A recent story reported that at the northern edge of Nyack, an artsy village along the Hudson River, a large sign on a soon-to-be-occupied storefront with tinted windows carries an announcement that has residents and shop owners there fuming: Fama DVD & Video, Coming Soon.
The story continues by saying that this village of barely a square mile is far from traditional or conservative, and in fact has something of a reputation for its progressive views and quirky bars and shops. The population there is diverse and heavily Democratic, wrote Anahad O’Conner in the Nyack Journal, the mayor is openly gay, and famous residents have included Rosie O'Donnell.
Yet ever since the local Planning Board voted in January to approve the opening of the Fama DVD shop, wrote O’Conner, some residents there have begun to mourn what they say is the imminent demise of their community, or at least the end of its charm. They have flooded Village Hall meetings, lashed out at the Planning Board and warned that the shop, which sits around the corner from a middle school and a residential area, will invariably become a magnet for crime, drugs and gloom.
What scares them about the shop, the residents told the Nyack Jounral, is that it is more than a place to buy X-rated films. According to the village, the shop will also include a row of eight private closet-size viewing booths where patrons can watch movies behind closed doors, a prospect that reminds many people here of the sex-shop booths that once made Times Square so notoriously seedy.
For weeks, village residents waited anxiously to see if the owners would bow to public pressure and move their shop elsewhere. But the widespread anger only intensified in April, continued the story, when the owners, instead of leaving, asked the village for permission to remain open 24 hours a day.
One conservative civic group, the Catholic Citizenship, sued the board and the store's owners, saying the shop would all but drive Nyack into the gutter. O’Conner wrote that tt has contended that the board violated the state environmental review law by failing to consider the socioeconomic impact the store would have on the community. The board has said it has no legal recourse to block the video shop.
But perhaps the most ardent and surprising opponent of the shop has been the actor Stephen Baldwin, a resident of nearby Grand View. Baldwin, who has starred in racy R-rated films but became a born-again Christian after 9/11, according to the story, stood outside the future shop last January and took photographs of some of its workers. He has vowed to stand outside the shop every day and take pictures of its patrons as well, so he can identify them and publish their names in local newspaper advertisements.
The Nyack Journal reported that Baldwin acknowledged the business had a right to operate, but said the location was unacceptable because it sits at the center of a main thoroughfare, with bus stops along the street, a hospital around the corner, and a middle school within walking distance.
"If the only defense I have is to photograph the patrons, then that's what I have to do," Baldwin said at a recent Village Hall meeting. "I want to do what I need to do to protect my family and the citizens of Nyack."
The Catholic Citizenship, the group that sued the store and the village, has offered to lend a hand to Baldwin, the story continued. Baldwin recently put his Victorian home on the market but plans to remain in the area and stay active in local affairs.
"The people who go in there are not looking to be known, so we're going to publicize them and let people know," said Larry Cirignano, the executive director of the group, which is based in Boston. "We'll have volunteers that will help out with that, and hold signs out there in front of the store that say, 'Smile, you're on camera.' "
The owners of the shop, Quintus Algama and Leslie Fernandopulle, have tried to keep a low profile, reported the Nyack Journal. Neither of the owners, who have a similar shop in Manhattan, returned several phone calls seeking comment.
In one rare public appearance, Fernandopulle attended a Planning Board meeting on April 3 to formally request that the shop's hours be extended. As it is now, the store will be open from 10 a.m. to midnight during the week and from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Friday through Sunday.
Standing in front of the five-member board, Fernandopulle argued for the extension by pointing out that two other businesses in Nyack, a McDonald's and a gas station, are allowed to remain open all night. The story reported that he kept his argument brief, saying only a few sentences, before quickly heading for the door and walking past the cold stares of hundreds of people who had showed up to argue against his request.
David Means, a resident of Nyack who attended the meeting, was one of many who stood up to address the Planning Board shortly after Fernandopulle left.
"To extend the hours is just opening the gate to the kind of late-night drifters we don't want coming into town," he said. "Who is at a sex shop at 1 in the morning anyway?"
Others chided the Planning Board and asked why it had allowed the shop to open in the first place.
"I grew up in New York City, and I remember Times Square, that I couldn't go near there," said one woman at the meeting, who identified herself as Lenore and said she was not from Nyack but did business here. "I remember the rapes and the drugs and all the prostitution back then. Do we really want to create that here?"
The board members, who listened stoically as residents took turns voicing their outrage, explained later that there was little they could do. Under federal law, municipalities are allowed to control where pornographic entertainment shops do business, but they cannot prevent them from opening, Chris Blair, a member of the board, told the Nyack Journal.
Nyack enacted an ordinance in 1992 that allows such businesses to operate in a select few areas, Blair said, and the site chosen by the Fama DVD shop, a former car dealership, happens to be in one of them.
"At the time the adult entertainment law was written in 1992, that area looked like the best place for it," Mr. Blair said. "What we did was find the place where such a business would do the least damage."
The story reported that in the end, the Planning Board voted to recommend that the village zoning board — which has the final say on the extension — reject Fernandopulle's request, saying that a 24-hour sex shop "does not seem to be in the interest of Nyack." Many residents have viewed that declaration as a small victory, but not everyone at the Planning Board meeting on April 3 was ready to celebrate. Irv Feiner, a former civil rights activist who has lived in Nyack for 50 years, stood up at one point and, facing the audience, said he worried that the uproar over the shop was a sign that the town was becoming less tolerant.
On the day the store opens, whenever that may be, Feiner announced, he will show up at its entrance and walk through the door as an act of defiance against what he called vigilantism.
"I will go into that place, and if anyone takes my picture, I will sue," he told the Nyack Journal. "I personally have very little respect for the shop, but I think the Constitution is more important."