I thougt this was an austerity move to save 'em from driving south to Ten's. Geeze try to save a little petrol and they get all upset. 
This is going to be a boon to the legal profession and that is about it. Ex Post Facto legislation usually ends up in court. The planning board really can't deny the permit since there is nothing against what they are proposing currently on the books. My guess is that it will be grandfathered like the "adult book store" down the street. They (book store) have been shot down numreous times for live sex shows because it was not the original use but they cannot shut the whole operation down it is grandfathered.
(Vesta do you remember the owner who dissapeared under 'suspicious' circumstances, some say related to the RI mob?)
Are we speaking of the old Moonlight Reader place on 236 ????
I only have one memory of that place that is personal.
Back in 1980 I living in Norfork Va. working in a hospital at that time decided to bring 3 kids home for a two week vacation with their gradparents.
One of my friends and coworker told me she had never been north of Richmond Va. so we planned to take a trip up the coast, drop off the kids and go into Canada.
We did so saw all the sights and on the way back SHE noticed the book store in my home town. WTF was very surprised to see this in such a little one stop light Burg so we as a lark stopped in to get gag gifts for our coworkers in VA.
Entering the store that had perhaps 4 customers milling about the owner or clerk came out from behind the desk and Holy Cow, he was a midget not 5 feet tall. We were the only females, real ones at best and were looking for outrageous greeting cards with a Yankee slant that were very different from ones we could have bought in the south.
I noticed a bulletin board in the back with those 5x3 cards advertising for swingers welcome and the actual names and phone numbers and addresses of the people advertising.
Now I had left town to travel at that time in 1967, so it had been only 13-14 years since I had been gone except for off and on a week or so vacation. I was totally amused, at the changes in MY small town, what a hoot.
I, when I picked up the kids got Dad aside and asked him what the hell was going on. Dad came ungluded when I told him I had shopped there and refused to talk about it. Mom on the other hand was more ---times change--.
So of again I went traveling and each time I came home in the last years the book store was still there.
OK I have now been home 23 years and in all that time have avoided 236 like the plague, in the time since most of the news about the book stores has been from the New Hampshire side with the stores along side truck alley headed into Maine.
Did have just one hysterical story about the Maine book store when parents complained that the children from the housing behind it were having sword fights with cast off dildos found behind the store at the bus stop.
I never heard of the owner whoever that was being found dead---You will have to fill me in here and then I will fill you in on the mob that came to Portsmouth and actually got on the shipyard to get to a sailor on a sub, was it the Sea Wolf or the Jack, that had inpregnanted the owner of a local restaurant and dance club. Were you around when Karen's was the hot spot in town ????
What fun to live on any sea coast.
