Georgia ? The windowless building that once housed Lavonia’s only strip club sits empty in the middle of a sprawling gravel parking lot.

This summer, a mob led by Mayor Ralph Owens tore down gaudy billboards advertising topless dancers, put plywood over glass doors bearing a nude silhouette and purged the awnings proclaiming the incendiary name of the club – Cafe Risque – in a diesel-fueled bonfire.

Seven years after Lavonia was duped into allowing the strip club to open, it got even by secretly buying the club in a property swap. It cost the town $1 million, or roughly a third of Lavonia’s annual budget. The deal could have come cheaper if Lavonia hadn’t gone through a middleman.

But Owens says it was worth it, and Lavonia residents still stinging from the deception are eager to back him up.

“We’re in the Bible Belt,” says Ron Walters, the owner of a downtown flower shop. “You just don’t do things like that here.”