Today's post is about a long-gone business establishment on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood — a store that will forever have a fond place in my heart. You can see it in the above photo and I thought I'd tell you a—
— No, no, no, no! You're wrong! It's not the Institute of Oral Love! I swear to you I never went into that place! I don't even know for sure what went on in there but the buzz was that it was kind of a trap where gullible men would wander in, thinking they were going to be physically gratified and then, once they'd shelled out goodly handfuls of cash, a woman would talk dirty to them — and that was it. All talk, no action.
And hey, when you think about it, what else could it have been? If you really were operating a business where the suckers weren't the customers, you wouldn't put up big signs that made everyone think that's what went on in there. You might as well have the signs say, "Attention, Police! Come In and Arrest Us!!!" How foolish would the cops have looked if prostitution was going on in that place and they didn't close it down? (For a few years, there was an innocuous store on La Brea with a sign that said "Bordello." I don't know what kind of business it was but because of that sign, the least-likely possibility was that it was a bordello.)
The business of which I have great memories is also not the Pussycat Theater next door…though since a blogger is always under oath when posting, I must admit to being in that place a grand total of twice. Both times were while that particular movie — which I think was there for much of a decade — was on the marquee. In my defense, let me point out that during that time, about two-thirds of the population of Los Angeles went there. It was very much "in" to see Deep Throat, which is why someone somewhere made eighty-three squadrillion dollars off it.
The Pussycat got my money twice — once when a friend of mine (male) wanted to go see it. Later, I had a lady friend who insisted I take her to it — but alas, not to learn a skill.
That's not the business this post is about and neither is whatever enterprise connected with that word "nude" at far right…but you're getting warmer. See that pink building at the extreme right? There were two small stores in there. Around 1963, the one on the right was a kind of business that has become almost extinct in this and age. It was a very nice second-hand bookstore and this may be the closest I'll ever come to having a real photo of it.
I was ten in 1962 and in an eternal quest for back issue comic books. That was not then an expensive hobby because new comics then sold for twelve cents and second-hand bookshops sold them for less than half that — a nickel apiece and often, it was six for a quarter. Needless to say, when I bought, I bought in multiples of six. An annual or any comic that sold originally for 25 cents counted as two regular-sized books.
That six-for-the-price-of-five "bargain" is one of the things that broadened my taste in comics. I'd be collecting DCs and Marvels and then one day at a store, I'd find, say, 29 of those comics I needed for my collection. Rather than waste the free comic to which I was entitled, I'd randomly select one issue of something I wasn't already collecting — maybe a Charlton. I'd take it home, read it and on my next pilgrimage to a used book store, I'd be looking for DCs, Marvels and Charltons.
The little shop on Santa Monica Boulevard did not have a name — or if it did, I never knew it. Outside, it just said "books" and most of what it had were books of the hardcover and softcover variety. It was run by a little old lady of about seventy and as far as I could tell, she was the entire staff.
The old comic books were not out for display. She kept them in piles behind a counter and when I came in, she would move one pile out from a shelf behind there and put it on the counter for me to inspect. I'd select what I wanted from it and then she'd put it back and bring out another pile…and then another and another until I'd been through them all. She took a great liking to me — I was pretty adorable back then — and she'd give me my picks from the New Arrivals pile. I'm not sure if it was so but she made it sound like those were comics that were being saved for me and me alone to peruse before she'd let just anyone have a crack at them.
My father drove me there once about every three weeks. Sometimes, he'd come in with me and browse the non-comic books and maybe buy a couple. Sometimes, he let me go in alone and he'd wait in the car or drop me off and come back. It was a pretty seedy area with those stores and theaters full o' smut but they were mostly closed when we were there on a Saturday morning and I don't recall ever feeling unsafe. The Institute of Oral Love had yet to open its doors but there was something else there that didn't seem much more respectable. I believe it was a "Nixon for Governor" campaign HQ.
I rarely left the bookshop with less than 30 comics, sometimes considerably more. Most were great treasures from a collecting (and investment) standpoint but what mattered to me was how they contributed to my evolution as a writer. I do what I do today in large part because I had access then to stories that excited me.
My visits there went on for a year or so. One day my father dropped me off there and said he'd pick me up in thirty minutes. At the store, the door was locked and the insides were dark. I knocked and no one answered so I waited around a bit to see if anything would change. When nothing did, I asked at a tailor shop next door and a man there said, without the slightest attempt to break the news gently, "Oh, the old lady died!"
I was just numb. It would be twenty-five minutes before my father would be back for me so I walked a half-block down to a little A&W Root Beer stand that also is no longer there. When it was, you could get a mug of their product for a nickel so I plunked one down and sat there, crying in my root beer. The next time we drove past the store, something else — probably porn — was moving in.
That's the whole story. It flashed through my mind when I came across the photo above and I thought I'd share it with you. It may seem like nothing to you but I can still recall the numbness and still recall what wonderful things I got at that store. For five cents each and six for a quarter.
