Why Jonathan Kay is not a Conservative, Part 1.

"A sad adieu to ye olde porn shoppe."

Hmm, off to an interesting start.

"It was last Thursday when I spotted the "for rent" sign in the window of the porn store around the corner from my house. It was a shock, I'll admit, to see this venerable neighbourhood institution empty and abandoned."

There goes the neighbourhood!

"Our local porn shop did more than sell DVDs of people having sex. Its mere presence kept the neighbourhood comfortably rooted in the middle-class realm. That's why part of me is going to miss it."

Forget social mobility, university education or high levels of literacy; porn keeps us anchored in the middle class! Someone tell Lou Dobbs. Maybe he'll let up on illegal immigration and focus on the real issues: Globalization and Outsourcing of local pornography. Those are good jobs providing good wages for middle class families! Is Jack Layton reading this? I see an NDP electoral issue on the way...

"Like just about everywhere else in Toronto, gentrification in my little area is assuming obscene proportions. "

"The porn store -- lodged in a stereotypically decrepit building -- struck a singularly authentic note of gritty urban realism amongst all this hyper-consumerist foppery."

OK, so gentrification bad and foppish. Writer from Montreal, living in Tony Toronto neighbourhood pining for the days of down the street porn, good? Is he married? Does his wife know he's writing stuff like this? Or was this her idea?

"Indeed, I found myself stressing its presence when I gave directions to visitors. My neighbourhood is saddled with the decidedly pretentious-sounding name of "Playter Estates," and mentioning this particular local business was a good way to disabuse friends of the idea that they were going to wheel up to some sort of Edwardian country house."

I think Shakespeare wrote: "Better thoust be perverted than pretentious".

"Then, in the 1980s, everyone got a VCR. The Piccadilly and its ilk became obsolete. No longer did men have to endure the frustration and indignity of watching porn in the company of other like-minded fellows -- they could simply buy the tapes and bring them home."

Damn you technology! Damn you all to hell! DAMN DIRTY TAPES!

"In 2007, the only men who still get their porn at the local XXX shop are in that vanishing demographic that's too old for the Internet and too young to call it quits altogether."

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