Wednesday’s Gazette reports on the 9/28 ordinance committee/planning board meeting. It notes how residents near 135 King Street expressed concern about a porn shop locating there:
“It’s a neighborhood that has made halfway houses and recovery programs welcome,” Mike Kirby, of 17 Summer St., said of the area around the proposed adult video store. “It’s almost as if Capital Video said, ‘Here’s all the people that are having trouble, let’s put this thing in the middle of them…'”Even Peter Brooks of Talk Back Northampton expressed support for some restrictions on lewd content on signs, saying, “I don’t think it’s fair to have adult material in someone’s face. Free speech also means the right not to have to listen to somebody.”
The Rev. Peter Kakos, pastor of the Edwards Church on Main Street, spoke to the broader effects of the proposed ordinance revisions–namely, protecting the city from developing its own “Boston-like combat zone…”