Twenty years ago, the news that a sex shop, Pandora’s Boxxx, was to open in south Brewer was met with outrage. Angry residents signed a petition demanding it move out of the neighborhood, there were two separate protests, a lawsuit was filed and Brewer ultimately adopted an ordinance about adult entertainment businesses.
This week, the news that Adam & Eve, a national chain of stores selling sex toys and other adult products, will open on Broadway in Bangor later this year was met, for the most part, with approval or shrugs. Commenters on the BDN website and on social media hailed the arrival of a new business in Bangor, and one that’s sex-positive to boot. In other words: it’s not a big deal.
It’s a long way from the outcry of previous decades. In fact, today, public opinion has shifted dramatically from the era when adult businesses and sexually explicit material were either not talked about, viewed as morally reprehensible, or were actively opposed by many in the community. Today, it’s just another type of business, same as any other.
It wasn’t that long ago that the city of Bangor was embroiled in a long-running battle with Diva’s Gentleman’s Club, a strip club who’s owner, Diane Cormier, fought to allow her employees to dance nude while also serving alcohol. That legal wrangling started in the mid-1990s, went all the way to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 2003, and didn’t fully end until Cormier was evicted from her building in 2011.
By comparison, when Dave’s Romantic Supermart — a.k.a “Dirty Dave’s,” a Bangor sex shop — closed this summer, many actually mourned its loss as a part of Bangor pop culture.
Sandra Caron, professor of family relations and human sexuality at the University of Maine, said that such a shift in public attitude doesn’t surprise her. As society has slowly relaxed its views on sexuality, much of the industry that has grown up around sex has matured.
“More than half of women own a vibrator, and 30 percent of those women use it with a partner. At this point, it’s pretty mainstream,” Caron said. “People view these sorts of things as part of wellness. Sexual wellness is a big part of overall wellness.”
Kraig McGee, a co-owner of the new Adam & Eve location, said the Bangor shop will only sell devices, accessories and other personal items, and won’t sell pornography or other explicit material. Its interior looks more like a higher-end boutique than the way sex shops may have appeared in the past — cluttered, in run-down buildings, with a seedy atmosphere.
Caron said such shops often tended to cater toward men, mostly straight, who came in to buy “dirty” magazines, books and videos. For many, there was an element of shame involved in going inside.
“It’s really a positive development that today, stores like this are not only open to women — they cater to them directly,” Caron said. “Women should be able to walk into a shop like this and know that it’s for them, and that they are entitled to sexual pleasure just as much as men.”
Prior to the 1970s, sex shops, strip clubs and adult movie theaters essentially did not exist in eastern Maine. Those businesses that dared sell adult content could get in big trouble, as evidenced by a 1963 obscenity trial in Bangor against an Exchange Street store that got busted selling “lewd” books and magazines.
With the dawn of the “free love” era in the late 1960s, the floodgates opened. In the 1970s, drive-in movie theaters regularly showed X-rated movies, including those in Bangor, Detroit, Enfield and Trenton. Bangor had its own X-rated indoor cinema, the Westgate Cinema, located where the Northern Light Health Care Mall on Union Street is today. The first-ever public “exotic dancing” establishments in the Bangor area opened around that time, including the short-lived Shamrock Club in Orono, and burlesque dancers at the Bangor House hotel.
Still, though, such places were rare, often located on the outskirts of town or out in the boonies, and were almost always met with some form of resistance by local communities. In 1990, one of the few strip clubs in eastern Maine was La Casa de Fiesta — located in a nondescript building along Route 11 in the unorganized territory of Dolby, near Millinocket. Residents of Millinocket and East Millinocket alike were not happy about it, and fought the Penobscot County Commission against allowing it to remain open.
Flash forward to 2023. Women take pole dancing and burlesque classes for fun and for fitness. You can buy sex toys at Walmart. Sexually explicit songs from artists like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have conquered popular culture. While it remains as complicated and mysterious as ever, if there’s one thing that’s changed in recent years when it comes to sex, it’s that people are way less afraid of it.
“Sex isn’t dirty or shameful. I think we, as a society, are starting to come around to that,” Caron said. “More education and more awareness about these sorts of things is always a good thing, instead of hiding it away or making it seem like it’s taboo.”
