Any good Midwesterner knows that if you can drive to a destination in less than 24 hours, why take a plane? That journey is perfectly road trip-able.
On the routes that mark any standard, lengthy road trip, there are a few givens: Saying “horses!” whenever you see horses. Ogling the mega-rest stops and giant gas stations that pepper the highway. (Which always seem to have great sunglasses.) And making note of the many, many billboards along the way.
Of those billboards, there are some near universals: Some advertising pro-life or religious messages, others highlighting firework stands, and then the ones that make the occasional passerby blush — adult retailers.
In an era where pornography is readily accessible on your phone and where adult toys can be delivered discreetly nearly anywhere in the world in two to three business days, how do these adult retailers situated off of highways and interstates continue to stay in business when most potential customers simply drive on by?
When adult retailers first came to the rural Midwest, “divisive” might be the best (and most politely Midwestern) term to describe town responses. The reality, however, was often much harsher — and much less polite.
The Lion’s Den — a chain of adult retailers with 52 locations in 23 states — was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in the early ‘70s. In 1978, one of its storefront was bombed.
Nearly three decades later, a Lion’s Den adult retail shop arrived just outside of the small city of Abilene, Kansas. Upset by the sale of pornography in their community, locals organized a 100-day round-the-clock protest and erected a billboard in a neighboring field reading “Pornography Destroys Families.” Any truck driver who entered the Lion’s Den would have their license plate numbers taken down and would be reported to their employers.
President of the Lion’s Den chain, Mark Miller, says this pushback is a form of NIMBYism. And while he said such “not in my backyard” mentality still exists as it relates to adult retailers, it’s not as prevalent as it once was.
“Just in the dozen years that I’ve been here, opening a store — you either have a protest, you certainly have people who are willing to express their opinion on social media,” he said. “The uproar quickly dissipates though, and they see that we’re as good a corporate citizen as anyone else is.”
That’s a question that Michael Borowski, an associate professor of photography at Virginia Tech, had when moving to the college town of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Borowski has chronicled roughly 20 small town sex shops across the U.S. as part of an ongoing photography series.
His interest was piqued when he came across Pure Pleasure, a roughly 10-minute drive outside of Chippewa Falls, population roughly 15,000. Adult retailer Pure Pleasure is a small, nondescript building — nondescript except for the pink neon script lettering spelling out its name.
Its placement is, well, kind of funny. The store’s closest neighbors include an auto parts shop, a construction equipment rental company, a gun shop, and a headstone and monument maker.
Like many things in real estate, a lot comes down to zoning laws. In many cities and towns, adult retailers fall under the category of a “sexually oriented business.” Those shops must adhere to stringent zoning restrictions. In the small town of Franklin, Nebraska, for example, sexually oriented businesses are not allowed to operate within 400 feet of places of worship, schools, public parks, correctional facilities, libraries, funeral homes, medical clinics, bars or liquor stores. (Such regulations are not uncommon, especially in the Midwest.) Oftentimes, adult retailers would be relegated to industrial zones, far away from mom-and-pop businesses and adding to the stereotypical image of a seedy sex shop.
Operate outside of the town limits, however, and you’re able to operate outside of the town’s zoning restrictions.
“Initially, when the opportunity was first pursued, [zoning] certainly was a huge factor,” Mark Miller of the Lion’s Den said. “30 years ago, because of the product mix that was sold” — which included more pornography — “it was much, much easier to find a building or a piece of property in a more rural area because of a lack of zoning.”
Outside of population bases, such stores catered to travelers and truck drivers. And the customers are there. “Traffic wise, we average about 1,000 people through the door per location per week,” said Miller.
Then, there’s also a level of anonymity provided by locations in more rural settings, according to Marina Adshade, an assistant professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia and author of “Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love.”
“I teach 700, 800 students a year at my institution. I have zero desire to run into one of them. I saw one of my students in a liquor store the other day, and he was absolutely mortified,” she said. “I guarantee if I went into a sex shop, I’d run into a student — and I’m not doing that.”
Oh, and those billboards seen off the sides of roadways? Those were sometimes the only advertisements accessible to adult retailers, at times when some media outlets shied away from running ads for vibrators and fuzzy handcuffs. (Or would do so under the auspices of handheld massagers.)
What may be most surprising is that many of these retailers continue to thrive in the modern age.
“The internet’s ease of access to pornography forever changed the adult retail business,” said Miller. “Even a dozen years ago when I started, you know, sales of video [pornography] was around 35%. Today, it’s 4.5% of sales.”
Adult retailers of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s were “tawdry, for lack of a better word,” said Kris Kay, PR and marketing director for ED Publications, which includes StorErotica Magazine, a B2B trade publication for the adult retail industry.
“It was kind of dingy, was kind of dirty. There wasn’t really a lot of attention paid to aesthetics,” he said.
That’s since changed as retailers have adapted to the changes of the internet age, in part by trying to expand their customer base.
According to Mark Miller, the Lion’s Den has invested in making its storefronts more inviting to couples and women. They’ve updated store facades, shop floors and signage. Many stores now have a glass front door rather than an opaque one — a small change that establishes a greater sense of safety, transparency, cleanliness and comfort.
“The number of female visitors increased dramatically after we made that one simple change,” he said.
The general modernization tactics that more adult retailers are employing are a change that Marina Adshade has noticed. “You know, there used to be just like nurse uniforms and like French maid uniforms and pornography for men. And now you see you go in, I think that they’re just a totally different space for people with a variety of different sexual desires or tastes,” she said.
Whether adult retailers will continue to be as much of the landscape of the Great American Road Trip in the Midwest as fields of corn and wheat and soybeans remain to be seen.
Kris Kay sees a likely urban-rural divide in the adult retail business: Sex stores in cities will be able to specialize and focus on niche products or kinks. The ones on the highways are likely to be generalist, he said: a scratch for every itch.
The Lion’s Den, meanwhile, is looking to expand. CEO Mark Miller says the goal is to reach 100 stores — though he notes that newer locations will likely be closer to population centers, not further away.
Kay, Miller and the University of British Columbia’s Marina Adshade all note that stores will likely have to lean into the aspect that inherently sets them apart from online-only sex shops: It’s an experience.
Salespeople are able to provide an education of sorts for customers, answering questions in ways that chatbots simply cannot. And for consumers looking to drop lots of money on products that make them feel good — after all, sex toys are not cheap — it can be worthwhile to see and feel a toy before splurging on it.
It’s a challenge, Kay said, when so many other experiences are vying for consumer dollars.
“[Adult retailers] are fighting Amazon, they’re fighting Alibaba, they’re fighting the savvy consumer that will go on to 20 different websites to find a toy that’s $10 cheaper. But they’re also fighting Top Golf, and they’re also fighting the movies. And they’re also fighting every other destination that everyone likes to go to when we have a little bit of money to spend in our pocket,” he said. “Sex toys are the ultimate discretionary item.”
