The Sullivan Sex-Shops.

[27cows]

Originally Posted by GreenSkull

The last experience i had in an actual British sex emporium was circa May 2002,and it was just as die as i remembered from three years previous .As the thin streak of piss behind the counter immediately got snooty (Despite my legendary charming personality) at me asking if he had any DVD`s with Missy in (I mean doesn`t it save time to ask ?) .Then went on to try and push a cheap looking slavic gangbang thing on me, and as i was briefly staring at the rack out of nowhere name dropped Cathy Barry telling me he knew her. Then probably due to my obvious lack of interest (I shrugged ) said the buy two get one free offer had now ended, eventhough the orange signs where still stuck on the front of each magazine shelf. Which led to me getting clenched (Like in fist) with him , going up to a sellotaped 80 pound priced bagged multi pack and opening it. As i did so he of course told me not to , but as i told him you`re fully entitled to check before you buy. Oh and wouldn`t you know it but in that pack of ten there were four duplicates ( Two had been used as the top and bottom of the pack just opened at different pages ) and three soft core magazines that wouldn`t have embarrassed a womans guild meeting ! . Thankfully there were a few people in the shop who saw this and i think it must have given them pause ?,along with hopefully going out and spreading the word to their friends. Because i wonder how many people had bought those packs and got ripped off ?, as i`m taking it such practice hardly goes hand in hand with a sensible returns policy ?.Anyway his response to my discovery and annoyance was just to repeat parrot fashion that i shouldn`t have opened it , i replied that i wished his parents hadn`t been brother and sister and politely took my leave .

Sure i guess there must be decently run shops out there , but just the same " Buyer ALWAYS Beware ! "

My mate's dad got stung some time in the 80s and hit on a novel way of getting a full refund - he threatened to cut the hands of the assistant off with an axe (which he didn't actually have LOL) if he didn't get his money back. I think either that or threatening to trash the shop were the only way of dealing with Sullivan's minions. They knew that any court case would expose their rip off empire for what it was, so they would just give you your money back and be happy to see the back of you.

[c0n@pelud0]

At the risk of getting all manner of abuse heaped on me, can I just say that my brother ran a couple of Private Shops in the late 80's/early90's, and even HE would agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed earlier in this thread. Thing was, his basic wage was so low he HAD to encourage his punters to spend more than they intended to, just so that he could reach his targets and earn a bit of bonus. He wasn't proud of what he did - even though to his mates he was a bit of a hero - but after being made redundant from the car industry, he needed some sort of income. Even our old mother denied he worked there, preferring to tell people that he was on the dole! And you're quite correct about selling other crap to keep the old bill happy, but he still managed to shift a lot of tools and 45's, amazingly enough.

As for the visits by the models of the day, it DID happen north of Watford. He got pictures taken of himself with Zeta and 'Tara Bardot'.

As for abusing customers, he tells me that it WAS very tempting sometimes, but he resisted the temptation! However, one thing that you guys failed to mention - or maybe it only happened to my brother - was that a lot of customers came to him to ask for advice on various subjects, and spoke to him like some people speak to bar-staff ('my wife doesn't understand me' etc), as well as discussing their sexual problems.

But yeah, they WERE rip-off joints, but I've no doubt that Sullivan had the last laugh when he was counting his millions, and probably still is, if it's true that he still owns the leases to all the shops.

Flame away.....

[Pinkpapercut]

I was always amazed that the Sullivan shops managed to survive in big cities. I grew up around Manchester and as a teenager was a big science fiction reader. Around the age of 15 I used to visit a bookshop off Tib Street run by a moderately notorious author later persecuted by God's Cop James Anderton. The shop was scruffy but in a cluttered antique shop sort of way, not the Sullivan "couldn't give a damn" style. This shop, Orbit, sold Science Fiction, hippy "Underground" publications, and soft- and hard-core magazines and reels. When I started buying hardcore, that's where I began.

I've only been in any of Sullivan's shops out of curiosity, a handful of times in 35 years, and I've never bought anything from one. I do recognise the picture painted of them by posters in this thread, the overwhelming atmosphere of con and can't-be-arsed, and I was always amazed they got any repeat customers.

I can understand how in a small town they might be the only shop selling porn, but in a place the size of Manchester - not the biggest city in Britain - there were always at least a couple of independent shops selling genuine hardcore and generally treating their customers decently, at least until the Web did away with their customer base, so for committed porn-hounds at least, there was never any need to go near Sullivan's pit.

If Sullivan's chain was profitable in itself, I can only imagine that it was on the strength of his shops in the Sticks, where they were the only game in town.

