TalkBackNorthampton Presents: The Real Challenge

The Real Challenge
An Open Letter to the City of Northampton

The real challenge facing the City of Northampton is how to deal with the secondary effects that might flow from an Amazing porn store, and others like it, while preserving as much latitude to all forms of expression and diversity of lifestyle as possible. I submit that in our panic to banish threatening porn stores to the outskirts of town, we verge on losing exactly what makes Northampton so special: its renowned tolerance, if not celebration, of intellectual, artistic, cultural and life style diversity. In large part, that is why Northampton is a destination for many who visit us and why so many of us who live here feel truly at home.

Northampton, stand back and look at the sweep of the various amendments to the zoning laws we are considering, a perfect storm of censorship, all really because of one proposed porn shop. Let’s be honest. Even if an Amazing porn store at 135 King Street displayed less than 1,000 square feet of adult material many of us would still believe it would sit there like filthy fly, infecting the neighborhood.

How pitiful that, in our panic, we feel compelled to use a sledge hammer to swat a fly where a swatter would serve us better. After all, what will this sledge hammer accomplish? After smashing into the furniture, our sledge hammer will have only made this fly and flies like it move to different spots not so far from where we first swung.

How pitiful that we lack the imagination, with all the intellect and creativity around us, to more closely consider what exactly causes the secondary effects we fear and to devise the appropriate measures to more surgically and effectively deal with them.

Let’s take a closer look by asking if adult entertainment inherently causes the secondary effects we fear, or if there is merely a coincidence of secondary effects often, but not always, observed where adult entertainment establishments may be located. If the latter, then one may reasonably conclude that other factors may be involved, and porn and porn stores alone, are not the causes of the secondary effects.

Do undesirable secondary effects necessarily flow into a neighborhood from the purchase, sale and use of pornography, as many seem to believe? Of course not. Consider all the pornography being enjoyed in households and dorm rooms all across Northampton via cable and the internet every week. Has it increased crime in surrounding areas? Depressed the property values across the City? Created a City wide dead-zone? The belief that undesirable secondary effects necessary flow into a community from the distribution and use of pornographic material and adult entertainment alone is just silly.

Do undesirable secondary effects necessarily flow into a neighborhood from the mere presence of porn shops? Of course not. Consider the porn shops in the West Village on Sixth Avenue, West 4th Street and Christopher Street, the French Quarter in New Orleans, the Red Light district in Amsterdam or the existent porn shops in Northampton, Oh My …. and Pride and Joy. Have they ruined the cities and neighborhoods in which they are located? To the contrary, in the eyes of many, on a net basis, the adult entertainment establishments enhance their cities and neighborhoods. Not all pornographic and adult entertainment establishments foul the neighborhoods in which they are located.

Indeed we at TalkBackNorthampton are learning that the studies relied upon by Nopornnorthampton and others are fundamentally flawed, including the NYC Adult Entertainment Study touted by Nopornnorthampton. Reputable researchers who are not pawns of the adult entertainment industry find, upon close scrutiny, that these studies ultimately rely upon other studies which lack credibility. As the work involved in preparing a critique of these studies is quite substantial, our critique will be featured in separate posts at this blog site. Some preliminary critiques are provided as footnotes.

For present purposes I submit that the real problem is that undesirable secondary effects flow from adult entertainment establishments for the same reasons that undesirable secondary effects flowed from other retail establishments which historically were irresponsibly operated and insensitive to the interests of the communities in which they were located, be it laundromats, bars, tanneries or Chinese restaurants.

To be sure, porn shops do have a bad reputation, and well earned. This is not surprising when we consider how historically society has viewed pornography, adult entertainment and anyone openly involved with it. Historically, no responsible community member would openly have anything to do with it! So, to fulfill its demand for sexually explicit materials and entertainment, respectable society left the job up to the very characters that could not care less about the interests of the community and the responsible operation of their establishments.

