Vancouver – from www.cbc.ca – A Vancouver community group is lobbying the city to get a sex novelty shop out of its neighbourhood.

A branch of the Lower Mainland chain Fantasy Factory moved into a storefront at Kingsway and Fraser Street in East Vancouver last fall.

The store advertises the sale of adult videos and magazines, lingerie, performance enhancers, and sex toys.

However, members of the Dickens Community group want it gone.

Director Peter Wohlwend said the group has spent the past 10 years trying to improve the area, and the store is a major setback.

“We have been fighting here the prostitution, drug dealing, and pimps in this neighbourhood in the last 10 years, and this sort of says, ‘Well, it’s okay, come and pick up a hooker here.’”

Wohlwend said the neighbourhood is very family-oriented.

“We have Mount Pleasant Family Place close by, and we have a little wading pool for little kiddies.”

Wohlwend and his group are writing letters to the city, trying to convince officials the store does not belong in the area.

However, storeowner Tony Perry [pictured] said he’s not doing anything wrong.

“This is not the 18th century. These people are acting like out of the sky a UFO just landed with an adult store. Where have these people been?”

Perry said he has owned adult entertainment stores for more than 50 years.

The shop meets all the necessary zoning guidelines, he said, and doesn’t display anything graphic or offensive on the street.

City guidelines only require sex shops be further than 305 metres from a school or community centre.