Jimmy Flynt

Who'd have thought a couple of brothers in the porn business would end up being named Best Local Heroes?

Only in Cincinnati does this kind of thing happen - the world capital of red-faced repressiveness and the religious right. There's apparently something about telling anyone else how to live their lives that just pisses off CityBeat readers.

Indeed, hundreds of you voted Larry and Jimmy Flynt into the realm of hero status, some citing freedom of speech grounds, some just on the general principle that a bunch of prudes shouldn't be wasting taxpayer dollars trying to shut down Hustler Books, Magazines & Gifts and the sale of some smutty videos. "Live and let live," scribbled one reader in the margins. "It's gratifying," says Jimmy Flynt, who manages the Cincinnati store. "Things have changed here since the 1970s. People come into the store and say they don't necessarily like Hustler magazine but they support what we're doing."

The Flynts are due back in court in May (pending Larry's health after an operation) to fight the 15 obscenity charges filed against them. Larry, the 56-year-old publisher of Hustler magazine (and now a resident of Beverly Hills, Calif.), first ran afoul of Cincinnati's porn police back in the 1970s, in a court battle that involved such right-wing icons as Charles Keating and Simon Leis Jr. (all made famous in the Hollywood flick The People vs. Larry Flynt).

Granted, the Flynts opened the Hustler shop in the heart of downtown last year to tweak their noses at the legal establishment and set the stage to revisit the community's obscenity standards, a rematch two decades later. Yet, in this town, what starts out as a mere tweak can end up a national First Amendment and family values test case, a la Mapplethorpe and the Contemporary Arts Center.

As Larry Flynt tells this month's Esquire, " 'Family values' and morals today are a label for sexual behavior, and that's what I find disturbing." Jimmy and Larry Flynt, Hustler Books, Magazines & Gifts, 34 E. Sixth St., Downtown, 421-7323.

Our runner-up for Best Local Hero is also the winner of the Best Volunteer of the Year, Danny O'Shea. An owner of the Auto Truck Parts Warehouse in Over-the-Rhine, he saw a lot of perfectly good bicycles going to scrap in the salvage business.

"So we started fixing the bikes up and giving them to charities," says O'Shea, noting that he's given 77 refurbished bicycles to the Over-the-Rhine Recreation Center, children's homes and churches. "Basically, any charity that needs bicycles can contact me." How did an auto guy get into fixing kids' bikes? "I've always been mechanically inclined," says the Over-the-Rhine resident, who grew up in Groesbeck. "When I was a kid, I always had mine apart. É Then Channel 9 (heard about it) and came out with a news crew, and the ball just started really rolling that way."

If people want to help, call O'Shea to arrange giving him that old bicycle you haven't ridden in forever or the kids' bikes that are gathering dust in the garage since they took off to college. "We'll take 'em, clean 'em up and get them to kids," he says. "We're really hurting for tires and inner tubes." Danny O'Shea, Auto Truck Parts Warehouse, 607 W. McMillan St., Over-the-Rhine, 621-6500.

In addition to O'Shea, many of our readers chose as Best Volunteer the late Lillie Mae Davenport. For two decades, Davenport - who lived barely above the poverty line herself - volunteered in the Over-the-Rhine Kitchen, touching the lives of hundreds of people a day. Davenport died of stomach cancer in February, just days after her 82nd birthday. "The spiritual gift Lillie gave to us was her ability to persevere through all the negatives in her life," eulogized the Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter at her funeral. Bokenkotter founded the soup kitchen where Davenport volunteered. "She was able to empathize with people." ©