PRUDE GROVE… Squid’s glad porn is free online these days (cue Avenue Q), because the one time Squid attempted to buy smut at a local sex shop, a leering creep in the aisle made Squid’s skin crawl. 


Luckily, a more Squid-friendly adult store is opening up in Pacific Grove. Ooh La La owner Shira Diallo says hers is a feminine sort of adult shop: think ruffly lingerie and bachelorette party toys rather than XXX videos. Diallo – who with husband Julian also owns Mary Jane’z, Twisted Roots and Truffles in Monterey, and SC Styles hair studio in Seaside – hopes to open Ooh La La this Friday, just in time for Valentine’s Day.


The hitch: The city still hasn’t issued her business license. Diallo describes a “crappy runaround” in which she pops into City Hall every week, only to learn about some new hold-up on her papers. Last month, she had to rally against a City Council resolution that would have blocked her business. “This has just been kind of ridiculous,” she says. 


Squid’s just glad the council didn’t pull the plug on sex shops like it did for that other would-be tenant of 115 Central Ave., the proposed pot dispensary, in 2010. (Poor landlord.) Because a little toke and a prostate massage might be just what P.G. needs.


CARMEL SHORES… Squid employs any one of eight laugh-mufflers when listening to GOPers get in a tizzy about prez candidate Mitt Romney. Is it his Mittness, or his Romneyness, that’s more likely to undercut him in a general election? At least he’s not Herman Cain. Meanwhile in quaint Carmel-by-the-Sea, another pizza man, restaurateur Rich Pèpe, is infusing the mayoral race with a certain delightful Pèpeness.


For example, he tells Squid the city should keep the Flanders Mansion because the beleaguered property is like his Ferrari. Should his wife ask him to sell the car? “Things aren’t that bad yet,” he says. “Let’s keep it in the garage.”


Pèpe, whose family owns some half-dozen restaurants and stores, says he’s self-funding because “I feel a little funny about asking people for money.” 


He probably feels even funnier about a reality-TV test pilot on YouTube, which explains how the Italian from New Jersey landed in Carmel (“I came out West to get laid and make a killing”) and why being in the food biz is fun (“Throwing $10,000 parties, $10-million weddings”).


Pèpe was an actor in the scripted pilot, he explains. It was intended for TV networks, not as negative campaign fodder: “As much as we get it taken down, someone keeps reposting it.”


Now, Pèpe’s gloves are off when it comes to his foe, burnished Councilman Jason Burnett. “Certain things the other side has said/done,” he emails, “have prompted me to get a little ‘Jersey’ on them.”