“They tend to just go to the back.”īack at the arcade at Mission Secrets, no one seemed to be bothered by the man’s request for oral sex. “That customer is not a customer that tends to purchase items,” he said. The arcade is in a different room than the sales floor. If this sounds counter to attracting the young and affluent, Crawshaw says those are two different types of customers that can coexist within the store. “If you live in an SRO you don’t have any privacy…where do you find relief? I hope they can hold on.” “Homeless people need to have sex too,” he said. “In a way, these porn arcades are still serving the purpose of the ones from shops and cinemas in the 60s and 70s: It is sex for those who don’t have access to it,” Stabile said. “Its like Victoria’s Secret, only we have toys,” Crawshaw said. Mission Secrets began offering lingerie as one of its products.
Shops like Mission Secrets are not just a reminder of San Francisco’s past, but still serve a purpose today. It was not unusual to see sex at a balcony, Stabile said. The city was so proud of the industry that tour buses would drive people through vice districts like North Beach, the Tenderloin and the Mission.
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In the late 60s, shortly after the collapse of the movie industry, the Victoria and Roxie theaters used to show porn and the latter even had live sex on stage, according to Stabile. “Imagine all those storefronts at 16 th and Mission that are now smoke shops…people would bring a projector and play porn,” said Mike Stabile, who has been documenting the San Francisco porn industry and released a film in 2011 titled, “Smut Capital of America.” The arcades are a reminder of the early 70s when the New York Times proclaimed the city as the “Porn Capital of America.” Not only were there scores of porn theaters, but people would show porn and other experimental European movies in any storefront they could. “Sometimes there are parents who don’t watch porno because they have kids,” he said. The store is no longer open 24 hours.īut the arcade still serves a function: the people who use them are looking for anonymous sex and most don’t have access to use the Internet in a private place.Ī patron who had just exited one of the booths, and asked to remain anonymous, said that he was just passing by the store after work. Those who want to make the sexual journeys of 50 Shades do so in the privacy of their own homes.Įven the arcades, which have traditionally been the biggest source of revenue for porn shops, have taken a hit. Still, he thinks that 50 Shades of Grey, the erotic romantic novel has opened younger couples to the idea of exploring their sexuality.īut so far, that hasn’t happened and instead the business is suffering. The fact that we exist as a business pisses people off.”
“I don’t think a porn store could ever become gentrified. “Adult stores have a stigma of a dirty guy in a trench coat ready to flash we just want to make it more female-friendly,” he said.
Crawshaw declined to talk finances, but he sees a future in going “boutique.” There’s now a greater emphasis on lingerie, lotions and toys, which, unlike DVDs, have proven to be piracy-proof.
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With dwindling DVD sales and the rise of free Internet porn, the porn business has taken a hit. “It’s changing because your customers are changing, and you want to appeal to the customers in hopes to getting more customers,” Crawshaw said.“The city is becoming younger– there are lot of young couples.” The decision to revamp Mission Secrets, which is owned by the Adult Megastore Corporation, is part of a bigger overhaul of its 16 Bay Area stores – six of which are in San Francisco, said Rick Crawshaw, the district manager for the company. “Mission News – a lot of people thought we were a news stand, they thought we sold magazines,” said Rick Crawshaw, who manages this and other stores owned by Adult Megastore.
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