Notorious Pornographer: Giant Porno Stores Not Appropriate for Residential Neighborhoods (explicit language)

As reported in Reason magazine, May 2004:

Robert Zicari is known in the porn industry as Rob Black. His wife Janet, a six-year porn veteran, is known as Lizzy Borden…

“Under the banner of their company, Extreme Associates, the pair are known for producing material that even fellow pornographers find objectionable. Their videos are products of a jaded, hypermediated era: explicit porn coupled with the over-the-top gore of slasher movies and the stunts and gross-out spectacles of reality TV….

“Zicari’s general sense of decency actually extends beyond prohibiting child porn and dog sex. ‘I’m not a person who thinks that everybody should watch pornography,’ he insists. ‘If you want to open up a giant porno store with jack booths and stuff like that, and you’re gonna plop it inside a [residential] community with nice lawns, and they don’t want it, I’m the first person who’s like, ‘Dude, you’re totally right, it’s kind of fucked up we put this place right here in the middle of your neighborhood.” But he also believes that people should be able to view his videos in the privacy of their own homes….

“‘In 1973, the Miller test had merits,’ says Zicari. ‘It gave people a way to control these seedy fucking porno stores in their community. Now, a private citizen buys my shit from the privacy of his own home, and that’s where he watches it….'”

Read the complete article (paid archive).

Needless to say, we are not as sympathetic to the porn industry as Reason is, but we were certainly gratified to see someone like Zicari say porn shop operators should heed community objections.