Show World adult shop to seek variance for more viewing booths

Representatives of the West Babylon adult shop Show World will go before the Babylon Town Zoning Board of Appeals Thursday to ask for variances that would allow it to add about eight viewing booths to the five it currently operates.

“It’s the right to compete,” general manager Dean Meo said. A nearby competitor, World-II, operates 19, he said. More booths doesn’t necessarily mean more customers but the ability to serve existing customers better, he said. “One of the only complaints we’ve had is that there are not enough video booths, because of the line it creates where people use them.”

Show World, on Field Street, is located in an industrial park surrounded by cemeteries and a landfill. The nearest homes are about half a mile to the south, across the Southern State Parkway.

That isolation is deliberate, Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer said, and is the result of litigation between the town and adult businesses in the 1970s. “The courts said the businesses had the right to operate, but the town could restrict the locations where they could operate,” he said.

Most adult businesses in the town today are confined to three heavy industrial areas. Besides the one where Show World and World-II are located, they include one off Grand Boulevard and one off Allen Boulevard.

Schaffer has aggressively pursued adult businesses operating outside those areas, and under him the town forced closure of a longtime West Babylon strip club in 2014.

Show World appears unlikely to meet official opposition. “They’ve been there for a number of years without incident,” Schaffer said. “There are no violations on the town side and no police activity.”