Taboo purges its shelves, removes ‘adult’ from its name to stay open

The operator of the Taboo sex shop has pulled about 40 percent of his inventory in an effort to remain open beyond the Friday deadline Columbia officials declared in a letter that threatens the owner with fines and jail.

Owner Jeff White faces fines up to $500 a day and as much as 30 days in jail starting Friday if the Devine Street store is not in compliance with Columbia’s zoning laws, according to a Jan. 28 letter from zoning administrator Brian Cook. The penalties are for each day the store is open without meeting city codes.

As of 5:15 p.m. Friday, no one from the city had been to or contacted Taboo Adult Superstore, manager Larry Boyer said. “They didn’t show up today,” Boyer said after the normal closing time for most government offices.

Boyer said he and employees have cleared shelves that had the most anatomically explicit products. Boxes of that merchandise were on the floor behind the counter of the small shop along a commercial corridor near largely residential Rosewood Drive. Boyer estimates that between 40 percent and 50 percent of the inventory the store has offered the past four years have been sold or boxed.

The removal of what store workers deem is the most offending material is an apparent response to Cook’s letter, which states that the owner would be cited “for operating a sexual device shop.”

Efforts by The State newspaper to reach Cook and the city’s deputy zoning administrator have been unsuccessful.

Taboo owner Jeff White has filed an appeal of a federal judge’s rejection of White’s lawsuit claiming that changes in Columbia’s zoning and business license laws were unconstitutional violations of First Amendment rights. White contends the laws were changed specifically to target his business and force it to either be shuttered or moved to areas of town zoned as light industrial.

Taboo opened legally four years ago in a commercial district under the old zoning law.

Cook said Monday in an email to White that the city would proceed to enforce the laws despite the appeal to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. “Taboo’s filing of an appeal of that judgment does not excuse ongoing violations of the city’s ordinances,” Cook wrote.

Taboo has been challenging the new laws since 2013. U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten has twice thrown the case out of court, most recently on Jan. 7.

Boyer said Friday afternoon that the store has removed the word “adult” from its signs and its doors. It also put its most explicit merchandise on sale and by Friday had stored what store employees deem possibly illegal.

Boyer said plans were to remain open until further notice from the city.

“Technically, all they could actually hit us with is not having a retail license,” the manger said. “But that’s no big thing.”

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Taboo purges its shelves, removes ‘adult’ from its name to stay open."