Not your daddy’s dirty book store

Adult stores used to be the province of guys who were, you might say, between girlfriends. Now they go there with them.

The new Déjá Vu Love Boutique, 3247 Industrial Road, bills itself as "10,000 square feet of pure romance." That's about 6,400 square feet larger than in its old location next door, which remains in the corporate family but has been turned into the tourist-oriented Erotic Heritage Museum.

Inside the new store that opened New Year's Eve, it's not unusual to see real live women -- in pairs or with their guys -- browsing the lingerie section, not too far from other store areas designated by neon signs such as "Fetish & Fun" or "Toys-N-More." Innocuous souvenirs such as T-shirts based on the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign hang not too far away from boxes containing replicas of female body parts covered in "cyberskin."

This brightly lighted department store is the new face of the dirty book store, moving beyond the seedy peep-show emporiums of the recent past.

"They wanted to take the adult shopping to a whole new different level," explains Andrea Brown, general manager of the new Déjá Vu. The original store was opened in 2003 by the chain of Michigan-based strip clubs founded by Harry Mohney. He's a friend of infamous Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, whose Hustler Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Calif., popularized the nothing-to-hide boutique trend.

"What they decided to do was make it more female friendly, couples friendly, and kind of get away from the old stereotype dirty book store," Brown says.

That task was made simpler by the first Las Vegas store's licensing, which wasn't "fully adult," she says. That meant no individual viewing cubicles and a limited hard-core video stock. Those restrictions did not apply to the Déjá vu Adult Emporium, which opened across from The Orleans at 4335 W. Tropicana Ave. in 2006. That store combined the old and the new, proving the upscale retail approach and the old-school cubicles could coexist.

Brown credits part of that success to a "strategic" layout. The blowup dolls and dildos are there, but not in your face. "(They're) just not the first thing you see," she says. "If you walk into a Sears you're not going to go over to where they have the chain saws and pick up a pair of bedroom slippers at the same time."

Other stores including Rancho Adult Entertainment Center, 4820 N. Rancho Drive, are remodeling to embrace the boutique approach. The Adult Superstore, 3850 W. Tropicana Ave., has female employees and clothing on a second level separated from the videos below.

At Déjá Vu, tables offer demonstrations of "toys" and lectures on "Sex Ed 101." Female clerks make women feel more comfortable and, "believe it or not, it's easier for men to speak to a woman," Brown says. "Women seem to be a lot more understanding, a little more compassionate."

The back of the new store contains today's version of the peep-show booth -- hospital-clean and outfitted with a leather desk chair -- and three "theaters" for communal viewing that look more like a casino sports book, with multiple TV screens and padded easy chairs with beverage-cup holders.

The retail trend rides the wave of a broader acceptance of pornography and sexually provocative businesses. The Sapphire strip club advertises on the side of a city bus, flaunting its 2007 designation in the Best of Las Vegas contest.

Hard-core stars Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick are household names, the latter planning to star in a burlesque revue on the Strip.

And the alternative Insurgo theater company found that by setting up the tiny Onyx Theatre in the back of the adult-fetish store called The Rack, 953 E. Sahara Ave., the two businesses "really helped each other out," says former head John Beane. The company branded itself as being outside traditional community theater, while patrons lingered to check out the merchandise on the way in and out of performances of "Hamlet" or "Lysistrata."

"I remember the old Talk of the Town on Charleston. It was sleazy," says John Staglione, the owner of the Evil Angel adult video company who himself crossed over to mainstream Las Vegas entertainment by directing and producing the dance revue "Fashionistas" on the Strip.

Talk of the Town was part of the porn empire established by the late Reuben Sturman. Working under the umbrella of the Gambino crime family, it was Sturman who installed the first coin-operated peep-show machines in Times Square. In 1989, a Nevada grand jury indicted Sturman for federal racketeering, and the store disappeared in the wake of legal troubles.

Staglione now faces his own federal battle against obscenity charges, which seems to run counter to the generally more nonchalant attitude about his wares. "The shift to more stores with a greater variety of product helped expose my product to more people," he says.

Stripped to basic demographics, the new trend doubles a store's appeal. Though Brown estimates about 30 percent of the women shopping in the apparel section are professional dancers at the nearby strip clubs, the rest are more apt to be couples looking to "put a little more romance, a little more spice back in their lives again."

And women don't quit shopping at the fashion section. "Let's face it," she says. "If you walk into any adult store, 95 percent of those items are designed for women's pleasure. It makes sense. Why not make it a place where women are going to be very comfortable shopping? Kind of rediscover themselves again, shall we say?

"This is the 21st century. Women are not afraid to ask for what they want and go out and get it. They can get their own jobs, they can buy their own homes, they can reach their own orgasms. Women are not afraid anymore."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.