The Republican reports yesterday that Capital Video’s Amazing.net porn shop on King Street is set to open soon. Northampton Building Commissioner Anthony L. Patillo issued a certificate of occupancy. Patillo expects to return to the store this coming week to verify that its stock conforms to the city’s adult-use zoning laws. These laws specify that Capital Video may not have more than 1,000 square feet of adult material on display, since the store is located within 500 feet of homes. There can be no porn viewing booths. The sexual content of Amazing.net’s signage is also regulated (PDF). Citzens may report violations to Mr. Patillo’s office.
NoPornNorthampton is encouraging potential employees to refuse to work for Capital Video. On December 1 it launched a series of ads in the employment classifieds section of the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
See also:
Full Text of Springfield’s Decision to Revoke Capital Video’s Viewing Booth Entertainment License
…the testimony shows repeated and persistent evidence of illegal activity and complicity and reckless disregard of Capital Video’s management over a long period of time which is sufficient to constitute a nuisance.
Rick Porras, Capital Video Executive, Would Rather You Not Know He Is a Pornographer (explicit language)
We can understand that if you’re promoting your ability to maximize sales, you might not want it known that you were maximizing sales of
Capital Video’s “Victoria’s Secret Standard”: Not Compatible with Northampton’s Signage Regulations
In December [2006], Capital Video initially proposed a bondage display for the outside of their porn shop at 135 King Street. When some Northampton Planning Board members objected at the Capital Video Site Plan Review on December 14, Capital Video attorney Michael Pill withdrew the display and verbally asserted the company would instead adhere to a “Victoria’s Secret” standard.
The problem is, this standard is vague, loose, changing, and itself might well violate Northampton’s site plan approval criteria (PDF), which state that:
Potential Nuisance Claims Against Capital Video
…”[I]n the appropriate case recovery will be permitted under the law of nuisance for an interference with visual aesthetic sensibilities,” where the offending object or display is such as would inconvenience or annoy the average person, not just a particularly sensitive neighbor. Hay v. Stevens, 271 Or. 16, 20 (1975) (finding a wire boundary fence between the parties’ property not a nuisance because it served a useful purpose). [emphasis added]
In Bloss v. Paris Township, 380 Mich. 466 (1968), the town enjoined as a public nuisance defendant’s operation of an outdoor drive-in theater in such a manner that pictures which related to sex and human anatomy and were not appropriate for minors were viewable by children on public streets, on residential properties, and in private homes without the consent of property owners and parents. The Supreme Court of Michigan rejected defendant’s freedom of speech and press claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, saying that the constitutional right to free expression does not encompass forcing one’s speech on an unwilling audience, in violation of their property rights. Bloss, p. 471. [emphasis added]
…Courts are especially sympathetic to a nuisance claim when it appears that defendant deliberately designed the advertising display in a way that would annoy plaintiff, beyond what is necessary for defendant’s business purposes.
Capital Video Attorney Michael Pill: Fickle Defender of Free Speech
Capital Video Attorney Michael Pill has tried to portray himself as a First Amendment hero, suggesting that legal restrictions on porn shops are impermissible infringements on freedom of speech. However, not so long ago he was on the other side of the argument, trying to use the law to impede people from practicing their religions, arguably far more worthy endeavors than the one he advocates for today. As we wrote back in October,
A Hostile Work Environment: The Porn Sections of Movie Gallery Video Stores
…My employment of several years with Movie Gallery has been most enjoyable with few exceptions. Working in a management position has allowed me to mature and grow as a young female employee… One of the exceptions to me enjoying my employment is the back room adult entertainment. The stores that have these, that I have worked in open me and the other workers up to a variety of negative, vulgar, embarrassing remarks and come-ons from customers. The stores without the back rooms are so pleasant because we do not have to endure this kind of harassment…
I never in my life had been so verbally abused, names that I couldn’t help be shocked by and found myself not keeping with the “customers always right” policies. Retaliating back verbally in my own self defense…
Improv Resource Center: True Porn Clerk Stories (explicit language)
…The “Little White Chicks, Big Black Monster Dicks” (note intriguing combination of race and fetish) series has some of the most offensive cover art I’ve ever seen, not because of the sexual content but because it’s incredibly racist. The little white chicks look at you demurely over their shoulders while surrounded by scowling African-American men. The men are repeatedly referred to as “monsters” (“monster dicks” itself doesn’t bother me because it merely implies that said dicks are monstrously large, but referring to men themselves as monsters is another story) and their faces are actually mounted on cartoon animal bodies. There’s no way in hell you could put that cover on, say, a book and not get your store burnt down…
