Along with its handsome brownstones and quiet side streets, Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood is known for liberal politics, social activism and a large gay professional class that is accepting of all sorts of lifestyles.  But lately, with the opening of the fifth gay sex shop on a five-block stretch of Eighth Avenue, residents are asking if enough is more than enough. “It’s starting to feel like Times Square around here,” said Stephen P. Williams, a writer who has told his teenage son not to get into conversations with the men outside the stores.  In large display windows, the shops advertise things like Boy Butter (“a revolutionary creamy formula”), penis-enlargement systems (“used successfully for 30 years with 15 million satisfied customers”) and peep show viewing booths (“$10 entrance, 12-hour access”).  They are between 18th and 23rd Streets, with names that are displayed prominently in blue neon lights and on bright-colored awnings: Rainbow Station, Blue DVD, the Blue, Splosh and, most recently, Vibe.  Though Times Square has been turned into a tourist’s paradise, with Disney musicals, chain restaurants and even a Baby Gap crowding out the peep shows, in Chelsea the stores still thrive. Scott McCormick, who is gay and the father of two young children, said the neighborhood opposition is not about homophobia. “I’m pretty liberal, but I’m conservative when it comes to raising children,” he said. “There are several schools in the neighborhood — every day we’re walking past these stores 10 times.”  Several of the shops are open 24 hours. Neighbors complain that they find used condoms and latex gloves in front of their homes, have light bulbs removed to darken their vestibules and see men having sex in the hours before dawn on playground benches. They say male hustlers are drawn to the area, including men who charge for sex in the booths in the rear of the shops.  The battle over the sex shops reflects changes in the neighborhood that have been going on for a long time. Residents, including a generation of gay men and women who have become parents, are now middle-aged with families. Stores that their younger, wilder selves might have found amusing and perhaps frequented are now seen as a bad influence on the children who fill the streets each afternoon when school lets out.  A father of a young child said that he would like to see the shops shuttered. But he also said he didn’t feel he could speak publicly because as a younger man, he would visit sex shops. “It would be hypocritical,” he said.  Longtime residents who remember Chelsea when it was run-down, poor and bohemian have come to see the shops as a nuisance and an eyesore. Cheryl Kupper, a retired book editor who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years, said she is no prude. She pointed out that she is gay and would have “no First Amendment problems” if the stores were discreet. “One feels the mannequins will jump out of the window at you with their bulging crotches,” she said.  Owners say they are providing personal items for a lifestyle that harms no one. Dumesh Kankanamalage, who owns two of the shops, said he never permits sex in the eight video booths in the back of Rainbow Station. “One person only per booth, and they have to shut the door,” he said.  “We provide a service,” he added. “They can look at movies they don’t want to get caught watching in the house.”  The question of how many pornography shops on Eighth Avenue are too many is not a new one at Community Board 4 meetings, where the issue comes up every few years. Christine Berthet, the board’s chairwoman, said the latest outcry was prompted by Mr. Kankanamalage’s application last year for a liquor license at Splosh.  “It was kind of a rallying moment,” Ms. Berthet said. Mr. Kankanamalage wrote that he planned to open a “white cloth, full service restaurant” on the ground floor “that would provide an affordable dining experience.”  “A porn shop serving liquor — what kind of economic model is that?” said Mr. Williams, the father with the teenage son. More than 20 people spoke against the proposal at a board meeting; 125 signed a letter of opposition.  In rejecting the application, the community board called it a “time bomb.”  The commanding officer of the 10th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Michelle Irizarry, said the neighbors’ complaints of prostitution and drug dealing were exaggerated. “We aren’t seeing what they are seeing, and they are not calling us to these locations when they see these things,” she said. “If they could show me one location where there are condoms or any sort of paraphernalia that would indicate any sexual activity occurring on the street, we would certainly be amenable to addressing that.”  She said there had been summonses issued but for lesser offenses, like public urination and disorderly conduct, along with noise complaints, mostly between 20th and 21st Streets, where there are two stores on the block.  Shop workers interviewed didn’t use the word “prostitution,” but they did say there were men who came into their stores soliciting sex. “I see hustlers come and ask for money,” said Anthony Fernando, who works the register at Blue DVD. “I think it’s easy money for them.”  He said men typically come to the store to pick up someone and then go elsewhere for sex.  Two weeks ago, he said, he had to call the police when a hustler tried to steal a customer’s wallet. Mr. Fernando said that after patrons started snapping pictures with their smartphones, the man ran away. How aggressively to regulate New York City’s sex shops has been a sensitive matter for elected officials, including the gay politicians who represent Chelsea. They are caught between gay residents who see the shops as a quality-of-life issue and want them shut and gay patrons, who say a crackdown would be a return to the days when the police raided their bars and social clubs to intimidate and humiliate gay men.  The result has been a political stalemate. The councilman representing Chelsea, Corey Johnson, who is gay and a strong advocate for gay rights, has avoided taking a public stand on the issue.  “Chelsea, as a neighborhood, is known around the world as a place of diversity and inclusion,” he wrote in response to a request for comment. “One of the challenges that neighborhoods face is how to balance local concerns.”  The authorities, too, are in a tough spot. In 2008 and 2009 the New York Police Department conducted undercover operations and raided several sex shops across the city, charging 41 men with prostitution.  But most of the charges were eventually dropped, and several of the men filed civil rights complaints against the city, winning settlements for as much as $450,000.  Since then, according to police officials, the department rarely if ever sends undercover officers into the shops. Inspector Irizarry said she had her uniformed cabaret unit make visits to check that the stores were properly licensed, that customers were over 21 and that there were no signs of criminal activity.  Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston and an anti-pornography activist, said the Internet has largely replaced old-style shops. “The days of going in and buying porn are way over,” she said, noting that smartphones have accelerated the change by offering small-screen convenience for discreet home viewing.  Even so, the manager of Rainbow Station, which has a collection of 1,000 pornography DVDs, said customers found that there were advantages to shopping in person. “Here they can touch merchandise,” he said, “and don’t pay the shipping.”  For parents in the neighborhood, it’s all a worry. One father described cooking dinner recently and asking his 6-year-old son, who loves helping out, to get him the olive oil. The boy, remembering something he had seen on Eighth Avenue, looked up at his father and said, “Dad, why don’t we use the Boy Butter?”  A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2015, on page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: Chelsea’s Risqué Businesses . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
In a famously liberal enclave, residents both gay and straight weigh freedom and acceptance against commercial displays that schoolchildren must walk past.