SR sensuality shop stirs controversy

The opening of an adult sensuality shop in downtown Santa Rosa has launched an ordinance dispute with city officials and prompted protests from surrounding business owners regarding the store's merchandise and location on Fourth Street.

The city has warned the shop that it violates city rules limiting sales of adult-oriented products and must close unless it changes its range of merchandise.

The Spice Sensuality Boutique opened in late August and carries everything from lingerie and lotions to adult toys.

Boutique co-owner Chuck Freese said Saturday that he and his wife, Moira, provide women with a place to purchase intimate items far from seedy adult entertainment establishments. It is a small storefront on a business-lined section of Fourth Street, a few doors from Tex Wasabi's and Checkers restaurants.

The Santa Rosa couple opened a Spice Boutique in Rohnert Park nearly two years ago.

"Our whole image is to create a safe haven for people," Chuck Freese said. "Spice was developed for women."

In late September, the couple received a letter from the city informing them that the boutique, which initially had been listed as a lingerie store, was being reclassified as a venue selling adult-oriented merchandise and was violating city ordinances.

"There are a great deal of products which are within acceptable standards -- some are not," Mayor John Sawyer said Saturday.

In question are adult toys that replicate male genitalia. Spice sells various shapes, colors and styles of the banned merchandise.

Freese said he and his wife would be willing to remove the products from the store in order to comply.

However, he said, the complaints over the sensuality shop's presence on Fourth Street are at the root of the ordinance problems.

"We would work with the city, item by item if we had to," he said. "We never wanted to fight with the city."

"We went through the right procedure," Freese said. "In the business application, we stated that we were a sensuality shop and sold bedroom essentials."

City officials and the Freeses disagree on whether the type of products sold were clearly specified before the store received a permit.

Regardless of the initial understanding, Sawyer said the boutique would have to stop selling the prohibited adult items in order to meet city requirements.

A handful of business owners and at least 50 customers have complained about the boutique's presence on Fourth Street, said Nancy Riley, co-owner of SHE, a woman's clothing store next to the boutique.

"We've been trying to build downtown Santa Rosa to be family friendly," she said. "It is not the appropriate place to have that kind of business."

Chari Blackwood of Sonoma, a customer at the boutique, said she was comfortable shopping at the store while her husband and children waited outside.

"It's not lewd and lascivious," she said. "If it weren't for places like this, marriages would go bad."

You can reach Staff Writer Tracie Morales at 521-5274 or tracie.morales@pressdemocrat.com.