2 Sex Shops on Melrose Stir Outcry for Closure : Zoning: Merchants, residents join forces to protest new adult establishments, citing fears of a decline on the trendy street.

Merchants and residents on and around Melrose Avenue, already concerned that the trendy street of international repute may be losing its luster, are up in arms over the recent opening of two adult entertainment shops.

Merchants on Melrose, or MOM, an organization of business people, and the Melrose Neighborhood Assn., a group that represents about 3,000 residents, have complained to city officials and police and have rallied together in an effort to pressure the businesses to relocate or stop selling sex paraphernalia. They contend that the stores will aggravate the area’s problems with gay cruising and lewd conduct and contribute to a general decline of Melrose Avenue.

“We are just sick about it,” said Richard Jebejian, president of MOM and owner of a custom furniture store. “My 8-year-old daughter could walk in there and get an eyeful. This is a direct cancer on Melrose. (Some business) people have been able to last through the recession and pay their rent, but these stores are not going to help.”

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood vice squad and the city Department of Building and Safety have investigated the stores, Sensations and Taboo, which are within two blocks of each other. Police and city investigators found both shops in violation of a section of the city zoning code that is intended to keep adult entertainment stores away from schools and residential areas.

“It is without question that both stores are within 500 feet of a residential zone and that their general course of business is of an adult nature, which violates the code,” said Dan Snyder, a senior building inspector who supervises the city’s enforcement of the adult entertainment sections of the ordinance.

The code describes adult bookstores as those in which a “substantial portion” of the merchandise consists of “instruments, devices, or paraphernalia which are designed for use in connection with specified sexual practices,” along with “books, videocassettes, and other printed material characterized by an emphasis upon the depiction or description of specified sexual activities or anatomical areas.”

Snyder said the city has ordered the stores to comply with the code “and that order will tell them to discontinue use of the place as an adult establishment within 30 days. They can, in fact, get rid of all the items that are anatomically specific and just sell lingerie and stay where they are.”

LAPD Lt. Paul Marks, who investigated the two stores, expressed sympathy with the residents and merchants but said police have decided to let the Department of Building and Safety handle the matter for now.

“We are trying to be sensitive to residents’ concerns that the stores are going to bring an undesirable element to the area and increase the problem of gay cruising,” Marks said. “The fear is that these two stores will be congregating spots. I know that Melrose is avant-garde, wild and trendy, yet residents shouldn’t have to deal with 3 a.m. cruising and men having sex in their yards, something that we have to deal with on an ongoing basis.”

Paul Zeppinick, an owner of Taboo, said he was surprised to hear about neighborhood opposition to his shop.

“No one has approached me and I’ve had no problems here,” he said. “I think people in the neighborhood should come into the shop and see where I’m coming from, and if someone has a problem they should come to me and talk about it.”

Sensations owner Barry Fireman did not respond to phone calls from The Times.

Complicating the issue on Melrose is the presence several blocks away of a third store, Drake’s, which sells the same type of items found in Taboo and Sensations.

In business since the mid-’80s despite efforts by the city to shut it down, Drake’s is regarded as a nuisance by some merchants and residents but is tolerated by others in the community, in part because until recently it was the only store of its kind.

“Drake’s is done in good taste and you really have to walk to the back to know what it is all about,” Jebejian said. “But with (the other stores), you walk in and it’s in your face.”

Drake’s is one of 22 adult entertainment stores in Los Angeles that sued the city last year in federal court, contending that the zoning code violates their First Amendment rights to free speech. The businesses argue that the code--which prohibits adult establishments within 500 feet of a place of worship, school or residential area, or within 1,000 feet of each other--is so restrictive that they cannot relocate and must close. The city maintains that other locations are available.

The adult stores won the first round last year when U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois Jr. issued a preliminary injunction blocking city enforcement of the zoning code against the plaintiffs. Deputy City Atty. Wayne Mooney is appealing the injunction at a hearing scheduled Tuesday in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

If the court finds the ordinance unconstitutional, Mooney said, the city will have to stop enforcing it. But he added that the city will continue to pursue other methods of regulating adult entertainment businesses.

There are other stores on Melrose that sell sex-related items that risk being offensive to at least some consumers. Condomania, a safe-sex store, sells mostly condoms. The shop opened a year ago, after AIDS swept the country and it became both smart and hip to be condom-ready. But the business owner, whose storefront is two doors down from Taboo, drew the line at carrying items such as dildos and other adult novelties that replicate or picture genitalia. Most business people along Melrose do not seem to have a problem with the store.

Rodolfo Costella, general manager of Chianti, the venerable Italian restaurant next door to Sensations, said: “When Condomania opened on Melrose, no one said anything because of the way the owner did the store. It was more like a novelty store. But these stores are more pornographic, gross, and it’s inappropriate for Melrose. It doesn’t help business.”

The landlord who owns the building housing Sensations has filed a lawsuit against the tenant, charging that he violated the lease agreement. Al Winett, whose 92-year-old mother owns the building, said the lessee, Fireman, never said anything in the contract about selling erotica.

“If there was a dupe, this was it,” Winett said. “It was supposed to be leased for women’s clothing, lingerie and miscellaneous items. We have been landlords here for 40 years and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

The Melrose Neighborhood Assn.’s board of directors met last week and decided that they would gather signatures protesting the stores, pressure Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky at their yearly meeting with him Tuesday, and yell and scream about the situation until something is done.

Arturo Martinez, president of the association, said: “We already feel that there is enough corruption here and that these stores are going to encourage lewd acts. We also don’t think that the particular location of these businesses is conducive to keeping the trendy image Melrose Avenue has internationally.”

What worries residents most, Martinez said, is that if the trend is unchecked, Melrose is in danger of becoming seedy.

“We think that the evidence is in Hollywood,” he said. “When the Pussycat Theater (which opened in the 1960s and shows X-rated movies) came to Hollywood Boulevard, it brought down the atmosphere. And you know what Hollywood looks like now.”