miss ann is taking her story to the people, hoping to create a grassroots PR counterinitiative to combat the city's attempts to shut her down. she urges people to contact the mayor as well as the ICLU and media outlets such as WXNT's abdul in the morning. supposedly nuvo will have a story tomorrow.
she's also started an account at the IMN board and begun posting in the off-topic forum (no link; paid subscription req'd to view forum). here is an excerpt from a post of hers explaining the origins of her current legal troubles. i have annotated the excerpt by adding a few links.
THIS IS HOW IT GOT STARTED:
Everyone knows I am a Dominatrix. I don't hide that fact because I am not ashamed or afraid. I opened a shop downtown inside an arts/business studio building called The Chatham Center. It was a regular retail shop and its inventory was arranged in such a way that it could not be defined by zoning code as "adult". That meant only 24% of my inventory could be what the code defines as sexual. 24% of my inventory was made up of leather restraints, floggers, canes, and paddles.The rest of my inventory was apparel (corsets & stockings) and fine art. If anyone knows Lunar Event's, Gwynneth Hermann, she can tell you first hand I sold a LOT of her art. I even sold Tim Brickley CD's.
I had a big champagne grand opening with Lunar Event and my brother's band. Always thinking free, NUVO covered my boutique with a small story and I started advertising my new business. I am an agressive marketer (that's how the Erotic Arts Ball got produced). I knew without a store front, I had to drive every bit of traffic to my location myself. I did a pretty good job because people found me even though the building's location is obscure.
Anyway, in June the building owner leased the rooms in the front of the building (formerly LAMP Fine Art Gallery) to a theater group from Butler. They covered the front windows with black plastic to block the light; for a whole month. The day care director across the street saw the black plastic on the windows at the same time her people saw my ad in NUVO classifieds under adult.
Next thing you know she called the Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association. The president of the neighborhood association (Clay Miller) has long feuded with my landlord (who is super cool). He doesn't like my landlord's future plans for the property which will be to build a 4-story condo building with retail on the first level and underground parking. I became Clay Miller's easy pawn to get at my landlord. Clay Miller is an ass and also needs to be spanked.
Black plastic and adult classified listing could only mean the worse and the neighbhorhood association went after me like I am a witch. Really most people in the association were against action or neutral, but they managed to get a motion passed to send complaint to the Mayor's office.
Clay Miller has a good friend at Indiana Historic Preservation Counsel and used his connections to apply pressure on the Mayor's office. Someone decided that this could be spun into a political 'win' for the Mayor and they did a press conference. They probably thought this would scare me and I would go away for good. They didn't count on Miss Ann being a Libertarian, smart, informed, well networked, and a political activist. This surprised me because any boob could research all I've published and deduce that about me. Instead, they thought I would be an easy pawn to exploit.
So, that is how it happened. Since the Mayor started this crusade in the media, I thought it should be fought there. Ultimately, I want them to back off the ordinance violation and grandfather me in to continue to practice my art from my home. I want my government to respect and protect my freedom and to trust that I am a good citizen. My neighbors like me because I am good to them. My clients like me because I care about their personal growth.
so she just got stuck in the middle of a dispute between her landlord and the chatham arch neighborhood association? curious. this could also explain why the city has changed its tune regarding the legality of her private practice out of her home (which is in the meridian-kessler neighborhood): it would look pretty hypocritical if the city went after one of her businesses but not the other one. (of course, it also looks pretty damn hypocritical for the police to declare that her business was legal and then turn around & try to prosecute her two years later.)
miss ann has also updated her website thereformatory.com with links to news coverage of her legal woes. she also links to me, calling stAllio!'s way an "excellent blog" (and emailed me also)... to be fair, very few blogs seem to have picked up on this story, and many of the ones that have are from out of state. there's been a lot of chatter on message boards (see threads on punkrocknight.com and the nuvo forums), but for whatever reason, the prominent indiana blogs have been silent. and what few blogs i've found that are discussing the story have maybe one post on the subject; nothing close to the depth of coverage i've tried to institute here. i try, but my blog just doesn't have the reach that, say, TDW has.
i'll post again tomorrow once the nuvo story goes up (assuming i can find it on nuvo's horribly [re]designed site).
update: miss ann is now booked to appear on abdul in the morning this friday, 7-8am on 1430AM. sadly at that time i'll likely be too busy sleeping and showering to actually tune in, but at least abdul keeps show notes on the web. [originally i misidentified the show as being on WIBC, although i linked to the correct website, newstalk1430.com. the correct station is WXNT.]
update: i emailed chris3000, who is blogsitting at indiana blog review, and scored a a post there on the story.¶