neighbors push back against sex shops in chelsea News

“Everybody needs sex,” said Max, the pseudonymous man behind the counter at the Rainbow Station in Chelsea.

To his left was a flat screen TV with a dozen surveillance-camera feeds of the store, including the area where patrons pay $1 to watch four minutes of porn in a private booth. Downstairs is a theater where customers can consume porn in a more communal setting.

Upstairs is where the store does most of its business, according to Max, amid the multitudinous racks of brightly colored lingerie and toys catering to all genders and a wide variety of tastes.

But outside on the street, some members of the community accuse stores like the Rainbow Station of contributing to a rise in crime in the neighborhood, including prostitution, drug use, public sex and vandalism.

“Men are constantly being solicited as they go down the street,” said Laura Evans, president of a group representing the 300 block of 7th Avenue, at 18th Street and 19th Street.

Eighth Avenue between 17th Street and 21st Street is home to around a half-dozen establishments that serve the gay community, including two sex toy shops, a lingerie boutique, an adult DVD store, a men’s spa and a gay bar.

Evans said she’s received reports of discarded drug paraphernalia on the street and men who are seen performing sex acts in alleys and stairwells. One neighbor, she said, found human feces outside his doorstep.

“I think a lot of people see things like used condoms and hypodermic needles on the streets,” she said.

And an increase in crime, she said, has coincided with some of these stores opening. “As there are more stores opening we’re seeing greater problems,” said Evans. “It’s the nature of their business and what they do.”

Last year her group opposed an effort by Splosh, a boutique on 8th Avenue and 18th Street, to obtain a liquor license. Residents opposed to the plan claimed the combination of alcohol and sex toys would be the tipping point in turning that area of Chelsea into a “red light district.”

Community Board 4 recommended Splosh be denied a license, and the State Liquor Authority obliged.

Splosh is owned by Dumesh Kankanamalage, who also owns Rainbow Station three blocks north. Across the street from Rainbow Station is The Blue Store, another sex toy shop. The affiliated Blue DVD is on 8th Avenue between 18th Street and 19th Street, next to Gym, a gay bar, and One Men’s Spa.

Evans and others in her group say they’re not opposed to sex toys or gay people, they just have an interest in preventing the area from becoming a sex district. Rainbow Station and The Blue Store have been in the neighborhood for seven to eight years, while newer establishments like Splosh and the men’s spa have been around for between two and four. Some residents see the proliferation of these sex-based establishments as drawing and promoting criminal activity.

“We’ve had one person defecate in our well, one person urinate on our wall in the well, and one case of frozen vomit by our garbage cans,” said resident John Mauceri, who’s lived at 8th Avenue and 20th Street since the mid-1970s and said those incidents are the first he’s experienced. “There is a lot more hanging out on 8th Avenue — people who are there, leaning against buildings when one goes to Gristides and still there after you have done your shopping and are returning home.”

Both Evans and Mauceri questioned how these establishments stay in business, as they frequently see people leaving the stores seemingly without having made a purchase.

“It feels quite retro to me, the way the Village was before the great health crisis,” said Mauceri. “It is, however, quite odd for this to be happening within a few blocks [of these stores], all selling the same products, in an age when pornography is available on the Internet and is free. So what is actually going on? How do these shops make enough money to pay the rent?”

But Max at the Rainbow Station said Kankanamalage is thinking of shuttering the porn booths, which he claimed don’t make any money. When asked if people are turning tricks in the booths, he pointed to the security cameras and said absolutely not. When two people enter a booth together they’re bounced, he said.

As to the proliferation of gay establishments in the neighborhood, Max said that three small businesses catering to the gay community have closed in the past several years, including Rawhide, an infamous gay bar, Rainbow and Triangle, a gay gift shop, and Universal Gear, a men’s clothing shop.

Nevertheless, Max admitted that sometimes male prostitutes hang out in front of the store. “We tell them to go somewhere else,” he said, pointing to a “no loitering” sign posted in the window. “We’re here selling sex toys, not promoting crime. I don’t see the correlation between selling sex toys and prostitution.”

George Triantis, the 10th Precinct’s crime prevention officer, said that while some illegal activity goes on in front of the stores, there’s no discernible link between crime in the neighborhood and these sex-based establishments.

“These places have been here for about seven, eight years already, they do attract a lot of people here. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the stores that security supposedly keeps an eye on, but they can’t be everywhere,” said Triantis. “When you have a lot of people attracted to a certain area, and they might be intoxicated, things do happen sometimes.”

Triantis said the 10th Precinct is aware of the community’s concern and conducts patrols between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. to deter illegal activity in front of the stores, mostly robberies and petit larcenies.

“Not that we’re having a lot of them; we’re not,” said Triantis. “Do we have a pattern? No.”

Triantis said the establishments have always been cooperative with police. “They always work with us,” he said. “There’s no problem there as far as crime patterns or prostitution.”

The neighborhood looks and feels like any other stretch of Chelsea: Thai restaurants, coffee shops and banks amid the Starbucks and Duane Reades that seem to pop up like weeds. But for some, the neighborhood is known for catering to baser instincts.

“Everybody needs sex,” said Max, for the second time. “We all have our preferences.”