[Foxbark]

As a child of the late '60s my great 'porn-buying period' encompassed the early to mid 80s right down to the seond half of the 90s.
I know the game changed sometime in the mid 90s when really explicit material started filtering down to yer local sweetshop (ie American titles such as Fox, Cherie etc, which actually showed the 'holy grail' - as we called it of 'dick entering fanny', if I might be allowed alittle pet vulgarism), also around that time various continental firms started selling hardcore videos via mail-order, and unlike Sullivan these continental chappies always delivered the goods at reasonable price.I think it was all down to EU 'single market' legislation, only that prudish old granny John Major kept schtumm on the reason for obvious reasons.
Anyway, I grew up in London, the great big metroplois - I can only honestly say that prior to the mid 90s Sullivan's smelly shops (both literally and metaphorically), were the only dealers around selling anything even approaching hardcore.There might have been some Soho establishments that I was unaware of - but I heard nasty tales about them anf their outsides looked SO intimidating, and the dear old Met. Police closed most of them down during the prurient Thatcher years of the early 80s.
The only hardcore I got to see then is what a mate happened to , literally, smuggle in from a day-trip to Amsterdam.


Foxbark.

Originally Posted by Pinkpapercut

I was always amazed that the Sullivan shops managed to survive in big cities. I grew up around Manchester and as a teenager was a big science fiction reader. Around the age of 15 I used to visit a bookshop off Tib Street run by a moderately notorious author later persecuted by God's Cop James Anderton. The shop was scruffy but in a cluttered antique shop sort of way, not the Sullivan "couldn't give a damn" style. This shop, Orbit, sold Science Fiction, hippy "Underground" publications, and soft- and hard-core magazines and reels. When I started buying hardcore, that's where I began.

I've only been in any of Sullivan's shops out of curiosity, a handful of times in 35 years, and I've never bought anything from one. I do recognise the picture painted of them by posters in this thread, the overwhelming atmosphere of con and can't-be-arsed, and I was always amazed they got any repeat customers.

I can understand how in a small town they might be the only shop selling porn, but in a place the size of Manchester - not the biggest city in Britain - there were always at least a couple of independent shops selling genuine hardcore and generally treating their customers decently, at least until the Web did away with their customer base, so for committed porn-hounds at least, there was never any need to go near Sullivan's pit.

If Sullivan's chain was profitable in itself, I can only imagine that it was on the strength of his shops in the Sticks, where they were the only game in town.

[slowdiver]

I applied for, and attended an interview at a Private shop in the mid 90's. The shop was very close to the local college, and I thought since there would hardly be a huge rush of customers, I could work at the shop and also sign up to do a college course, studying between punters.

The guy who ran the shop and interviewed me was the archetypal sex-shop manager. The hours of work were a bit heavy ( 9-6 six days a week, closed on Sundays and you shut the shop up for half an hour every other day to bank the takings).

He also gave me a nice little insight into the sales approach he expected.

"Everyone who comes through the door WANTS to buy something" he said. "Your job is to get them to buy as much as you can."

Sadly I wasn't offered the job (he seemed both amused and bemused when I asked about their trade-in policy; "Nah, we don't do that. The pages are always stuck together").

The shop itself did fit the standard description though. Threadbare carpet, low lighting and one of those curtains made of plastic strips as you entered the premises.

[pigskin]

Originally Posted by Jenkinson

The memory of visiting seedy Private Shops of the sort that Foxbark so well describes is one of the shared experiences that must unite many members of this forum. My fascination with them began in much the same fashion as his. By my mid to late teens, I had already managed to become a fairly regular reader of Knave, Men Only, and Club International, and they always contained full-page advertisements for the erotic delights to be found in the Sullivan sex shops, along with a cut-out voucher promising a free porno mag (usually described as Swedish or Scandinavian, and rarely if ever honoured).

I first summoned up the courage to enter one of these alluringly 'wicked' places in (I think) 1982, just after the ban on window displays. It was a small establishment on the east side of Walkers Court in Soho, now part of the Harmony shop, and it was marginally better than many at the time, in that there was a table displaying some unwrapped magazines that the customers could flick through in order to whet their appetites and make their choice. Very likely, therefore, it was outside the Sullivan chain.

