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Bock, Minn. (AP) ― Elders in Bock thought the supper club's new owner had little change in mind when he reopened the establishment in the four-block-long town just before Christmas 2002.

But Richard J. Jacobson was planning an exotic holiday surprise.

"I ran it four days and then remodeled over Christmas and put in a stage (for nude dancers). It was a late Christmas present," said Jacobson, smiling in his Bock club, a few miles east of Milaca and well-travelled Highway 169. "When I reopened, the place was packed. I didn't even do any advertising."

Jacobson, 36, is a gadfly to officials in Bock and in Coates, the Dakota County city that forced him to close Jake's Gentlemen's Club in 2002. He was acquitted in March on charges of trying to pack the Coates City Council to get his club reopened.

Jacobson said he has rejected a $1 million offer for the Coates bar, which he painted bright pink before leaving town.

"I can be feisty when I have to be," he said.

Indeed: Jacobson was ordered to pay more than $6,000 in attorney's fees to Coates during their 10-year court battle. He dumped 600,000 pennies, weighing about 3,700 pounds, on and around a sagging table at a City Council meeting in 2002.

Nor has Jacobson forgotten his Coates nemesis, Mayor Jack Gores. His Bock club's name? Fat Jack's Cabaret.

Gores declined to comment on the name.

Jacobson grew up south of Coates in Cannon Falls. He wrestled and pitched in high school, worked at his father's mobile home dealership and later cooked at his dad's bar. After high school, he worked at a now-defunct strip club in Cannon Falls. His parents separated about the time he graduated in 1988.

He left town three days later to study finance at Arizona State University. He transferred to Augsburg College in Minneapolis before the nude dancing business lured him back in 1992. He was hired to open and manage the Coates club and bought it about two years later.

In 2002, when Jake's closed, he opened Fat Jack's in Bock.

"There were some very irate people," said Clerk-Treasurer Lynda Sjoberg. "The council felt he had pulled a fast one." It suspended his liquor license, and some residents picketed the club. But Fat Jack's kept pouring and the ladies kept stripping.

And Sjoberg, who once counted herself among Jacobson's strongest opponents, now lives with Jacobson and manages Fat Jack's. They have been a couple for about two years.

The city called the Mille Lacs County sheriff, whose deputies ensured that Jacobson stopped serving liquor, said Undersheriff Alan Marxhausen. So Jacobson sold soft drinks and stayed open till 4 a.m., no longer bound by the 1 a.m. law on serving alcohol, Marxhausen said.

After assessing legal options for more than a year, the council in March 2004 granted Jacobson a liquor license, Sjoberg said. She said two council members resigned in protest, as did the new clerk. Sjoberg, who had resigned as clerk months before to care for an ailing son, was rehired and still fills the post.

Dennis Girard, who became mayor in January, said Fat Jack's has brought a lot of business to Bock's two gas stations and two other bar-restaurants. Girard said he and his wife have eaten at Fat Jack's, where the X-shaped dance stage is in a separate room from the bar. There's also a shop that sells sex toys and videos.

"I've seen the dancers perform at a bachelor's party or two," Girard, 38, said. "It is very tastefully done for the type of place that it is ... They have signs up saying 'Gentlemen -- No Touching the Ladies.' "

He noted that Fat Jack's gives locals a $2 break on bottled beer.

"I am glad they're here," said Girard, sipping a beer at the bar. "We cannot deny it is financially beneficial to the town."

The mayor conceded that some in the town of 106, with many retired folks, "have a problem morally with the club."

"A lot of people in the city of Bock don't want it there," said Chad Wedell, council president of Emanuel Lutheran Church, Bock's only house of worship.

Ted Beckman, 56, said men leaving Fat Jack's have harassed female clerks in a convenience store and have been seen committing vandalism.

"It is something we have to live with, but city councils across the state should pay attention to what happened in Coates and here," he said, "because people like Jacobson are looking for small towns to take advantage of the councils."

Undersheriff Marxhausen said a few incidents have occurred outside Fat Jack's, but no more than at Bock's other two bars. "As much as I despise what he is doing, he runs a pretty good show."

Some of Jacobson's backers have moved into city posts. Brad McBride, a former bouncer and business partner, joined the council in January.

After checking out Fat Jack's for herself and talking to Jacobson, Sjoberg, 43, said she accepted a lucrative offer in December 2005 to manage Fat Jack's and quit managing a liquor store in nearby Milaca. Her 22-year-old son is a club DJ.

Sjoberg and Jacobson live with her 7-year-old daughter and his 2-year-old son in a large cabin-style home about 8 miles from Bock.

Sjoberg finds Jacobson "very intelligent, fun to be with and good-looking," but a bit tight with money.

"I want to make it, not get rid of it," Jacobson chuckled, sitting across a bar table from her.

The club charges $5 admission for strip shows. The nude dancers sign contracts and can make hundreds or even a thousand dollars on a good night, Jacobson said.

Jacobson said he paid off Fat Jack's more than a year ago and owes nothing on the vacant Coates bar. He drives his Mercedes between Bock and his other home above the Mississippi River in Prescott, Wis., and owns a dozen properties.

Jacobson also spreads his time and money around Bock.

He donated a security box for residents' water and sewer payments, and spent about $700 for about a dozen traffic signs. In January he volunteered to walk around and read the town's 53 water meters.

Although Sjoberg said she struggles with the morality of a strip club, Jacobson has no qualms, saying no one is forced to see the shows: "I've thrown a few people out over the years, but I've never thrown anybody in."

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)