WINONA, Minn. – For more than 10 years, Frank Yakish stood his ground — in front of a porn shop in downtown Winona, Minnesota, with homemade signs in hand.
Known to his neighbors and peers as “the guy with the sign” or “the porn store guy,” Yakish was not the only resident of Winona who didn’t appreciate the presence of Intimate Treasures. He was just the one who had the hardest time letting go.
Days after the store opened in 1999 (under the name Downtown Book and Video), a clutch of local citizens banded together to form Standing Together Opposing Pornography — or STOP — and began lobbying the Winona City Council to do something to close it down, pronto.
In the true spirit of purely symbolic half-measures, the council tried imposing a moratorium on the opening of adult establishments. Their efforts eventually, and unsurprisingly, were overturned by a federal judge.
Showing the sort of legislative creativity available only to lawmakers who apparently have never heard of concepts like ex post facto or “grandfather” clauses, the council’s next bright idea was to pass an ordinance prohibiting the sale of sexually explicit material within 600 feet of a place of worship. The way the council saw it, the presence of the local Islamic Center less than 600 feet from Intimate Treasures would thereby empower the city to shutter the porn shop, despite the fact the store predated the zoning ordinance.
Perhaps believing it would inspire the store to pick up stakes and leave without any further legal tussling, the council included in the ordinance a five-year grace period in which Intimate Treasures could move out voluntarily. Instead, when the grace period expired in 2006, the store lawyered-up and prepared for another courtroom brawl.
Exhibiting hitherto rare common sense, the council then decided not to press the issue, possibly at the advice of an attorney who adised their zoning ordinance had not one little snowflake’s chance in hell of surviving court scrutiny.
By then, the members of STOP largely had stopped giving a shit. Let’s face it: Even most anti-porn activists have lives.
Yakish, on the other hand, was just getting started. According to local media reports, he “spent several days a week for more than a decade publicly protesting the store.”
Now, 16 years after its tumultuous opening, Intimate Treasures is closing for reasons far more compelling than laughably unconstitutional zoning ordinances or sign-holding protestors: fatally low sales.
“It’s not because of the religious groups or the guy with the sign,” said Claire Jumper, who has been a clerk at Intimate Treasures for almost four years. “Businesses have a hard time in Winona. That’s just the bottom line.”
If anything, Jumper said Yakish’s ongoing one-man protest of benefited the store.
“Honestly, he was free advertising,” she said.
Yakish has never been willing to speak to the media about his years-long protest, so there’s no word on how he feels about losing one of the more pointless volunteer positions in the history of the sign-holding industry.
Thus deprived of his raison d’ protestation, will Yakish now fade into ex-crusader obscurity, much like his former comrades in arms at STOP? Or will he remake himself by latching onto a new cause, like locking himself into a cage of thorns to put a Biblical twist on an old PETA trick?
As for the property that once housed the object of Yakish’s zealous ire, it is now slated to reopen as upscale apartments, atop two new, non-sinful businesses. The plan suits Winona Mayor Mark Peterson (not to be confused with Scott Peterson or Drew Peterson) just fine.
“We’re not going to miss it,” Peterson said of the now-departed Intimate Treasures.
To his credit, however, unlike the STOPs and Frank Yakishes of the world, Mayor Peterson at least appears able to distinguish between distasteful and unworthy of existence.
“As we’re trying to revitalize our downtown, it’s not a business we would seek out to put in our historic district,” Peterson said. “They have every right to exist, but it’s not the kind of business we necessarily want. Its leaving is not a bad thing.”
Mayor Peterson has something of a point. After all, strange people wandering around protesting local businesses day after day can’t be good for downtown Winona commercial property values.