I did not live in London, however, so most of my subsequent porn-buying expeditions were made to the dismal provincial Private Shops of the sort that had to pretend that they were not in fact sex shops, but book shops which sold a few sex magazines incidental to their main business - their supposed main business apparently being the sale of Oxfam rejects, such as four year-old copies of the British Rail timetable. They were indeed decrepit places in decrepit districts, often near railway lines, with roughly boarded up windows that made it hard to tell whether they were open or closed. You felt such a fool when, after posing as a casual passer-by, you hastily barged into the entrance of the notorious store only to collide with a locked door! The Southampton, Salisbury, Bournemouth, Reading, Aldershot, and Swindon shops were the ones that I came to know best. I've written of some of my experiences as a customer in the thread entitled "Were you ever ripped off by David Sullivan?":

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...%22#post343902

A lengthy thread, that one!

I liked to imagine that buying porn was a rather debonair and rakish activity, but it was hard to sustain this notion when confronted with the Private Shops. When you managed to get through the front door, you would usually find yourself in a strange improvised lobby made of sheets of unpainted hardboard with no decor except the warning notice required by law. The next obstacle would be either a pair of slatted swing-doors like those of a saloon in a Western or else a kind of curtain made of thin strips of red, yellow, white, and blue plastic, of a sort only otherwise seen in instead of a kitchen door in a transport cafe. Some of the strips were always torn and dirty, and it was with these draped around your shoulders that you made your grand entrance into the much anticipated Aladdin's cave of eroticism - only to be grunted at by the bored scruff behind the counter.

Foxbark writes that "the meagre porn on the shelves was shite". He's essentially right, of course, but I wonder if this is the judgment of hindsight. At the time, I have to admit, I was powerfully stimulated by at least some of the pictures in those faked, pirated, and censored mags. They did the trick, so to speak, and I kept coming back for more. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that Foxbark is mistaken in saying that Whitehouse and Playbirds are still in business. I've not seen new editions of them in any of the usual outlets for a year or two now.

I too wondered a lot about those much-advertised tours of sex shops by Whitehouse starlets. The curvy brunette Zena Whitehouse once played a major role in my fantasies. When she was supposed to be visiting the Bournemouth shop, I racked my brains to find some way of seeing my porno idol in the luscious flesh. It was impossible: I was still at school at the time! If anyone did attend these events and actually met the models, I'd be interested to hear about it, for, with the wisdom of age, I fully share Andysmz's scepticism about the visits ever having taken place. In the early 1980s, though, it pleased me just to imagine that the dark and dingy little shop had been graced by Zena's fantastic buttocks, well-rounded breasts, and shapely thighs, preferably encased in black PVC boots!

I stopped using the Swindon one when I found the genuine article at Gorse hill; which I believe is still trading

[c0n@pelud0]

Picture of my brother as a 'lucky punter' (he was actually the manager) meeting Zeta in one of the Private Shops on her tour of the provinces. The guy on the right was the area manager i believe.Thanks to hattertim for searching this out for me. I put the black bars across to preserve their anonimity from the 70's-pornstar-moustache-police btw

[Wankbitch]

I've loved reading this thread and seeing that my earliest sexshop experiences (Wellington St, Luton in case you're interested) were virtually the same as everyone elses. For me it was 1990 that I first found myself being virtually bundled up to the counter and told "you want this mate" and being relieved of my cash and out of the door. Like the other posters I found the content to be crap and very expensive for what it was. For a few years I decided just to stick to newsagent topshelf stuff instead and after a while even that started to piss me off when you'd find cover girls not appearing in mags etc. Then in about 1994 I first came across American mags, my thing is big big boobs and when I saw Gent and Score they blew me away. Whitehouse never had a chance again. It was like comparing Blakes 7 to Star Wars!

[Wankbitch]

Actually that last parts not true because Blakes 7 was made with love and skill but only let down by available budget! I think in those days like so many things the British product was about ripping off the punter for the maximum amount they could get away with while the American equivalent was about providing the best product for the best price. As the years went by I ended up by various means I won't bore you with knowing a few models, photographers and writers from the UK porn world and I've never heard a good word for David Sullivan from any of them.

[pharoahegypt]

In regards to the comments made by both 'cOn@peludO' & 'slowdiver' above.............

As most of you long termers know; i ran one of the proper XXX shops; not the shoddy Private ripoff ones......

The plastic strips were something of a necessity, as in warm weather, and to attract more customers. doors would often be propped open; but to stop 'non adults' from looking inside and being "corrupted", those multi coloured (often red white and blue) hanging streamers were the only solution to stop ourselves being closed down in an instant of opening the door.

And i also had many guys come in and ask my advice; not only on the videos or toys, but also on their home fire issues; funny as i was single and having the time of my life working there; so what the hell did i know. i did know enough to sell them poppers or the chinese herbal crap we couldn't shift though...lol. but female customers asking for advice were much more likely to get my attention.. and other parts of me if they wanted...!!!

Oh, happy days...!!!! (late 1990's) PhEg.