Put away your riding crops, folks. You’ll have to skip the spanking booth this year.

This Friday is the 10th anniversary of Whip It, the annual fetish bash that takes over Rock Island nightclub in wild style. Usually, it’s a night for regular folks and the not-so-secretly kinky to let loose a bit. Just a bit though — it’s all for fun, and past years have led to some great stories about certain people’s inclinations toward both the giving and receiving of ass-smackings. (You know who you are.) Obviously you can’t turn Rock Island into an actual S&M club, but you can break out the leather bustier or vinyl pants, grab a whip, watch a sexy fashion show, and fake it.

But not quite so much this year. Seems that Rock Island — and all clubs that promote fetish-y events, from the bigger clubs like Rise or The Church, to the Walnut Room or the hi— are coming under the microscope via the local liquor board. It’s apparently illegal for folks to spank each other in public, or to simulate sex (what, no dirty dancing?) or to show the cleft of the buttocks or the underside of the breast. Normally this is largely ignored, but lately it’s been made clear to club owners that any goof on their part will result in a lost liquor license. So. Burlesque shows — filled with those tiny pasties and southern breast hemispheres — are technically illegal. Plumbers and baggie-pants-wearing-hip-hoppers are taunting the law with those low-slung jeans, and practically every young couple getting their groove on, gyrating together to the music on the dance floor, are suspect.

This doesn’t mean that Whip It won’t happen this year. But Rock Island will turn the focus of the fetish ball away from the audience and more toward a series of naughty-but-nice pre-approved performances on stage. The theme is “Bedroom Stories,” with a sassy oversexed Goldilocks leading the way through the bedroom with burlesque shows by the Oh La La dance troupe (they may push their luck with the pasties) sassy skating performances by the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, fashion shows by Slave One and Bound By Design, and other shows.

Just remember if you head to Whip It this year — you’ll have to leave the whips at home.