Kim Airs has been commuting back and forth between Grand Opening!s - her old store, in Brookline, Mass., and the new, slightly smaller one at 8442 Santa Monica Boulevard - for several months, and Thursday night, the doors opened to an eclectic collection of media, sexwork activists, porn stars and anybody else that could wangle an invite.
Besides reporters from Time Magazine, Self Magazine, British GQ, the L.A. Times, AVN, Los Angeles Magazine, E! Entertainment, Esquire, and the L.A. Weekly , we spotted porn stars Mark Davis, his wife Kitten and their companion Charmaine Star, plus Kylie Ireland and Dave Cummings; makeup artist to the (porn) stars Marianne Walter; AIM Healthcare’s Miss Sharon Mitchell, Hustler’s Theresa Flynt; sexwork activist and writer Dr. Carol Queen, and author Lisa Palac.
The store, which in some ways resembles San Francisco's Good Vibrations, is about as customer-friendly as possible, right down to how they market their vibrators.
"We keep batteries in our vibrators, because you don't buy the box; you buy the product," Airs explained. "That's the huge difference between us and anybody else, because you're buying the product; you're not buying the naked chick on the box."
Besides the vibes, the store has a wide selection of dildos, art books, sex ed books, lubes, condoms, videos and above all, art - like her wall of silken "pussy pillows."
The videos and DVDs are available for sale or rent, and Airs is very selective about her stock.
"It's more couples oriented," Airs detailed. "It's not so much gonzo. We've got Shane's World , which is tried and true gonzo. But that's kind of what we limited it to. Some Seymore Butts, but that's it. We've got a lot of classics, because our clientele tend to be older, so it's, 'Oh, you know what? I never saw Deep Throat .' Or 'I never saw Taboo .' So we give them the opportunity to see those. The classics do really, really well here; very steady."
But Airs wants to do more than satisfying her customers' sexual device needs; she wants to improve their sex lives altogether.
"We'll be having a number of educational lectures," Airs informed. "They're tasteful, they're not explicit; anything from 'Ifs, Ands and Butts,' an anal sex workshop - I teach a striptease class called 'Take It Off'; 'Sex Tips For Guys,' 'Sex Tips For Girls,' where we cover a lot of anatomy. Things that are really important. People that fantasize about learning something, or 'You know, I've always fantasized about my girlfriend wearing a strap-on' - well, we teach a strap-on class: 'Strap It On And Ride Till Dawn,' which is open to men and women. We also teach how to talk to your kids about sex and just a whole big range of classes."
Unfortunately, the classes won't start till sometime in June, because - get this - "We had to get a conditional use permit for the city, because classes are not part of a normal retail store's agenda."
See, the sexually-oriented boutique needs a special permit to educate !
Those who aren't familiar with Airs, and perhaps live too far away from her stores to actually pay a visit - and are too communicatively-deprived to go to her Website www.grandopening.com but have cable TV - can check her out on her HBO special, scheduled to air sometime in July or August.
"It's called Porn 101: Doin' It For The Big Screen , which is our night of amateur adult video that I put on at the Coolidge in Boston," Airs explained. "HBO's Real Sex made it a segment, and they loved it so much, they're making it a one-hour feature, and it'll be aired this summer."
Airs hopes to put together a similar film festival in Los Angeles.
Perhaps the evening was best summed up by Mitchell, fresh from her talk at the Free Speech Coalition general meeting in Van Nuys:
"Isn't this great? We love Kim, we love her store. It's Feng Shui - everything is in perfect alignment with the universe and with the chi."
