Although we can't spell "obscenity," we sure as hell know it when we see it ... by the way, is that item for sale?

The Sherman Minton Bridge still stands.

The many vacated commercial buildings in downtown New Albany haven’t collapsed – yet.

People are moving, going to work, shopping, living their lives.

When the sun again sets, the highlands we know as Silver Hills will cast a long evening shadow over the city’s west side, where New Albany Adult DVD finally has opened on Main Street in spite of persistent and generally bungled efforts on the part of the city to keep the business shuttered.

The First Amendment has survived another beating at the hands of small-minded ward heelers, and now the market will commence its judgment on the veracity of New Albany DVD’s business plan.

Naturally, owing to the ongoing litigation and various settlement possibilities, we’ll never know if the store’s strategic aims were designed with day-to-day profit in mind, or whether inviting the city’s misguided wrath and collecting the proceeds was the store’s only goal from the beginning.

Amany Ali’s Sunday Tribune survey of the New Albany DVD saga concludes with this account of the Wizard of Westside’s latest bizarre rationale for self-insertion with respect to arbitrating New Albanian morality.

West end resident Dan Coffey said he is attempting to raise enough money to buy the building and use it for a senior center. Coffey is a City Councilman, but said his efforts are strictly as a New Albany resident who does not want the adult bookstore in New Albany.

Coffey said he has taken pledges so far, and said he will not actually begin collecting money until he knows that enough money could be collected to accomplish the goal.

Coffey said the new business is not an asset to the city.

"I try not to look at it," he said. "It kind of breaks your heart when you drive by it."

Coffey said he doesn't think local residents will frequent the store.

However, he said he thinks customers will keep the business open.

"I think the vast majority of people will come from Louisville," he said.

Citizen Coffey is to be commended for belatedly swapping his elected persona for a more properly expressed private one, which places him firmly within the ranks of concerned taxpayers like David Huckleberry, whose recent suggestion that we do a better job of fleecing Caesar’s-bound motorists drew enthusiastic nods from Councilman Coffey.

However, Coffey is heartbroken at the sight of New Albany DVD, a rare “new business” that even the Wizard can see fits the bill of enticing transitory Louisvillians to spend money in New Albany, something that “local residents” assuredly won’t do … but these same “local residents” still must pay, either by pledging the money they wouldn’t spend on adult DVDs toward a crusade to uproot the store, or providing it indirectly to city government to atone for its botched campaign against the First Amendment.

All the while, whether through Coffey’s congenital grandstanding or the city’s mangled legal strategies, New Albany DVD is provided free publicity and maximum exposure (pun intended) far beyond what it could receive in paid advertising.

Had the city ignored New Albany DVD in the spring of 2004, allowed it to open for business, passed ordinances restricting future projects of the same ilk, and all in all, treated the phenomenon according to a policy of containment rather than aggression, it is quite possible that New Albany DVD would already have passed into history by now.

Instead, fueled by the puritanical zeal of the Coffeyites, the city faces a lose-lose situation, with every available option standing to cost us money we don’t have to spend.

As for the Wizard himself, it is quite likely that he see the situation as clearly as NA Confidential … but when it comes to ambition, self-aggrandizement means never having to say you’re constructive.