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| Jonathan Kay |
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(See hardcopy for Photo Description) (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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It was last Thursday when I spotted the "for rent" sign
in the window of the porn store around the corner from my house. It was a shock,
I'll admit, to see this venerable neighbourhood institution empty and abandoned.
But I knew the day would come sooner or later. In this 24/7 500-channel,
broadband-serviced world we live in, it seems there's just no room for
old-fashioned mom-and-pop, bricks-and-mortar smut merchants.
Our local porn shop did more than sell DVDs of people having sex. Its mere
presence kept the neighbourhood comfortably rooted in the middle-class realm.
That's why part of me is going to miss it.
Like just about everywhere else in Toronto, gentrification in my little area
is assuming obscene proportions. The local retail strip on Danforth Avenue, once
dominated by fading Greek diners and variety stores, now boasts women's clothing
shops with names like envelop and Boutique la di da. There's a gluten-free
organic pizza restaurant, a store stocked with nothing but hot sauces, and a
place called The Water Shoppe, which sells, yes, bottled water plucked from
exotic streams around the world. The porn store -- lodged in a stereotypically
decrepit building -- struck a singularly authentic note of gritty urban realism
amongst all this hyper-consumerist foppery.
Indeed, I found myself stressing its presence when I gave directions to
visitors. My neighbourhood is saddled with the decidedly pretentious-sounding
name of "Playter Estates," and mentioning this particular local business was a
good way to disabuse friends of the idea that they were going to wheel up to
some sort of Edwardian country house. "Go up Broadview, then right at the porn
store -- the pornography shop, you understand … yes, yes, that's it, a place to
buy filthy smut. You can't miss it. I'm just around the corner …"
As with all things, my attitude is a product of age. I am a member of that
slim human cohort that grew up after the sexual revolution, but before the
Internet revolution. For Gen-Xers like myself, porn was neither forbidden nor
downloadable. You could buy it, but you had to do it at a seedy store. Growing
up in Montreal during the 1970s, I thought it completely unremarkable that
Westmount, the city's wealthiest Anglo neighbourhood, should have its own adult
movie theatre lodged in an otherwise respectable section of its main Sherbrooke
Street. commercial strip. ("The Piccadilly" was housed in the same building
where my dentist worked. So I'd get a tantalizing sidelong glimpse of the coming
hard-core attractions every time I'd go see Dr. Weinstein for a fluoride
treatment.)
Then, in the 1980s, everyone got a VCR. The Piccadilly and its ilk became
obsolete. No longer did men have to endure the frustration and indignity of
watching porn in the company of other like-minded fellows -- they could simply
buy the tapes and bring them home. A decade later, the Internet took the
storefront out of the equation completely. In 2007, the only men who still get
their porn at the local XXX shop are in that vanishing demographic that's too
old for the Internet and too young to call it quits altogether.
Public morality has changed a lot, too. When I was a kid, some Westmount dads
formed a group called "Parents Against Aggressive Pornography," which campaigned
to shut the Piccadilly down on values grounds. (They got their wish in 1985.)
But these days, porn doesn't raise an eyebrow. Little girls are wearing "porn
star" T-shirts. HBO and other black-turtleneck channels are full of explicit
porn-industry documentaries, and you are apt to get the most nasty videos
delivered straight to your computer monitor merely by misspelling the name of
your favourite Web site. Gone are the days of the prude patrol.
Not that my neighbours weren't happy when I broadcast the news of the porn
shop's closure in a mass e-mail. But being Torontonians, it was all about the
real estate. "Property values just jumped a point!" one replied. "Let's hope a
cute cafe moves in," said another. ("Wonder what they did with all my home
movies?" a third added racily. "They couldn't rent them -- which is why it went
broke," chimed in a fourth.)
And I'll admit that I too began thinking about the bottom line. In terms of
the money I can get for my house, it's like someone just put $5,000 in my pocket
--double that if we could score a Starbucks. Oh yeah, Starbucks … Mmm, hmmm ...
As my pretensions of raw inner-city living dissipated amid sensuous yuppie
daydreams of plump, overstuffed chairs, hardwood floors, shamelessly exposed
beams and arousing double-shot vanilla lattes, I reflected on the sad state of
my generation. Our libidos may not have disappeared. But they've certainly
gentrified.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Illustration:
• Color Photo: Jonathan Kay / (See
hardcopy for Photo Description)
Idnumber: 200711060077
Edition: National
Story
Type: Business; Column
Length: 792 words
Keywords: PORNOGRAPHY
Illustration Type: CP
PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20071106
NUPDATE: 20071106
DOB: 20071106
POSITION: 1
