Thursday, February 19, 1998
Neighbors groan over porn store
WESTWOOD: Adult-video office investigated; vice squad issues
citation for lack of a permit
By Rachel Munoz
Daily Bruin Staff
Pornography or adult entertainment? Legal or illegal? These are
the questions surrounding the Hot Body International business that
has quietly resided in Westwood for over a year.
On Jan. 29, tipped off by homeowners groups complaining of a
pornography video store, the West Los Angeles Vice Squad
investigated an office space at 10872 Weyburn Ave.
"We went there and (the video store) was not what we found,"
said Sargent Doug Abney, who heads the unit that was called to the
location. "You can’t tell what type of business it is from the
outside."
What the officers did find inside the building belonging to
developer Ira Smedra was two or three workers boxing up adult
entertainment videos.
When the officers saw that the business appeared to be only a
distribution center, they went ahead and "checked for all of the
permits."
Not having a business license was the only offense that Hot Body
International was guilty of. It is considered a "minor offense." A
citation, equivalent to a traffic ticket, was written and the
company will have to appear in court.
"The business-license angle is the only thing that they found
that they could give us grief over," said John Cross, the president
of Hot Body International.
However, Cross knew that he wouldn’t be renting the office on
Weyburn forever. He felt their time might be limited because the
Village Center Westwood project may be built on that same property.
"We looked at it as a temporary warehouse space."
But that isn’t the only Westwood area location that Hot Body
International uses for business space. There is also a home office
on Levering, where Cross lives.
According to Cross, the Vice Squad has also visited this
residence.
"A couple of years ago, we did shoot something in the backyard
but it’s totally secluded," Cross said. Throughout the years, the
house has been the location where several models for the videos
were interviewed, in which "they tend to wear alluring
clothing."
These events could perhaps be responsible for the anonymous
phone calls that Cross received at the house.
"The things she said were highly sexist and racist," Cross said.
He feels they were close to harassment.
But one Westwood homeowner is looking past the tenant to the
landlord of the Weyburn building: Ira Smedra.
Jackie Freedman, co-president of the Holmby-Westwood Property
Owners Association, had heard that there was a pornography business
in the Village. After walking by the location, she became
suspicious and called the vice squad.
Outside of her disapproval of this sort of tenant in the
village, she looks to the property’s owner, Ira Smedra, as the one
who is responsible.
"It shows disregard to the village," Freedman said. "And he has
left the property in deplorable conditions."
But Smedra insists that he had no idea who was renting the small
200 square-foot office space from him and only spoke to someone at
the office for the very first time last week.
His agent took care of the lease with Hot Body International,
who claimed they were a telemarketing company, a business Smedra
considered legitimate.
"It is to some degree telemarketing," Cross said. "It is direct
marketing; we ship things there."
When Smedra spoke to a Hot Body employee last week, he was told
that tapes were distributed from the office but there is no filming
taking place there.
"Everything is fine. It’s not like business is being done there.
It’s not like it is a studio. There is nothing sinister going on
there," Cross said.
But Smedra doesn’t understand how the residents discovered what
was going on in the Weyburn office. "If the homeowners know what
the man is selling, then they must be buying it," he said.
Despite just being a distribution center, Smedra evicted Hot
Body International at the beginning of this month, giving the
company 60 days to find another distribution center. "We don’t
allow adult uses," he simply stated.