Sometimes people get animalistic about the tapes. For the real addicts (I’m convinced that porn is like alcohol: some people can stop at just one every now and then, some people just binge on weekends, and some people get genuinely, horribly addicted) the reptilian brain kicks in. They hit the magic portion of the tape and they’re done. They pop out the tape and slam in another one, and the next day the stack comes back, unrewound and covered in goo…
The Anime section is the one that really makes me cringe… Sure, all the boxes claim that all the characters are at least 18, but a lot of them are clearly drawn to look about 12. And there’s a lot of raping. Not just run-of-the-mill raping, either – we’re talking about triple-penetration rape by demons…
The most common fetish, if you can call something so common a fetish, is for borderline jailbait. This is true of both straight and gay porn. The gay series to watch are Eighteen Today, Just 18 and Gay and First Time Tryers. The straight series are Bring ‘Em Young, Barely Legal, and, horrifyingly, Faces with Braces…
A lot of fetishizing has to do with unwitting or unwilling participants, and that runs pretty hard up against my “whatever floats your boat” policy…
I don’t understand the need to degrade someone. But that need is definitely, sadly out there. One of our best-renting titles of long standing is called Grudge Fuck.* It rents right back out as soon as we can replace the tag. Every time…
Rocco’s Animal Trainer series, I’m told, traditionally ends with Rocco fucking a woman up the ass while he shoves her head into a toilet and flushes…
It doesn’t look like the women on porn boxes are having that much fun. They’re always being bent or twisted into uncomfortable positions, or trying to avoid sperm being shot directly into their eyes. The fact that the men watching want to see as much as possible means that the women don’t seem to be getting touched much. They’re just getting poled by some guy who’s apparently deliberately avoiding their erogenous zones. Whee…
Like Mr. Buddy, [Mr. Hazy has] spent literally thousands of dollars in rentals. He’s like clockwork – in, six hardcore porn videos and then back again within a day or at most two.
…Mr. Hazy is definitely not pirating. As I mentioned, Wednesday and Friday are New Porn Days and he has to hit them because he has seen all of our other straight videos. I’ll type that again: He has seen all of our straight videos. Try though we do to rotate the stock, we just can’t keep up.
That, my friends, is why I feel comfortable using the phrase “porn addiction”.
Mr. Hazy isn’t the only one that’s finished off the store. There are several customers that have seen everything we carry, or at least everything that floats their particular boats. That’s why I loathe New Porn Days. We don’t get the new stock out until at least 4 or 5 o’ clock at the earliest – sometimes we don’t even receive the shipment until then – but people start calling at about 10 in the morning and the frequency of the calls and intensity of the whining only increase as the day goes on…
NoPornNorthampton is encouraging potential employees to refuse to work for Capital Video. On December 1 it launched a series of ads in the employment classifieds section of the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
See also:
Full Text of Springfield’s Decision to Revoke Capital Video’s Viewing Booth Entertainment License
…the testimony shows repeated and persistent evidence of illegal activity and complicity and reckless disregard of Capital Video’s management over a long period of time which is sufficient to constitute a nuisance.
Rick Porras, Capital Video Executive, Would Rather You Not Know He Is a Pornographer (explicit language)
We can understand that if you’re promoting your ability to maximize sales, you might not want it known that you were maximizing sales of
A Caning for Miss Granger…Considering the role of porn in domestic abuse and child molestation, you might not be proud of some of the magazines sold by Capital Video, which include such material as:
My Daughter’s Fucking Blackzilla
Hot Pho King Asians
Please Help Me Pay For College #18: Graduation Ass Of 2007
Ass 2 Mouth #11
Broken China Dolls
Mexicunts #5
Ashley Blue Aka Filthy Whore
and
Barely Legal: School Girls #3
“These sweet and oh-so-studious school girls can’t wait to have their perky titties peaky titties and most holes corrupted!“
Magazine: World of Black BondageAny feelings of discomfort or embarrassment would be completely understandable. Fortunately, there is a simple way to ease them. Quit. Today.
Article: ONCE A Slave…
“Because this babe has a submissive personality and a heart-shaped behind, she makes the perfect slave. Be that as it may, she got the notion into her pretty head that she wanted to play dom.Photo Caption: “The look in her eyes tells us that she would like this bondage session to end pretty soon. Forget it, girl!”
“Well, her man quickly disabused her of the idea that she could dominate him. He got rough, took away her leather paddle, threw her onto the bed and tied her into a series of strict positions.”
