I certainly have heard of the bizarre Texas rules for selling dildoes and whatnot, but I have never seen them put into practice. Luckily (or perhaps not), Amanda has some video (featuring Molly Ivins!) and a personal story about how exactly one goes about buying a vibrator in the Gret Stet of Texas.
Me? The first adult bookstore I can name that I actually went into and bought any kind of toy for myself was Aircraft Book & News in East Hartford, Connecticut. So, so, not the woman-friendly Forbidden Fruit that Amanda knows about, since it was (and still is) focused on a clientele who stop in for porn after finishing their shifts at Pratt & Whitney.
I later found woman-run erotica shops in Ann Arbor and in the South End of Hartford, but I will never forget the fairly skeezy vibe at Aircraft Book & News and the sense of swallowing my fear before going in there.
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Porn stores are the skeeviest! I’ve recently come to the south, and tried to go vibrator shopping with my partner… It is NOT reassuring to have a steel cage around the cash register area!!!
Yeah, welcome to the South. You’re going to love it.
Heh…
Greatest place ever: Toys in Babeland. Woman-owned and woman-run, very fun, and not skeezy in the slightest. All the toys are out on counters, so you can play with them (with your hands, kids) before you buy. And they have guarantees, so if your vibrator breaks right after you buy it, you can return it. A trip to Babeland is a nice Saturday afternoon activity to do with the girls.
And for those of you who don’t live near a Babeland (they’re in Seattle, New York, and I think San Francisco), you can order from their website. I recommend the Rabbit and the Snowy G. :-)
Pandagon appears to have been suspended?
When it comes to shopping for sex toys, thank Gore for the internet. No worries about skeeviness and available no matter where you live. I second the recommendation for the Rabbit, which I ordered from Toys in Babeland…twice (they don’t live forever).
Ha. I think I bought my first at Aircraft too. Either there or Bookends in Enfield, and no, neither one is particularly women-friendly. But at least it wasn’t, you know, illegal.
I was once dared to go into a Pleasure Chest store; the darer said he thought I wouldn’t. (He was telling me how he and office buddies used to just pass the window of the branch store near their office, and I chided him when he said they had never gone inside.) I bought the Pleasure Chest catalogue to prove that I’d indeed gone inside. I showed him a page and asked if he would like to have a certain piercing done… he quite quickly closed the book.
Aircraft News – haven’t thought of that place in years, although I didn’t buy my first toy there. I grew up in EH, worked at Pratt too…
Aja/Zuzu – didja ever hit The Pub?
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