Porn Next Door

The L.A.Times reports:

Two weeks ago today, inside the million-dollar-plus houses on a quiet cul-de-sac in Encino, the neighborhood kids delighted in what the Easter Bunny had brought.

Then, about 10 a.m., the porn stars started showing up.


Helaine Gesas, who has lived on Hayvenhurst Avenue for 38 years, was in her kitchen cooking Passover supper when she noticed men hauling cameras and lights into the two-story house across the street.

Her neighbor Kerry Cohen, a paralegal and mother, was on her way out to organize a charity event. As she squeezed past several large production trucks, Cohen looked in her rear-view mirror and saw "scantily clad" young women parking their cars and heading toward the same house.

As far as John R. Johnson was concerned, "that was the end of Easter Sunday." Johnson, another neighbor, told his 9-year-old daughter to stay inside while what he described as a "prison-yard break" — a large film crew, many of its members covered in tattoos — entered the iron gates of the house in the 3600 block of Hayvenhurst.

Outraged, Johnson called the city seeking to shut the porn shoot down. But everything, he was told, was perfectly legal.

In any given year, about 3,900 adult films are shot in Los Angeles, according to industry estimates. As with any other shoot, those films are supposed to obtain permits from the city. But the city doesn't restrict the content of the projects it approves.

Big business in Southern California.