Skeezy Daytona Beach Commissioner Likes Bar Fights, Trying To Do Sex With Strippers

Oh, thank goodness. This drab grey March afternoon has been enlivened, somewhat, by news from the Sunshine State (the Florida one): Daytona Beach City Commissioner Carl Lentz is just one lucky guy when it comes to doing embarassing stuff in front of security cameras. A week ago, Lentz got himself kicked out of a strip club and given a trespassing warning after (allegedly, always allegedly) trying to convince a lady working at a strip club to do sex with him and then throwing a drink on the lady. This week, since he's just really not having a swell time of it, another video was released showing Lentz getting into a fight at a different bar last November. Obviously, there are just too many cameras around. Whatever happened to privacy?

So anyway, in last Friday's altercation, Lentz allegedly tried to get the bartender to go home with him, and when she turned him down and backed away behind the bar, he tried to come around the bar to reach her. And then he threw a beer on her. He seems nice. A bouncer escorted Lentz out. The bar's owner says Lentz first threatened to have the club shut down, then offered to ensure less trouble from police if the server would just have sex with him. And yet despite these persuasive negotiating tactics, Lentz was still rebuffed. He was up all night for good fun, but he did not get lucky.

A cop got the whole post-throwing-out scene on video, and can we just say that we wish every cop was required to record all their interactions with the public like this, because accountability? Sadly for Lentz, he does not come off looking like Joe Public Servant -- more like Joe Drunken Fratdouche.

We haven't watched the whole thing (24 minutes!) so tell us if there's anything cool or scandalous past like the 10-minute mark, OK? (Update: We took another look, and we now can say that the highlight of the video comes at about 17 minutes in: Lentz says to the cop, "You don't have to be so official. I'm not, like, an asshole. I'm a guy. I'm an official...person, but I'm always just a guy.") We totally believe Lentz's very convincing explanation that he was just visiting the club at 2 a.m. because he was thinking of buying it, since you never know when a late-night real estate impulse will strike. Also, he was not arrested, because who knows why? His attorney is very adamant that it was all about real estate, though.

The other incident that came to light this week actually occurred back in November, when Lentz and a friend were visiting the bar at LuLu’s Oceanside Grill in Ormond Beach, where Lentz was just minding his own business and being his charming self, asking the bartender lady, Brooke MacIver, to take off her sweater, which was probably not a good idea in retrospect, seeing as how the bartender was manager Brett MacIver's sister. Things got icky when Lentz "allegedly called [Brooke MacIver] 'slow,' which was misheard by Brett MacIver, who in turn asked Lentz and his friend to leave." (We love journalistic euphemism -- we cannot say "slut" in a family newspaper, apparently, unless maybe Rush Limbaugh says it.) And of course, somewhere in there, Lentz also made a point of asking "Don't you know who I am?" because every asshole city official in a story like this asks that.

After MacIver told him to get lost, Lentz took off, but the surveillance video shows Lentz coming back in. He allegedly approached Brett MacIver "in a threatening manner" and pulled Brooke MacIver's hair. And then the punches flew, and chairs were smashed in two (there was no blood, however, nor a single gunshot, so stop singing). Just another night of constituent service for a Florida city official, really.

No charges have been filed in either of the episodes, and Lentz's attorney, Lauren Koleilat, insists that "These matters are being blown out of proportion due to my client’s status as a public figure." Who likes to behave like a drunken douchebucket.

Thank you, Florida.

[ Daytona Beach News-Journal / Daytona Beach News-Journal again / RawStory ]

 Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He had no idea how boring his Friday nights must seem to elected officials.