Adelaide City Council aim to push all sex shops onto Hindley st, all while gentrifying the street of sin is resulting in a conflicted stance | Caleb Bond

With new planning rules endorsed by Adelaide City Council to restrict erotic retailers to Hindley Street, Caleb Bond writes they have other things to worry about.

Thank heavens Adelaide City Council has appointed itself the sex police.

It’s not like it has anything else to worry about.

New planning rules endorsed by the council would essentially restrict new “adult entertainment premises” – strip joints and erotic retailers – to Hindley St.

In all my years of wandering around the Adelaide CBD, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped and thought, “Gee, we really need to stop the scourge of strip joints and sex shops taking over this city”.

Nor, in all my years of talking to other people who wander around the Adelaide CBD, has anyone complained to me that we have to do something about all these rampant houses of sin.

Probably because there is no such scourge.

Bond believes council should be more concerned with King William St. Picture: AAP/Mark Bake)

The most thinking I’ve done about the matter is to wonder how Pole Position, near the intersection of East Tce and Pirie and Hutt streets, stays afloat outside of the Adelaide 500 and Fringe Festival due to its strange location.

Can you think of any strip clubs that have opened in the past decade?

They’ve actually closed – Strats and Aphrodite Lounge have both packed up.

But councils must be seen to be busy so they’ve decided to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

One city can only support so many establishments of that nature.

Adelaide City Council says Hindley St is “the pre-eminent evening and late-night entertainment hub for metropolitan Adelaide”.

But the council seems a bit conflicted.

On one hand, it wants to gentrify the place by widening the footpaths and increasing outdoor dining.

On the other, it wants to concentrate every stripper and sex toy-merchant into the one street, thus cementing its famous seediness.

Both cannot be true at once – and let’s be real, the only kind of dining anyone seeks on Hindley St is greasy fast food or a late-night yiros from Yianni’s.

And that’s no knock on Hindley St – I’ve spent many a night within its venues, particularly The Little Pub.

West End traders in the past complained about sexualised billboards on Hindley Street.

Part of what makes Hindley St is the fact it is a bit grimy and seedy.

You know what you’re getting and you don’t expect anything else.

You’d think they’d be more concerned with King William St, which I have complained in these pages for years is a dirty dump unworthy of its status, according to the council, as a “ceremonial” boulevard.

I have repeatedly complained about the derelict old Adelaide Metro info centre at the corner of Currie St – which has been empty for about five years – and its constant coverage of graffiti.

The windows are boarded up with weird artwork to mask the fact the ground floor is covered in pigeon droppings.

Its unhinged doors were on Sunday scrawled with the message: “ADR YOUR F*KN S**T!!!”.

The spelling is an abomination – and who or what ADR is I have no clue.

That’s what Adelaide serves up on the thoroughfare that goes through the middle of the city.

But the council is more worried about where strippers can and cannot work.