Andreatta: Downtown's last porn shop quietly closes

Few longtime businesses close without a last hurrah. A blowout sale. A nod from the chamber of commerce. A spot on the evening news.

But when the last adult bookstore in downtown Rochester shuttered for good in February, it went without so much as a peep.

Going quietly wasn't always the way for State St. Book Mart, which had peddled X-rated magazines, toys, movies and video peep shows out of 109 State St. since 1972.

Sandwiched between City Hall and the local FBI offices, the shop was once the scene of arrests, police raids and raucous civic battles that both challenged and shaped city obscenity and zoning ordinances.

Unlike other sex shops that once dotted downtown, State St. Book Mart endured and, over time, mellowed like its aging clientele to become just another downtown fixture to peter out.

"We knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when," said Dominic Zicari Sr., 77, who now lives in Sanibel, Fla., and with his son, Dominic Zicari Jr., owned the business and the building.

For years, Book Mart was a surviving relic of zoning changes and pornography's migration to the Internet. Its closing is a coda in the rebirth of downtown, one envisioned by civic leaders as a gentler destination for pedestrians and businesses.

"There are certain businesses that when coming into or leaving a neighborhood signal a shift," said Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corp. "I would suggest that lower-end adult paraphernalia places and pawn shops are two of those."

Today, there are only five businesses with licenses to operate as a "sexually-oriented business" within city limits, according to the city. Four of them are strip clubs and another, Show World on Mt. Read Boulevard, is a grander, less seamy version of Book Mart.

None is downtown, and none ever will be again. Such businesses are prohibited downtown. Book Mart only existed because it was grandfathered in.

Book Mart's closing was announced last week along with the sale of the building in a short news release issued by Hunt Commercial Real Estate.

It read that the building, which has four floors and roughly 9,000 square feet, was sold for $135,000 and that the new owner has plans for an "upscale" restaurant. A phone message left for the new owner, a woman with a New Jersey area code, was not returned.

"Put it this way, nobody was sad to see them go," Chris Staffieri said of Book Mart as he sprinkled mozzarella and garlic on a pie at The Pizza Stop, his family-owned restaurant a few doors north of the shuttered porn store. "A lot of shady stuff went on there."

"Shady" is a subjective term, of course. One person's "shady" is another's "risqué." But few downtown storefronts elicited the willies from passers-by the way Book Mart could.

Its sign, which still hangs, billed the store as "Your One Stop Adult Shop" and boasted DVDs, assorted novelties and private video viewing booths. The store was open around the clock, but its shades were always drawn shut.

Nikki Monahan was the last clerk to work at Book Mart. She recalled the parking lot next door as a magnet for junkies, and the graying gay hustlers whom she said scoped out tricks from a nearby bench as "The City Hall Club."

"It was kind of a rough spot, like working at the bus station," Monahan, 37, said. "I considered getting a pistol permit."

She spoke from behind the counter of Ontario Video & News, a porn shop in Wayne County also owned by the Zicaris.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Book Mart was occasionally raided by authorities, and Zicari Sr. faced myriad criminal charges, including obscenity and tax evasion. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies descended on the shop in 1987 to arrest Zicari on pandering charges for his alleged role in financing a pornographic film called Backside to the Future.

But in its later years, Book Mart was more tolerated than target. When it closed, the shop hadn't been the scene of a crime or cited as a nuisance for at least 10 years, according to the city.

"It definitely had its own vibe," Monahan said. "Some of the customers had been coming there forever."

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