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Porn shop is just daily grind for these clerks - Marianne Costantinou, SF Chron, September 14, 2004
Stereotypes being what they are, you'd think the guys running the porn shop in El Cerrito would be, well, kinda slimy. And stereotypes being what they are, the guys who work nights at the Adult Variety Store assumed the same about the customers. "I thought it'd be little old men wearing trench coats, you know, flashers,'' says one of the nighttime salesmen, who wants to go by the name John Hamilton, a mix of his middle name and his mother's maiden name.
But, he was relieved to discover, "it's not that at all.''
In his year at the surprisingly clean and brightly lit shop on San Pablo Avenue, there has not been a single dirty old man -- or, at least, none wearing a trench coat. Instead, the clientele includes the well-to-do from the hills, doctors, hip-hop artists, secretaries, nurses, cops, construction workers, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, lesbian and gay couples, and lawyers, including one they recognized from his TV commercials.
And though Hamilton and his colleague, "Badger" Cloud, are not exactly Boy Scouts, they claim they're not into porn. Sex, sure. But not porn. "I'm like a bartender who doesn't drink,'' says Hamilton, 27, who wears his blond hair in a crew cut. "Some people get addicted to that stuff. Once you start, where's it going to end? I have unlimited access here. I don't even want to go down that road.''
"I've never been into porn,'' says Cloud, whose brown hair is slicked into a Mohawk. "It just seemed fake."
"This,'' he adds, waving his arm at the shop's crowded shelves of videos, sex toys and magazines, "could be a bakery. It's that bland to me.''
To the men, working at the porn shop is almost like any other sales job, but with added benefits. For starters, it's a night job, from 5 p.m. to closing time at 1 a.m. That lets Cloud, who has been at the shop for only a month, go to Vista Community College in Berkeley during the day, just as a job at another porn shop in Santa Barbara freed his days to go to junior college there. The job helps pay his school and living expenses, including rent for the West Oakland apartment he shares with his live-in girlfriend, whom he says he's crazy in love with. The night job is also convenient for Hamilton. It's just a few blocks from his house, so he gets to walk to work. And the shift doesn't start till the end of his longtime day job, as a boat mechanic. He needs two jobs because he is paying child support for his 7-year-old daughter in Palm Springs, whom he visits every other month. She was conceived when he was in high school. Though he believes that becoming a teenage father helped sidetrack his life from becoming the professional his parents raised him to be, he has no regrets.
"This little girl's a miracle,'' says Hamilton, who dates occasionally but has not had a steady girlfriend in a while. "She's beautiful. She's smart. She's tall. She's going to take over the world. If I need a third job, she's worth it.''
Luckily, the porn shop job pays well, from $12 to $18 an hour, he says, depending on experience, or how well they know the answer to the perennial customer question: "Where does this go?'' There are health benefits, paid vacation and a 401(k) plan. And the job lets the men be themselves. They wear jeans and T-shirts to work. There are no uniforms or name badges, "no McDonald's fry hat,'' Hamilton says. And there's no corporate culture or usually even a boss around. If a customer is rude, says Cloud, he feels free to tell him off. "If somebody cusses at me, I can say 'F -- you, get out of my porn shop, ' " Cloud says. "It's not like working at the Gap, where anyone could walk all over me.''
Both men say that the unorthodox nature of a porn shop was a big draw to them -- even though they each have traditional middle-class backgrounds. "I've never been a preppy. That's not me,'' says Hamilton, who grew up in Palm Springs, went to private schools and took piano and horseback lessons. "I've never wanted to conform. I prefer doing something outside the norm. Different is good.''
"It's a job where it's very unpolitically correct,'' says Cloud, who grew up the youngest of four in San Ramon. "I like that about it."
Though the men claim they don't feel embarrassed that they work at a porn shop, they admit it's not the first thing they tell strangers -- or their families. Hamilton's mother, a microbiologist at UC Berkeley, didn't find out about his job till his brother "squealed on me."
Cloud prefers to call it an "adult bookstore," though there are no books. His girlfriend doesn't mind that he's surrounded by images of fantasy women indulging men's fantasies. She understands, he says, that "it's not the real thing." But he hesitated to break the news to his parents.
He need not have worried. They were OK with it.
