Local Pornography Shop Forced To Shut Down

Put off by the city’s stance against a medical marijauna clinic, Jason Vance the owner of Va Va Voom home of X-rated videos, adult toys and naughty underwear closed its doors in Wendover earlier this month according to building owner Lars Pederson.

“He [Vance] was a little pissed off when the city council voted not to license a medical marijuana store until the federal government made it legal,” Pederson said Wednesday. “Evidently things aren’t going so well in retail sex products and he needed to branch out.”

In the 2000 election, the sell of medical marijuana was endorsed by well over 60 percent of Nevada voters but while theoretically legal  the state did not adopt any mechanism for the sale or purchase of pot for medical purposes until the 2013 legislature.  This April and over 13 years since the sale medical marijuana was first approved by Nevada voters buying and selling medical marijuana, will be legal at least by state law in various dispensaries in the Silver State.

But West Wendover and most other northern Nevada cities responded by adopting local ordinances that forbid pot shop dispensaries until marijuana is legalized nationwide.

According to Pederson that pre-emptive strike spelled the end of Va Va Voom probably not to the anguish of any West Wendover City official.

Indeed Vance’s store formerly known as the Blue Boutique has been a thorn in the city’s side ever since it opened fifteen years ago.

Selling everything from sexy lingerie to X-rated videos to what are politely called marital aids the store fell partly under the city’s often contradictory Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance.

It was officially labeled “not the kind of business we want here” shortly after it opened in 2000.

Vance’s store survived various undercover police investigations, building inspections, and even tax audits. Through all of the official and unofficial oversight he calls harassment, Va Va Voom kept on Vavooming.

And while the store drew criticism of what was inside, city officialdom saved its outrage for what was outside the store.

In the summer of 2006 Vance decided to paint his building yellow– bright yellow. Then mayor Josephine Thaut drove past the new store and moved heaven and earth to get Vance to repaint it including threatening his business license.

At first Vance thought about toning down the color to appease city fathers but then decided not to.

A dyed in the wool capital “L” Libertarian, Vance publicly fought the city on the grounds that no official had the right to dictate the color of any business. After checking the code, the city agreed with Vance and promptly drafted a new ordinance that gave it the right to dictate the color of paint a business could use.

Since Vance painted his building before the law was passed, he was not encumbered by it. The first business was the Limon market which drew the city’s attention for painting fruit on its outside walls.

Vance did however put the city on notice that not only would he not seek official approval in future paint jobs, but that if the city tried to enforce its new law against him, he would sue on the grounds the law violated his freedom of speech.

Since then Vance became a firebrand denouncing what he saw as an overly repressive city climate.

Vance’s enthusiasm fighting city hall began to wane during the Great Recession of 2008. Already weak from competion on the internet, the nationwide economic slow down was the final straw for hundreds of retail sex shops across the country. The fact that Wendover’s house of ill repute weathered that storm is a tribute more to the repressive atmosphere in Utah where local and state laws effectively banning the growth of retail adult entertainment stores, gave Wendover a leg up to weather the storm for at least a little longer.

That stay of execution lasted about six years and without a new revenue creator Vance closed the store.