An Oakland sex shop is trying to open in the San Francisco airport. It’s controversial, and it’s running into a procedural snag.
Airport rules for ‘terminal 3 popups’ say that the business first has to have $250,000 in annual revenue before it’s permitted to apply, and the Feelmore Adult Gallery misses the threshold. They’re asking the airport commission to lower the bar. We’ll find out March 20th which stores get to open.
There are some objections — even in San Francisco — to opening a sex shop in the airport, which attracts people from all locations and walks of life and because it’s “hard to be discreet when selling a foot-long prosthetic penis.”
However the shop’s owner suggests they aren’t just a sex shop they’re also “an erotic art gallery and community resource center” and people need a sex shop during delays.
When people get into an airport, and the plane is delayed, you got three or four hours to kill,” Joiner said. You’re going to need something. Not just a power cord— not just a sandwich. You’re going to need a vibrator, a condom, lubricant.
Personally I think that’s debatable, since there’s no Minute Suites in the San Francisco airport.
The shop also believes they can be discrete, making “sure that people wouldn’t be offended, through high-end vibrators that don’t look like vibrators, and that don’t have disparaging detail on the boxes.”
Personally I see a need for a sex shop landside, before security so you can put stuff in a friend’s carry on before they go through the checkpoint and so you can buy something to check as baggage as a standalone item.
Now *this* is the quality av-geek reporting that I love. =)
LMAO and drawing stares from fellow diners. Great!
I say go for it. It’ll make the TSA lines a lot more entertaining…
To be fair, there used to be a rather unrepentant sex shop at FRA. I haven’t heard about it lately, so I assume it’s gone now.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/crap/123650006
The lube will have to be in TSA-approved sizes.
Stuttgart has a sex shop right next to the car rental counters. The store has pretty explicit merchandise in the window.
http://www.stuttgart-airport.com/at-the-airport/shops-more/informations?retail=13489
I don’t think the author knows what “disparaging” means!
It all sounds hilarious until the guy who can’t handle a few hours without sex toys is the passenger sitting next to your wife/girlfriend/child/etc. and is liquored up or just knows that the FAs won’t do a thing.
I’ve seen penthouse and darker porn mags for sale in many airport bookstores which always baffled me…and to the other commenter my scientific analysis says women use these toys much more than guys. The folks that “need” them will already have their own with them. I say go for it just that it’s gotta be tasteful from the outside as I don’t want my four year old seeing a giant dong, he needs to wait a few years so he can google it himself with all the other kids in his class.