SUNSET PARK, NY — The issue of sex shops and adult-related businesses near the Sunset Park waterfront was raised again yesterday by David Galarza of Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors.
Galarza, who is also active in zoning and housing issues in the neighborhood, organized a rally yesterday afternoon. This included a march from 39th Street and Second Avenue to a Pentecostal church on 39th Street and Third Avenue and finally to the headquarters of Community Board 7 at 43rd Street and Fourth Avenue.
The immediate cause, said Galarza, was the community board’s reported decision to grant a liquor license to Peyton’s Playpen Gentleman’s Club at 3901 Second Ave., described as a strip bar on New York Magazine’s web site.
Community board officials were unavailable for comment yesterday, but William Crowley, a spokesman for the State Liquor Authority in Albany, told the Eagle his agency hadn’t received the applications. This may mean that the application is still at the community board – according to state law, requests for liquor licenses within the city must be heard by community boards before they’re forwarded to the agency.
In general, added Crowley, “Requests for liquor licenses are granted unless there’s a reason not to do so.”
Although the New York Magazine web site says Peyton’s now has a beer license, Crowley told the Eagle that he had no record of the club having a license at all.
Another strip bar at the same site, the Wild Wild West, however, had its liquor license suspended several years ago. In a celebrated case in 2001, Police Officer Joseph Gray of the 72nd Precinct and several of his fellow officers went into the strip club – which the NYPD had barred them from frequenting.
After having quite a few drinks, Gray got into his car, drove under the Gowanus Expressway on 39th Street – and then hit, and ultimately killed, a local woman and her two children.
One of Galarza’s supporters, the Rev. Sam Cruz of Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park, told the Eagle, “I grew up in the community, and I don’t remember seeing all these sex shops. This happened after Mayor Giuliani decided to clean up Times Square, and many of the X-rated businesses came here [because zoning allowed them to do so]. I have three young daughters.
“I don’t care what you do [at home] as far as sex is concerned, but this is something else,” he said. “We’ve seen NYPD statistics that most of the johns who pick up prostitutes under the expressway aren’t from Sunset Park.”
He linked sex-related businesses with prostitution, and also mentioned video stores that supposedly carry both X-rated and “regular” DVDs and videos. “You don’t see anyone going in there to get a copy of Bambi for their daughter,” he said.
He also alleged that the city concentrates such X-rated businesses in working-class neighborhoods. “You don’t see them doing this in Bay Ridge, and they wouldn’t allow it in Park Slope,” he said.
