Bucks naked: here's the bottom line on running a topless club.

• Author: McMillan, Alex Frew
• Position: Diamond Club

Back in 1985, when Tom Wicker was 37 and running a popular rock club, he booked a hot young band few Charlotte fans had heard of. He'd had much better draws - some nights, as many as 1,500 fans would pack Kidnappers. With a big act such as Simply Red, a British R&B group that had the top-selling single in the States when it came through the Queen City, the place would sell out in 15 minutes.

But this particular night, only 150 showed up to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They got quite a show. The four members of the Los Angeles funk band came out wearing nothing but a single sock each - pulled over their privates. "That was a big thing," Wicker recalls. "That got a big chuckle."

It wasn't the first time he had near-naked people on stage - Kidnappers used to hustle up some pretty wild swimsuit contests. But the Chili Peppers were the first professionals to get paid for it. They wouldn't be the last.

Wicker ran the club five years until he burned out on rock'n'roll. Before that, he'd opened and closed 20-some bars and restaurants, so many that he has trouble with the dates and can't remember all the names. But Kidnappers was different. "That's about the only place I changed that was making money," he says. "The last night I was open for business, I had 800 people there. And I just shut it down totally."

He was tired of dealing with precocious bands and their drunken fans. He was fed up working 90-hour weeks and seeing the rewards go to performers who got a piece of the door - say half of anything over $3,000 - on top of their fee, which usually ran a couple of grand.

He's happier now. These days, performers pay him - $37 a night each - for the privilege of working at The Diamond Club. The $7-a-head admission is his alone. At a conventional bar, a domestic beer that wholesales at 50 cents or so goes for $2.75 tops. Wicker charges a dollar more, increasing his margin close to 50%. A mixed drink wholesales for $1, and he charges $4.75, compared with $2 to $3 elsewhere. Then there are food sales and close to 30 types of souvenirs, ranging from beer huggers to $25 sweat shirts.

Wicker runs a strip club, albeit an upscale one that pulls in $2 million to $3 million a year. On a good night, he can clear $10,000. In a risque business, he makes what some might consider an obscene profit, and he thinks things will get even better with the new club he's opening downtown. He sells sex, at least the taste of it, and it doesn't sell any better than on expense account. "You're going to see brokers, bankers come in here," he says. "On gold Express, they don't care if they blow $500." Wicker also runs a popular dance club, which pulls in the twentysomething crowd, though he's fast realizing that it, too, could do with some value-added attractions.

Some say what he does is sinful, but Tom Wicker thinks he's only following commerce's first commandment: Give the market what it wants. And that's what he's always tried to do.

Wicker is a big, burly man who stands at 6 foot 2. He rarely wears suits - he has broad shoulders and a bit of a beer gut, so they give him the bulk of those guys who run nightclubs in movies. Around the office, he dresses casually and looks more relaxed - about the fanciest thing he wears is a Tommy Hilfiger sports shirt, and he only wears that because his new wife bought it. She drives a new Lexus. He drives a 1987 Chevy Celebrity with more than 200,000 miles on it.

He has a small behind-the-scenes staff of four or five, who handle payroll and other administrivia in cramped quarters next to the dance club. The offices are spare and in semidisarray - there are scuffs on the peach walls that the cheap Japanese prints don't hide. The place isn't pretty, but it works. Anyway, this is show biz, and Wicker knows it doesn't matter what you do or look like in private. The side of his business the public sees is glamorous, slightly out-of-this-world.

The Diamond Club sits where Kidnappers used to; in a two-story building a hundred yards back from Old Pineville Road. It's a half-block off Tyvola, the main drag between the Coliseum and Charlotte's most-upscale mall, SouthPark. During the daytime, you'd hardly notice the club. At night, it's impossible to miss. Roadside, a bright pink neon sign lights the way. Next to a small ornamental fountain and an equally ornamental white limo, there's always a doorman or two in black tie. For $3, there's valet parking. It could be three bucks well spent because there's rarely much space in the parking lot, which brims with sports cars, pickup trucks, a lot of family sedans and wagons.

Inside, customers work their way past a display case of Diamond Club merchandise and a cash register where an attractive woman relieves them of their admission. Guys check out the Herb Ritts photo (a topless model, but hey - it's art), primp their hair or pat down their ties before fording the river of noise and pushing on into the club. It is dimly lit by more pink neon and strategically placed...