PHILADELPHIA—The last triple-X movie theater in Philadelphia was on its way to becoming a part of history until, at the last minute, the city’s zoning board approved a variance to expand the space significantly. Despite continuing opposition from a neighborhood group, it now looks as if the venerable Forum Theater on Market Street will be around for years to come.

According to an article by the Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic, Inga Saffron, the battle over the Forum is all but over, since it is very rare for the courts to reverse a zoning board decision. In March, a Common Pleas Court judge upheld a decision made in 2009 by the zooming board to allow the theater’s owner to raise the roof by three feet.

“That sounds trivial,” she wrote, “but, as theater attorney Ronald D. Patterson told me, the extra height would enable his client to insert a mezzanine and increase the operation’s total floor space by about 80 percent.”

The extra space will allow the theater to construct a new second-floor stage as well as install private viewing booths. In exchange for the variance, the theater’s longtime owner, Anthony Trombetta, said he would do away with the Les Gals, another strip club he owns on Market Street. According to Saffron, that allowance by Trombetta gave the zoning board the justification it needed as cover for its decision.

“The board’s logic, according to court documents, was that a one big porn palace was better for Market Street than two small ones,” she wrote. “In allowing Trombetta to enlarge the Forum, city planners and the zoning board went hook, line, and sinker for his argument that a consolidated porn operation would benefit Market Street.”

But it’s not as if the theater, or its owner, is an unknown quantity to anyone in city government or local law enforcement. The Forum Theater was opened in 1975, and has been exempted from more recent zooming changes because of its grandfathered status, “despite the encroachment of upscale condos on nearby streets—despite the opening of a celebrated public high school on the next block north.”

From the very beginning, however, the club and its owner have enjoyed a colorful reputation. Saffron writes that Trombetta was convicted on a federal prostitution-related charge in 1975, has a long history of alleged mob ties and was even labeled by the Meese Commission as Philly’s porn king. According to police records, she adds, two women were arrested in Les Gals as recently as 2008 on charges of prostitution, and the place is well-known as a destination for those looking for a sexual liaison.

As all of the other adult movie theaters succumbed to competition from the internet, the Forum held on, and now the fear for the local neighborhood group, as well as for Saffron, is that the sexual activity that has reportedly taken place in Les Gals will be transported to the Forum’s the new booths.

“Perhaps the Zoning Board of Adjustment doesn’t believe porn hurts neighborhoods. It also approved a flashing digital billboard for Club Risque on a site that directly faces the Baptist Worship Center in Bridesburg,” she wrote. In New York, she continued, Mayor Giuliani worked proactively to clean up Times Square. In Philadelphia, she added, market forces had to do the trick.

“And now we have City Hall doing its best to undermine the cleanup,” she lamented.

Well, she is pretty hot!  I would do her…

A Japanese pornstar has offered to sleep with Chinese students to apologise for her country’s invasion of theirs in 1937.

The incursion sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War which led to the death of approximately 20 million Chinese people after the conflict merged with World War II as a front of the Pacific War.

According to The Korea Times, pornstar Anri Suzuki, 24, who has a doctorate in history with a thesis on the invasion, will have sex with Chinese students to make up for the war.

Suzuki said: “We have to respect history and cannot obliterate it. I want to cure the wounds of Chinese with my body, and I am practising this by having sex with Chinese students in Japan.

“I think it is psychological compensation to them. Actually, Chinese students treat me more friendly and comfortably than Japanese.”

More fun jobs you wish you had!

LEE MILL, DEVON, England—Calling jobseekers: You won’t see this at your local employment center.

As employment becomes ever more scarce in Britain, one lucky couple will soon be bucking the credit crunch in style, as online sex toy retailer Adult Pleasure Zone is seeking to find its latest employees: an energetic couple to become the world’s leading sex toy testers.

The job requires the couple to test-drive the retailer’s hundreds of existing toys, along with dozens of the most weird and wonderful new toys from around the world, to find only the ones that best hit the (G-)spot. They will also become a feature on British televisions as the foremost foreplay experts, and will have a column on top women’s website FemaleFirst.co.uk.

A two-car crash on a Florida highway was caused by a 37-year-old woman who was shaving her bikini area while in the driver’s seat, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Her ex-husband was steering from the passenger seat.

Megan Mariah Barnes and her ex-husband Charles Judy were driving southbound Tuesday morning when they slammed into the back of a pick-up driven by David Schoff after he slowed to take a turn, CBS station WFOR-TV reports.

Barnes said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be “ready for the visit,” trooper Gary Dunick explained.

Barnes and Judy allegedly drove another half-mile before switching seats. When they were pulled over, Judy claimed to have been driving. The trooper noticed burns on Judy’s chest from the passenger-side airbag, which disproved their story. The airbag in the steering wheel apparently did not deploy.

Three passengers – a man and two women – were treated for minor injuries.

Barnes had been driving with a suspended license, just a day after being convicted in an Upper Keys court of a DUI. She was sentenced to nine months of probation, and her license was revoked for five years.

Now, Barnes is being charged with reckless driving, driving with a revoked license, leaving the scene of a crash with injuries, and driving with no insurance, WFOR-TV reports. She could face a year in jail if found guilty of violating her probation.

Judy was not charged in the crash.