Photo Caption: “Her Master has told her, ‘Don’t you dare move.’ She’s finding that immobility is in itself a form of torture.”
Photo Caption: “Because her body is beginning to ache, she writhes on the carpet. It makes watching her even more arousing.”
Photo Caption: “Tied to the post, Tracy takes a fearful whipping.”
Story: My Father, The Hero
First He Protected Me, Then He Porked Me!
Story: Getting Gooey With Uncle Louie
His Huge Cock Made Me A Woman!
Story: Portrait Of A Hot Pussy
My Brother Painted Me Nude, Then We Got Lewd!
Story: Two On A Tool
I Gave Both Of My Daughters A Good Fuck!
Capital Video’s “Victoria’s Secret Standard”: Not Compatible with Northampton’s Signage Regulations
In December [2006], Capital Video initially proposed a bondage display for the outside of their porn shop at 135 King Street. When some Northampton Planning Board members objected at the Capital Video Site Plan Review on December 14, Capital Video attorney Michael Pill withdrew the display and verbally asserted the company would instead adhere to a “Victoria’s Secret” standard.
The problem is, this standard is vague, loose, changing, and itself might well violate Northampton’s site plan approval criteria (PDF), which state that:
No signs, text, graphics, pictures, publications, videotapes, CDs, DVDs, movies, covers, merchandise or other objects, implements, items or advertising, depicting, describing sexual conduct or sexual excitement as defined in MGL Chpt. 272, §31 shall be displayed in the windows or on any building or be visible to the public from the street, pedestrian sidewalks, walkways, or bikepaths or from other areas outside such establishments.For an example of a Victoria’s Secret store display, here is a 2005 report from Newsweek:
At the Tyson’s Corner mall in northern Virginia last week, just a quick escalator ride from Oliver Owl’s toddler playground and three doors down from Gap Kids, four beautiful plastic women shared an intimate moment in the brand new Victoria’s Secret store. One of the mannequins, impossibly thin and blonde and dressed in microscopic panties and garters, crawled across a countertop on all fours toward her disheveled and reclining brunette partner, she of the bra with convenient nipple cutouts. Below them, in plain view of anyone walking past the store, two thong-sporting dream women spooned on a black leather bed, their perfect synthetic derrieres aligned side-by-side. A window display revealed a scantily-clad beauty draped in heavy ropes and teetering on five-inch stiletto heels, her arms straight up in the air, wrists entwined…Here are more pictures of the store display mentioned in the Newsweek article. This display, almost certainly not in compliance with current Northampton signage regulations, is an example of how Northampton’s Planning Board was hasty in approving Capital Video’s Site Plan. Capital Video has not demonstrated that it knows what it means to comply with Northampton’s laws.
Potential Nuisance Claims Against Capital Video
…”[I]n the appropriate case recovery will be permitted under the law of nuisance for an interference with visual aesthetic sensibilities,” where the offending object or display is such as would inconvenience or annoy the average person, not just a particularly sensitive neighbor. Hay v. Stevens, 271 Or. 16, 20 (1975) (finding a wire boundary fence between the parties’ property not a nuisance because it served a useful purpose). [emphasis added]
In Bloss v. Paris Township, 380 Mich. 466 (1968), the town enjoined as a public nuisance defendant’s operation of an outdoor drive-in theater in such a manner that pictures which related to sex and human anatomy and were not appropriate for minors were viewable by children on public streets, on residential properties, and in private homes without the consent of property owners and parents. The Supreme Court of Michigan rejected defendant’s freedom of speech and press claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, saying that the constitutional right to free expression does not encompass forcing one’s speech on an unwilling audience, in violation of their property rights. Bloss, p. 471. [emphasis added]
…Courts are especially sympathetic to a nuisance claim when it appears that defendant deliberately designed the advertising display in a way that would annoy plaintiff, beyond what is necessary for defendant’s business purposes.
Capital Video Attorney Michael Pill: Fickle Defender of Free Speech
Capital Video Attorney Michael Pill has tried to portray himself as a First Amendment hero, suggesting that legal restrictions on porn shops are impermissible infringements on freedom of speech. However, not so long ago he was on the other side of the argument, trying to use the law to impede people from practicing their religions, arguably far more worthy endeavors than the one he advocates for today. As we wrote back in October,
[I]n 1998 he represented homeowners who sought to block Amherst’s multiracial Hope Community Church from building a new sanctuary, on the grounds that it would attract too much traffic. (“Plan to build church stymied”, Sunday Republican, April 5, 1998, p. A17.) This litigation cost the church hundreds of thousands of dollars over five years.Dr. Pill well knows the First Amendment is not absolute, and that other interests should be considered to get the optimal result for the community.
