Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

Have a beer? Ogle nudity? Toss a dwarf?

Those choices are featured tonight at a strip club in Detroit called the Toy Chest.

It’s all in fun, with a dwarf who’s a paid professional, wears a helmet and gets harmlessly pitched by participants onto air mattresses, the topless bar’s spokeswoman Alissa Katzman said. A $10 cover charge gets patrons inside and $5 enters them in the dwarf-tossing contest, Katzman said, at the spot on Ford Road near the Southfield Freeway.

Longest pitch wins you a trophy. But more than 3,400 people have said: That game's a loser. They've signed an online petition — at www.change.org — objecting to the event promoted on the bar’s marquee.

“If this were puppy tossing or kitten tossing, people would be all over it,” said Denise Wood, 50, of Fowlerville. Wood heads the Motor City Chapter of Little People of America, a California-based group that stands up for short folks. She and her husband adopted their son, 10, who's a dwarf, and she worries that people who see the bar’s activity will think it’s OK to try dwarf tossing elsewhere.

Cops say bar is 'out of control,' want license revoked

“What’s to prevent kids from doing this to someone at school?” Wood said, adding: “I just don’t know why people think it’s OK to toss a person. I know this guy agreed to it, but when you dangle a carrot in front of people, they’ll do all kinds of things."

The bar, whose sign also promises “sizzling topless entertainment,” is known for hosting zany entertainment, including fire breathers, boxers, sports personalities and live bands, although “we don’t believe in having porn stars — we’re not that kind of club,” Katzman said. She was expecting “a crazy busy night,” she said.

“There’s nothing illegal about this," Katzman emphasized.

In Michigan, she's right. Authorities banned dwarf tossing in Florida in 1989 and in New York State in 1990, according to the Little People of America's website.

“It’s unsafe. People with dwarfism have a vulnerable spinal canal,” she said. There are more than 200 types of dwarfism, with an average height of four feet, said the group's national spokeswoman, Leah Smith, in Philadelphia.

“I’m positive, if the person who is doing this told his doctors, they would not be impressed,” she said.

Contact Bill Laitner: 313-223-4485 or blaitner@freepress.com.