Strip Club Owner Gets OK to Buy Small Town

It's the town of Mustang*, 75 acres of nearly nothing just south of Corsicana.

It's been in the works for two years, muddied up by the death of Mustang's founder and the interference of his widow.

So why is it important?

You might remember this post I made a few days ago about Houston finally getting the go-ahead to enforce its Draconian** sexually oriented business law, which would make it virtually impossible for most such businesses to operate within Houston city limits. Such businesses would effectively have to relocate outside the city limits- which continue to expand every year- and accept Harris County laws, which could enact equally prohibitive restrictions.

But one of the peculiarities of Texas law is that county-level ordinances, for the most part, have no jurisdiction in cities. Cities have local option- a city in a dry (no alcohol sales allowed) county can elect to be wet, for instance.

Prostitution is illegal by statewide law, not county ordinance, so that would still be illegal... but pretty much anything else would be acceptable.

So somebody tell all those strip club, adult bookstore, etc. owners getting shut down by the Houston Vice Squad: there's a lot of unincorporated and undeveloped land in Harris County- land around Cypress out US 290, land around Katy and the Grand Parkway, land between Sugar Land and Richmond (though that's going fast), and land up towards Atascosita and Crosby on Beltway 8 and US 90. Get together, buy up a bunch of it, and incorporate it. Form your own city, make your own laws...

... and shoot the bird to those who want to run you out.

* MapQuest lists four cities in Texas named Mustang.

** "Draconian" is intended to be capitalized. It's named after an ancient emperor named Draco, remembered for the extreme severity of his laws. He was the kind of person who made a capital crime out of Looking At Me Funny. Unfortunately, since he was Emperor, or king, or whatever, nothing could be done about it.