Despite their hefty platforms and 6-inch heels, stripper shoes – “Pleasers,” by brand name – are work boots. They’ve got steel rods in the heels that make them basically unbreakable, and they’re made to be worn for hours at a time. In New England, there’s only a few spots to buy Pleasers. So prospective strippers and longtime veterans go to Hubba Hubba.
Hubba Hubba is one of a dwindling number of adult stores in Greater Boston, serving sex workers, college students and the region’s LGBT, BDSM and punk communities. These days, though, the shop has new competition that’s weeding out its New England neighbors.
“The market has changed considerably, because CVS and Walgreens and Nordstrom now sell sex toys and lube,” said owner M.J. Pullins, hair in a topknot and a pair of glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. “We’re truly the only store left standing.”
From the outside, Hubba Hubba looks not much different from other storefronts in Cambridge, its windows populated by a tote-bag-wearing mannequin clad in a Dunkin’ sweatsuit. The front door features the shop’s logo since 1979: a puckered pink pair of lips, drawn pop-art style.
Inside, things change. Leather floggers, BDSM masks, “Pleasers” and sex toys of every shape, size and color line the walls, each item adorned with a tag stating its source company and other facts. (A tag on a set of bright pink anal beads, for example, says its manufacturing company is woman-owned.)
Cambridge’s only other adult store, Good Vibrations, shuttered in late September (promising on social media that a “reopening will be announced soon”). The store, which is part of a San Francisco-based chain, still has a location in Brookline – but local adult stores such as Hubba Hubba are few and far between.
The Combat Zone and zoning
In the 1960s and ‘70s, adult stores – and far more risqué ventures – would have existed by the dozen in Boston’s Combat Zone, a once-thriving red light district in today’s Theater District. But that neighborhood disappeared during the AIDS epidemic and after several high-profile crimes, according to Peter Drummey, the chief historian at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“A city that had many theaters and bookstores, almost all together in one area, went from having many to few,” Drummey said.
Through regulations, zoning laws and building permits, Boston pushed the sex industry out of downtown and to the borders. Cities and towns continue to use similar zoning laws and regulations to limit which businesses can open and where, said Daniel Farbman, a Cambridge resident and law professor at Boston College.
Hubba Hubba opened its bricks-and-mortar location in Cambridge in 1979, a store that under founder Susan Phelps made a fast transition from vintage to punk to adult store, dodging Boston’s crackdown on vice by situating itself beyond the city and the Combat Zone. The shop’s position as a legacy business, carried on by Pullins after Phelps’ death in 2017, has likely helped its longevity, Farbman said. He added that laws are only part of the regulations imposed on businesses such as Hubba Hubba, and community engagement can sometimes be just as important in keeping a business alive.
“If I build a nonconforming treehouse, the local government doesn’t stop me from doing it unless my neighbors complain,” Farbman said. “A lot of this is about what’s actually happening and how it lands in the neighborhood.”
Pullins is aware of the reputation a shop such as hers might garner, and she’s made an effort to build rapport with her neighbors in Cambridge, she said. She befriended the employees at the Dunkin’ on her street, the Indian restaurant around the corner and even the day care in a neighboring plaza. At night, delivery drivers from the nearby Domino’s stand outside Hubba Hubba, serving as a makeshift security service while Pullins and her employees close up shop.
“Cambridge is a small town,” Pullins said. “There’s strength in numbers.”
Hubba Hubba’s advantage
Now, Hubba Hubba is up against multimillion–dollar chains and online retailers such as Amazon. But it has one major advantage over its competitors: human connection. One employee, Kitty, who requested her last name not be published for safety reasons, said Hubba Hubba has no bestselling items because each sale is a conversation between customer and employee.
“We ask, ‘What have you tried before? What are you looking to explore? What do you like?’” Kitty said. “And then we come back with, ‘These are the three toys that work best for your body.”
For Pullins and Hubba Hubba, the ability to converse with customers is “the reason we stay in business” in an ever-changing market.
On a Wednesday evening, Hubba Hubba has a handful of customers, some browsing and others beelining to their toys, outfits and accessories of choice. Pullins sits on the floor in one aisle, replacing the hooks on a display rack full of fuzzy handcuffs, substituting black hardware with neon pink.
For Pullins, this is a typical evening – and she’s not worried about her workload changing anytime soon. Since it opened, Hubba Hubba has shifted inventories to fit the needs of its customers. Pullins will keep doing that as long as it’s necessary.
“We’ll see how the alternative community evolves,” she said. “The great thing about being little and small is you can be very nimble.”
Hubba Hubba, 2 Ellery St., Mid-Cambridge
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Is the author of the article best friends with that random lawyer from BC?