"They're Republicans,'' he says. "As long as I'm making money, they don't care."
Stereotypes being what they are, you'd think the guys running the porn shop in El Cerrito would be, well, kinda slimy. And stereotypes being what they are, the guys who work nights at the Adult Variety Store assumed the same about the customers. "I thought it'd be little old men wearing trench coats, you know, flashers,'' says one of the nighttime salesmen, who wants to go by the name John Hamilton, a mix of his middle name and his mother's maiden name.
But, he was relieved to discover, "it's not that at all.''
In his year at the surprisingly clean and brightly lit shop on San Pablo Avenue, there has not been a single dirty old man -- or, at least, none wearing a trench coat. Instead, the clientele includes the well-to-do from the hills, doctors, hip-hop artists, secretaries, nurses, cops, construction workers, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, lesbian and gay couples, and lawyers, including one they recognized from his TV commercials.
And though Hamilton and his colleague, "Badger" Cloud, are not exactly Boy Scouts, they claim they're not into porn. Sex, sure. But not porn. "I'm like a bartender who doesn't drink,'' says Hamilton, 27, who wears his blond hair in a crew cut. "Some people get addicted to that stuff. Once you start, where's it going to end? I have unlimited access here. I don't even want to go down that road.''
"I've never been into porn,'' says Cloud, whose brown hair is slicked into a Mohawk. "It just seemed fake."
"This,'' he adds, waving his arm at the shop's crowded shelves of videos, sex toys and magazines, "could be a bakery. It's that bland to me.''
To the men, working at the porn shop is almost like any other sales job, but with added benefits. For starters, it's a night job, from 5 p.m. to closing time at 1 a.m. That lets Cloud, who has been at the shop for only a month, go to Vista Community College in Berkeley during the day, just as a job at another porn shop in Santa Barbara freed his days to go to junior college there. The job helps pay his school and living expenses, including rent for the West Oakland apartment he shares with his live-in girlfriend, whom he says he's crazy in love with. The night job is also convenient for Hamilton. It's just a few blocks from his house, so he gets to walk to work. And the shift doesn't start till the end of his longtime day job, as a boat mechanic. He needs two jobs because he is paying child support for his 7-year-old daughter in Palm Springs, whom he visits every other month. She was conceived when he was in high school. Though he believes that becoming a teenage father helped sidetrack his life from becoming the professional his parents raised him to be, he has no regrets.
"This little girl's a miracle,'' says Hamilton, who dates occasionally but has not had a steady girlfriend in a while. "She's beautiful. She's smart. She's tall. She's going to take over the world. If I need a third job, she's worth it.''
Luckily, the porn shop job pays well, from $12 to $18 an hour, he says, depending on experience, or how well they know the answer to the perennial customer question: "Where does this go?'' There are health benefits, paid vacation and a 401(k) plan. And the job lets the men be themselves. They wear jeans and T-shirts to work. There are no uniforms or name badges, "no McDonald's fry hat,'' Hamilton says. And there's no corporate culture or usually even a boss around. If a customer is rude, says Cloud, he feels free to tell him off. "If somebody cusses at me, I can say 'F -- you, get out of my porn shop, ' " Cloud says. "It's not like working at the Gap, where anyone could walk all over me.''
Both men say that the unorthodox nature of a porn shop was a big draw to them -- even though they each have traditional middle-class backgrounds. "I've never been a preppy. That's not me,'' says Hamilton, who grew up in Palm Springs, went to private schools and took piano and horseback lessons. "I've never wanted to conform. I prefer doing something outside the norm. Different is good.''
"It's a job where it's very unpolitically correct,'' says Cloud, who grew up the youngest of four in San Ramon. "I like that about it."
Though the men claim they don't feel embarrassed that they work at a porn shop, they admit it's not the first thing they tell strangers -- or their families. Hamilton's mother, a microbiologist at UC Berkeley, didn't find out about his job till his brother "squealed on me."
Cloud prefers to call it an "adult bookstore," though there are no books. His girlfriend doesn't mind that he's surrounded by images of fantasy women indulging men's fantasies. She understands, he says, that "it's not the real thing." But he hesitated to break the news to his parents.
He need not have worried. They were OK with it.
"They're Republicans,'' he says. "As long as I'm making money, they don't care."
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