LA’s LGBTQ community loses iconic storefront business
A legacy LGBTQ business that for over three decades was a pilgrimage site for aficionados of homoerotic magazines, books, and video- which also included scarce and sought out vintage titles, is closing its doors Saturday, February 9, forever.
Circus of Books (originally knows as Book Circus), located at 8230 Santa Monica Blvd. at the corner of North La Jolla Avenue in West Hollywood, was a beloved institution offering gay and straight porn magazines as well as adult sexual toys during a time those publications were the primary medium for distributing queer sexual imagery as well as being of dubious legality. The shop also sold international newspapers and classic literary titles.
As was the case with nearly all of the LGBTQ bookstores across the United States, many of which have closed over the past 15 years, the shop was also a community mainstay, a refuge, a haven, a safe place for the community members to come together, meet, chat, peruse publications that offered a perspective on the sexual lives of adult LGBTQ people, but more so, the shop offered them a brief sanctuary from homophobia.
https://www.losangelesblade.com/2019/02/09/las-lgbtq-community-loses-iconic-storefront-business/ via