sometimes it feels like netflix has reinvented the documentary. The streaming service frequently produces movies and series on topics that more traditional studios may not have given the time of day, like Tiger King or Wild Wild Country. His latest is Circus of Books, which tells the story of West Hollywood’s eponymous gay porn shop and its unlikely owners. The Circus of Books store closed its physical location last year after several decades as a neighborhood mainstay in West Hollywood, one of the most important bastions of gay culture in the United States. But while the physical location of the Circus of Books is gone, the store lives on, both in the memories of those who frequented it and in the form of a new store that is its spiritual successor.
The story behind the circus of books, which is developed a lot in the documentary, is like this. the store first opened as a book circus sometime in the 1960s, though no one involved in the store’s latest incarnation seems to remember who the original owners were. In 1982, a couple named Karen and Barry Mason took over the store. she was a former journalist and he was a former film special effects engineer, and they got a job handing out hustler magazines to Los Angeles bookstores. In the late 1970s, one such store was Book Circus, which also doubled as a gay porn store. after discovering that the current owners couldn’t keep the store running, the masons decided to buy it.
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the masons became owners of book circus in 1982 and changed the name of the company to circus of books. But just because a pair of straight, conservative Jewish parents were the new owners of a gay porn and sex shop, that didn’t mean they’d ditch the store’s offerings. instead, they expanded them. They opened a second location in the Silver Lake neighborhood of East Los Angeles and also began producing their own gay porn movies, according to the BBC. however, with this 1980s expansion came additional problems. the reagan administration was cracking down on the porn industry, and mr. Mason was accused of selling pornography across state lines. He faced a five-year prison sentence, but managed to avoid jail time after pleading guilty.
masons and the circus of books also played a part in perhaps the biggest story of the 1980s: the AIDS crisis. At the time, AIDS patients were not considered eligible for Medicaid coverage, and patients had to be unemployed to obtain health insurance. But the masons employed many HIV and AIDS patients, paying them under the table so they could still earn a living without losing their health insurance, according to the couple’s daughter, Rachel Mason, who directed the documentary The Circus of Books. .
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Today, the circus of books no longer exists. The Silver Lake location closed for good in 2016, and the original West Hollywood store closed in February. 2019 after nearly four decades of mason ownership. however, he still lives in a spiritual sense. In January 2020, LGBTQ porn director and drag artist Chi Chi Larue took over the original space on Santa Monica Boulevard from the Masons and opened Chi Chi Larue’s Circus. the new site is much more exclusive than its predecessor, but contains a number of nods to the store’s storied past and offers many of the same products.
Between the new store in the original location and the new Netflix documentary highlighting the old store, it seems unlikely that anyone will forget the book circus any time soon.
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