Similarly, in 1996, Dr. Pill represented an Amherst couple who wanted to force their next-door neighbor to take down a tepee in her backyard, which she used for meditation, New Age therapy and spiritual drumming. (“Tepee neighbors resume ban effort”, Springfield Union-News, April 9, 1996, p. B1; “Zoning board rules tepee can stay”, Union-News, April 12, 1996, p. B4.)
A Hostile Work Environment: The Porn Sections of Movie Gallery Video Stores
…My employment of several years with Movie Gallery has been most enjoyable with few exceptions. Working in a management position has allowed me to mature and grow as a young female employee… One of the exceptions to me enjoying my employment is the back room adult entertainment. The stores that have these, that I have worked in open me and the other workers up to a variety of negative, vulgar, embarrassing remarks and come-ons from customers. The stores without the back rooms are so pleasant because we do not have to endure this kind of harassment…
I never in my life had been so verbally abused, names that I couldn’t help be shocked by and found myself not keeping with the “customers always right” policies. Retaliating back verbally in my own self defense…
Improv Resource Center: True Porn Clerk Stories (explicit language)
…The “Little White Chicks, Big Black Monster Dicks” (note intriguing combination of race and fetish) series has some of the most offensive cover art I’ve ever seen, not because of the sexual content but because it’s incredibly racist. The little white chicks look at you demurely over their shoulders while surrounded by scowling African-American men. The men are repeatedly referred to as “monsters” (“monster dicks” itself doesn’t bother me because it merely implies that said dicks are monstrously large, but referring to men themselves as monsters is another story) and their faces are actually mounted on cartoon animal bodies. There’s no way in hell you could put that cover on, say, a book and not get your store burnt down…
Sometimes people get animalistic about the tapes. For the real addicts (I’m convinced that porn is like alcohol: some people can stop at just one every now and then, some people just binge on weekends, and some people get genuinely, horribly addicted) the reptilian brain kicks in. They hit the magic portion of the tape and they’re done. They pop out the tape and slam in another one, and the next day the stack comes back, unrewound and covered in goo…
The Anime section is the one that really makes me cringe… Sure, all the boxes claim that all the characters are at least 18, but a lot of them are clearly drawn to look about 12. And there’s a lot of raping. Not just run-of-the-mill raping, either – we’re talking about triple-penetration rape by demons…
The most common fetish, if you can call something so common a fetish, is for borderline jailbait. This is true of both straight and gay porn. The gay series to watch are Eighteen Today, Just 18 and Gay and First Time Tryers. The straight series are Bring ‘Em Young, Barely Legal, and, horrifyingly, Faces with Braces…
A lot of fetishizing has to do with unwitting or unwilling participants, and that runs pretty hard up against my “whatever floats your boat” policy…
I don’t understand the need to degrade someone. But that need is definitely, sadly out there. One of our best-renting titles of long standing is called Grudge Fuck.* It rents right back out as soon as we can replace the tag. Every time…
Rocco’s Animal Trainer series, I’m told, traditionally ends with Rocco fucking a woman up the ass while he shoves her head into a toilet and flushes…
It doesn’t look like the women on porn boxes are having that much fun. They’re always being bent or twisted into uncomfortable positions, or trying to avoid sperm being shot directly into their eyes. The fact that the men watching want to see as much as possible means that the women don’t seem to be getting touched much. They’re just getting poled by some guy who’s apparently deliberately avoiding their erogenous zones. Whee…
Like Mr. Buddy, [Mr. Hazy has] spent literally thousands of dollars in rentals. He’s like clockwork – in, six hardcore porn videos and then back again within a day or at most two.
…Mr. Hazy is definitely not pirating. As I mentioned, Wednesday and Friday are New Porn Days and he has to hit them because he has seen all of our other straight videos. I’ll type that again: He has seen all of our straight videos. Try though we do to rotate the stock, we just can’t keep up.
That, my friends, is why I feel comfortable using the phrase “porn addiction”.
Mr. Hazy isn’t the only one that’s finished off the store. There are several customers that have seen everything we carry, or at least everything that floats their particular boats. That’s why I loathe New Porn Days. We don’t get the new stock out until at least 4 or 5 o’ clock at the earliest – sometimes we don’t even receive the shipment until then – but people start calling at about 10 in the morning and the frequency of the calls and intensity of the whining only increase as the day goes on…