So, what should we do? The demand for, and therefore the production and distribution of “erotica” or “pornography” will never really go away. Perhaps we should accept the facts of life and channel that energy in manner calculated to result in a town that resembles in part the West Village in NYC rather than Eight Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen? At the very least, we should search for measures to implement that would discourage owners and operators of adult entertainment establishments for insensitive and irresponsible behavior. Set forth below, I list a number of ideas to start the process of devising viable alternatives to the proposed amendments to the zoning ordinances, many of which will be easier to equitably apply in practice than the 1,000 square foot rule:

Face the Community. The owners of Oh My … and Pride and Joy are among us, so they must face and discuss with us the concerns community members may have. Why not require something similar for absentee owners and operators? See my letter to the de facto owner of the Amazing video porn store chain posted below.

Presence. Perhaps require the de facto owners and operators of adult entertainment establishments be either community members, or actually work at their establishments on a full time basis?

Esthetic Measures. The City Council is considering amendments to ban sexually explicit content from storefronts, but that alone does not guarantee esthetically pleasing storefronts. Indeed, the Amazing video store front in Springfield was nothing but a tawdry sign and ugly cinder block. Why not look into measures that could be implemented to require or encourage esthetically pleasing storefronts?

Care for Surrounding Areas. What about requiring appropriate outdoor lighting? Care and maintenance of the grounds surrounding the premises? Funding for extra police officers to patrol the premises and surrounding areas, if the establishment stays open during late night hours?

Licensing. Perhaps there could be implemented a licensing scheme where an adult entertainment establishment would lose its license to operate if there are repeated violations of the standards we require it to abide by? I note to my chagrin how Northampton bar owners, managers and staff throw out their customers as 2 am approaches with remarkable energy and vigor …

At this juncture, I really do not know if any of the above ideas will be particularly viable or legal, but there are two things I do know: First, adult entertainment establishments are not going away. Indeed, Capital Video may either reduce the size of their display of adult content to under 1,000 square feet or ultimately prevail in court. Second, when we fail to hold owners and operators of pornographic stores and adult entertainment establishments to high quality of life standards, but instead, just attempt to relocate them to already depressed parts of town, then, at best, we merely relocate the problem from one area of Northampton to another. For that we all should be ashamed.


Sincerely yours,


Always Controversial

Footnotes

The findings of the NYC Adult Entertainment Study are at odds with its conclusions (which were driven more by politics than science). The NYC study ultimately relies upon studies conducted in other cities to support its conclusions, many of which subsequently have been discredited. The only real causal link established by the NYC study was that the mere public perception of concentration of porn stores and adult entertainment establishments caused undesirable secondary effects, not necessarily the adult entertainment establishments themselves!

Here are just a few our notes which put the NYC study in a more unbiased perspective than Nopornnrothampton would have you believe:

1. The survey also interviewed community liaisons and beat officers in study areas. “When the survey and control block fronts were compared for criminal complaints and allegations, the officers generally did not link higher incidents with adult uses…. Four of the six officers thought the adult uses have no effect on crime” (50).

2. In the words of interviewed brokers: “Several brokers added comments to explain their responses about the impact of adult entertainment establishments on nearby property values. Some said that property value decreases would be minimal or that values may be affected differently depending on the age make-up of the area” (51).

3. On pages 52-54, the study attempts to analyze criminal complaints between survey areas containing adult entertainment establishments and control areas. However, the study admits “it was not possible to draw definitive conclusions from the analysis of criminal complaints. Land uses other than adult entertainment establishments, e.g., subway station access, appear to have a far stronger relationship to criminal complaints. It was not possible to isolate the impact of adult uses relative to criminal complaints” (66). (Emphasis added.)

4. On property value: “The analysis of trends in assessed valuation relative to adult entertainment uses was inconclusive” (54). Also: “While the total assessed values on the survey block fronts may be influenced to some extent by the presence of adult entertainment uses, demonstrating such effects is very difficult” (54).

5. The study also acknowledges: “In some cases, particularly in study areas with only one adult entertainment establishment, the DCP survey did not yield conclusive evidence of a direct relationship between the adult use and the urban ills affecting the community. This reflects the fact that, in a city as dense and diverse as New York, it is difficult to isolate specific impacts attributable to any particular land use. Other cities that have conducted similar studies have acknowledged the same difficulty” (62).