Sex And Taxes… Squid feels a tad bit sleazy when driving past L’Amour Shoppe adult DVD store on East Alisal Street in Salinas. Apparently, L’Amour’s services are in high demand: The store has tried to add about a dozen more private movie booths.

Salinas police officer Richard Lopez says the shop first tried to expand when In & Out Tax Services (seriously, this is their name) moved. Lopez says the city’s police and code enforcement departments shut L’Amour down because it didn’t have permits for the addition. L’Amour started building the booths on the Rianda Street side of the business, but the city stopped it again.

Lopez says he has photographed condoms and other evidence of sex occurring in L’Amour’s booths. “Why would you go to a motel when you can go to L’Amour Shoppe and get a booth?” Lopez asks.

Recently, L’Amour tried to expand by the books. The city attorney’s office was going to approve the addition, Lopez says, but the city backed down after he and a neighboring property owner complained.

Now the city is exploring how to further regulate the 24-hour store. Councilwoman Gloria De La Rosa last week asked the city attorney to research a San Diego ordinance that restricts adult book stores to certain areas and limits their business hours. De La Rosa and Salinas United Business Association leaders want L’Amour to relocate from the East Salinas redevelopment area, hoping the hookers and johns will follow. At least then Squid won’t feel like a pervert when shopping at nearby Long’s.

Feed The Beast… While planes doused the county with synthetic moth pheromones, Squid sat gas-masked in a closet, getting a little freaked out by the sound of Squid’s own breathing. So Squid started to occupy Squid’s mind with other chemical thoughts – like methyl bromide.

It’s been 20 years since the United States sat holding hands singing “Kumbaya” with 23 other countries, vowing to kick its addiction to methyl bromide. Someone anteed up with 2005 as a cutoff year. But the United States threw a trump card and said it could do even better, and that even California would kick it by 1997.

Well, 1997 came and went, and the United States limped back to its dope house begging for a few more hits of methyl bromide, calling each one a “critical-use exemption.” Even now, 10 years after its own deadline, and two years past the 2005 deadline requested by other nations in the treaty, this country still applies for and is granted more exemptions than all other countries combined. While countries like Germany and the Netherlands are celebrating years of sobriety, the United States continues to suck hard on the methyl bromide pipe.