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It remained open during the AIDS crisis, when numerous employees died. Strangled by the internet — where pornography and dating apps abound — Circus of Books will close for good Saturday.
If you wanted to find community, you had to go out and seek it. After Karen, who had worked as a journalist, spotted a newspaper ad seeking magazine distributors for Larry Flynt — the publisher of Hustler and Chic — Barry started driving around to liquor stores and newsstands, taking orders.
Karen did deliveries.
She was pregnant at the time, so she hired unemployed musicians — she preferred drummers, who always seemed the most reliable — to help with heavy lifting. One West Hollywood store, Book Circus, ordered gay titles, including Blueboy and Honcho , each month and instantly sold out.
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Barry made a deal with the property manager: The couple kept the staff and changed the name to Circus of Books. Along with the pornography, they sold obscure novels from LGBTQ authors, as well as science fiction books, foreign newspapers, even Bibles. For decades, gay magazines — including ONE, the non-pornographic magazine for which the archive is named — that were sold at newsstands in big cities were obscured behind a tarp or curtain and sold alongside bawdy straight magazines, even if the gay periodicals had no nude pictures. They had to go to synagogue with their mother. I was fighting with my mom about my hair color … and they were actually dealing in hardcore videos.
Rachel and her brothers sometimes sneaked into the pornography section to giggle at the movie covers until their mom yelled at them to get out. If employees felt well enough to work, the Masons encouraged them to come in so they could have some normalcy.
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If they needed public assistance to pay for expensive medication, the couple would pay them off the books in cash so they could keep unemployment benefits. It was the only time, Karen said, she ever broke the rules. The Masons by that time had bought the building, which had several apartments upstairs, and their tenants were dying, too. Many were estranged from their families. I had nothing to say to parents like that.
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At its peak, Circus of Books had three locations. A short-lived Sherman Oaks store closed in the late s after the city ordered it to stop selling porn because it was too close to an elementary school. The Silver Lake shop closed in amid declining sales.
First Hand Gay Adult Digest Magazine (Volume 14, Number 4), 0718964691065
The West Hollywood store had its share of drama. In , the city ordered the store to close daily from 2 to 6 a.
But it was a sting. By continuing past this Warning Statement Page, I affirm, under penalty of perjury that I am not an agent or attorney for any government, governmental agency or branch, law enforcement agency, or military agency or branch, nor am I a law enforcement officer for any level city, state, or federal government.
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