Drive-In Condom Shop Opening Is Delayed

Drive-in movies and drive-in restaurants have become endangered species, but a drive-in condom shop is about to open in Newhall.

Not just yet, though.

Hours before Richard Kotler and Frank Bennetti were to open for business Monday in an former Fotomat booth, vandals broke a window and smeared black paint over its Safe Sex Shop sign, drawing the circle-and-slash symbol over the word Sex , the operators said.

As a result, the co-owners have put on hold for a couple of weeks their plans to offer condoms to motorists to fight acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They said they want to help conquer what they call the biggest impediment to coping with the disease--”embarrassment” among some consumers who would have to shop for condoms in drugstores and supermarkets.

“You don’t even have to leave your car,” Bennetti, 50, a local auto-body shop proprietor, said. “All you do is look at the menu we’ll post and tell us what you want. It’ll be quick, easy and convenient.”

Bennetti and Kotler said their shop is the first of what they hope will be 200 outlets statewide. They plan to sell single condoms at $1 apiece and packages of three at $5, tax included.

Kotler and Bennetti said they did not bother reporting the vandalism to police. They said they have no idea who was responsible, but that a few days before the Safe Sex Shop’s scheduled opening, four people who identified themselves only as “concerned citizens” came to Bennetti’s body shop and tried to dissuade them.

“They told us what we were doing was evil,” Kotler, 40, a Santa Clarita attorney, said Monday. “They said: ‘There is no safe sex. People should just say no.’

“Well, that’s all well and good, but, let’s face it, abstinence is unrealistic. It’s totalitarian to tell somebody either to abstain or risk a disease that can kill you.”