Protester holding "consenting adult" sign.
I want to lend my support to BlondSlave and CruelSensei and the entire DFP community. There latest fight with the Montclair Zoning board does seem to look like basic discrimination.
I live nearby the store and drive by frequently. I have been a semi-regular store customer for years (really some of my best and most favorite items I own are from there). I started shopping there shortly after they purchased DFP from the original owners and moved it to Bloomfield Ave.
My first visit to the store was the first time I have ever had a sales person offer to physically strike me! She asked me to turn around and then proceeded to throw her whole body arm strength into a nice beautiful arc of black leather until it expertly landed into a pleasant thud against my back.
That flogger is now hanging in my closet.
I even attended one of the first parties they threw in the basement. It was a smaller space then, and overall the party was actually kind of cramped and overcrowded (I know they have since almost tripled the party space since then) but the people were all genuine and mostly sincere. I never went to another party there, but mostly that was for two simple reasons: My Ex and my Schedule. I had originally purchased memberships with my Ex, and out of respect for her, I didn’t really want to attend in her absence. She attended another party or two after our breakup, and she even invited a few of her friends to go along also. I didn’t want to complicate the situation but accidental showing up myself one night.
But more recently I just have a hard time getting a free Saturday that aligned with their party schedule. And when I do get a free Saturday night, I tend to focus my time with Delilah and for a number of good reasons we have been less “out” in the scene lately. More focused on each other. (Yay).
So overall I’m not REALLY aware of all the facts of the situation. I only know what I have read online (at fetlife and NJ.COM etc).
But I kind of wonder if DFP really played their cards correctly with the town. A public demonstration for BDSM rights is fine, but if it was meant to sway the zoning board I worry that it might have backfired.
Delilah is all ruffled when reading the comments on both new articles (NJ.COM and Baristanet). Sometimes I admire that wonderful youthful sense of justice she has at times. While the internet allows people like US to keep our anonymity it also protects idiots and their own rants. Half the time I think people say stupid crap because they like the attention it gets. But many of the comments reveal the real level of stupidity that most of the readers have about the kink community.
I wonder how wise it was to turn this into a public fight. It’s not that I don’t support everybody’s right to protest – I’ve given my hard $$ to organizations like NSCF. I think that this is eventually a fight that is worth fighting, and it’s a fight that eventually we will win.
I think the problem is that if you are trying to convince Montclair that your basement parties are “private” and have no visible or negative impact on the community, having a public protest with people in full fetish wear, in broad daylight, doesn’t really help convince people. It plays right into the opposition’s argument that this is “deviant” behavior and should not be allowed anywhere inside their beloved little suburban hamlet.
I think the other problem is that the Zoning Board is made up of politicians. I’m not sure if they are elected or appointed, but they are beholden to their community at large. By turning this into a public issue, you just increase the number of terrified mothers calling up the city council and ranting “what about the children!”. Any zoning board members who might have secretly approved of the place, are now gonna worry of the scrutiny they may receive by approving.
It seems like DFP clearly made a decision early on – they KNEW they wanted to build a dungeon. I think they even chose the new location originally with full plans on expanding into the basement. But by failing to get “pre-approval” from the town before they proceeded, they opened themselves up to this sort of legal challenge. Zoning laws are notoriously difficult to defeat, and Montclair has used them to prevent things like drive-thru fast-food places and other businesses they don’t like. Whether you classify the basement as a “sex-club” or “entertainment venue” or “social gathering” it won’t matter if the town has basically has classified you as a retail store. They won’t argue about whether you can do that in Montclair, they will simply declare you can’t do it at that address – in that basement!
It’s true that the DFP store has been in Montclair for 30 years, but most of that was as a very small boutique shop tucked away in the Upper Montclair Mews. Cute. Small – and I don’t think it even faced the street itself. But no venues for parties (that I know of – I myself never went in!).
I understand why DFP may not have wanted to get permission from the town first. Because in all likelihood, on first view, most towns would immediately reject the idea any way they could. But at least then they could have considered other locations before risking their hard time and money building a playspace there.
In the end I with DFP every success in challenging the zoning ruling. But I think the real lesson learned here is to follow what OTHER successful kink enterprises do – contact community members EARLY!
For TesFEST (and other similar kink events that I know), usually the organizers contacted the local police long before they even booked the hotel. And they also made sure that the Hotel venue owners were well aware of what sort of activities were gonna happen, before they invite all the kinksters in. Not every town or hotel will be supportive, but asking for permission first avoids problems like this later!
When kink.com bought the San Francisco Armory, there was a lot of commotion in the local community about their beloved landmark being transformed into one of the largest porn studio lots in the world. Ableit that was San Francisco (and Montclair is pretty far from SF), kink.com has made a LOT of efforts to demonstrate to the neighborhood that they would be good neighbors. When people came to protest at local city meetings, they showed up to hear their fears and complaints. They invited people in for tours. Of course that site was already “pre-zoned” correctly for them, so they didn’t have to argue that they had any “right” to film porn. They already did according to the existing Zoning laws.
But Zoning Laws CAN prevent you from doing things that are completely legal. Zoning Laws can’t prevent legal BDSM parties from existing, but they CAN tell people where they can do it. That might not seem fair, but unfortunately that legal fight was lost years ago.
I would also recommend that if the Zoning Board denies them approval – they should at least demand for the Zoning Board to tell them where in Montclair such a place like this would be permitted. Because if the Zoning Board can fail to find a single spot in all of the town that would permit a legal and private gathering of adults, then it bolsters any legal case you have later on against the Board. But it also forces them to classify your activity into the existing Zoning classifications, and that opens up the opportunity for DFP (or some other organization) to move the dungeon into a “pre” approved spot (much how kink.com avoided Zoning issues with the Armory).
What I would recommend is stop arguing that this is about civil rights. Because that’s just gonna confirm in all the small-minded idiots heads that you really are just a freaky fucked up minority who wants to encourage unspeakable acts! I’m not saying that it ISN’T about civil rights, but I doubt that is really gonna change be a successful argument in a Zoning dispute.
What you REALLY need to argue, is that places like DFP are an asset to the community. That they are good neighbor and IMPROVE the quality of life in Montclair. I would encourage them to invite the freaked-out people in for coffee and donuts. Invite the members of the zoning board in. Give people a real idea of what the kink community is all about.
And while it’s true that often people want to dress up in leather and dog collars, but doing it in public at City Hall is probably not going to help you win the war.
You can’t really win this war until you can kill the misinformation – these aren’t deviants bent on wrecking the town. These are EXISTING COMMUNITY members- doctors, lawyers, moms and dads – who are just getting together to express themselves. It’s exactly what decent liberal towns like Montclair should be encouraging.
EDIT:
I ranted in a few other places: http://www.montclairtimes.com/NC/0/2623.html (as “mark”)
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/montclair_shuts_down_fetish_sh.html#4687369
August 12th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
As a member of DFP,i agree with many of your statements especially when you mention that these vanilla governing bodies of Montclair would have been satisfied seeing regular attire worn; They asked who we were and then questioned our position aND our reason for bein there; It was smart of us to be calm and not loud while we were there as it indicated mature questioning of the law instead of a riot zone; No Montclair police were called so we did score points; This is my opinion for the next meeting
May 29th, 2010 at 8:09 am
Nice blog. I just bookmarked you on my bloglines.
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