Letter to Gazette: “Porn store is going to have a bad effect on children”

Today’s Gazette publishes a letter from Jessica Grant of Northampton:

Driving my children down Summer Street to Market Street as I do several times a week I was disturbed to see a brightly colored sign adorned with stars on the soon-to-be-open porn store on King Street…

At what age would a child be able to type that into a browser and see the graphic front page of their Web site? My 6-year-olds aren’t far from it.

I don’t understand why a business with an adult-only clientele would want to look like a toy store for children and I am sorry to see it on a corner we pass by so frequently.

The porn shop is on King Street in part because several members of our regional community helped put it there. To express your dissatisfaction, we encourage you to contact the following people:

Contact the property owners of 135 King Street, Barry G. and Annette E. Goldberg
We call on the Goldbergs to terminate Capital Video’s lease. They may suffer penalties for breaking the contract, might even expose themselves to a lawsuit, but this doesn’t compare to the risks they are imposing on our neighborhood. The Goldbergs, of course, are well insulated from these risks, living as they do in a porn-shop-free upscale section of Longmeadow.

Contact Capital Video attorney Michael Pill of Shutesbury
Adopting the veneer of a free speech hero, Dr. Pill took it upon himself to help a convicted criminal with mafia ties set up a hard-core porn shop next to homes, churches, counseling centers, a school of dance and a prospective bike trail (see PDF). Like the Goldbergs, Dr. Pill lives in an upscale community that, to the best of our knowledge, has no porn shops nearby.

Contact the leasing agent for 135 King Street, R.J. Greeley Co.
Robert Greeley claims that if he owned the property, he would have rejected Capital Video as a tenant. Nevertheless, he declined to extricate himself from the transaction.


See also:

Amazing.net Signs Go Up at 135 King Street



Walk Into Something Wonderful (explicit language)
“I certainly, will be taking other walking routes than I have been for the past 25 years, when going to Stop & Shop, or Foster Farrar, or the bank, rather than have to walk by a big Capital Video Pornography Store on the corner of North and King streets.” — Pat Styer of Northampton, letter to The Republican, 9/10/06

The New York Times: “Smoking Among Children Is Linked to Cartoon Camel in Advertisements”
New studies demonstrate that the cartoon camel at the center of an elaborate advertising campaign for Camel cigarettes appeals far more to children than to adults…

One group of researchers said their study showed that since the start of the Old Joe campaign three years ago, the brand had become the choice of one-quarter to one-third of smokers under the age of 18. Before the campaign began, they said, less than 1 percent of those under 18 smoked Camels…

Even without cigarette advertising on television, another study showed, 6-year-old children were as familiar with Old Joe Camel as they were with the Mickey Mouse logo for the Disney Channel…

Traffic Control: The People’s War on Internet Porn
Average age of first exposure: 11

The Creation of a Pornography Addiction
“In a majority of my cases, the earlier the exposure to pornography, the deeper the client’s level of addiction. In most cases I see involvement with pornography starting between ages ten to fourteen… [C]hildren and teenagers are faced with sexual decisions before they fully understand the consequences of their own sexual behaviors.”