am weekdays and 4pm-7am weekends

Issue 62 featuring: Aiden Ashley, Jana Jordan & Jenny Ryan