Highlights
Defying neighbors who opposed the new store, San Jose customers lined up 60-deep to meet Larry Flynt and get his autograph.
SAN JOSE — Larry Flynt has always known how to profit from his adversaries. Like a judo master, he has used the lunges of his rivals to change the fulcrum of balance. In the process, he has become both a First Amendment icon and America’s best-known smut peddler.
That defiant celebrity animated the party Saturday night as Flynt arrived in San Jose to baptize his new Hustler Hollywood store in a former Bank of the West building at Bascom Avenue and Stevens Creek Boulevard.
“Larry, you’re the man!’’ shouted one young male customer who was clutching a goodie bag that contained lip balm, condoms, lube and facial oil. “Welcome to the neighborhood!’’
At the age of 74, Flynt looks tired. His skin is pale. His hair has a faded reddish hue. And the years in a wheelchair — he was shot and paralyzed in 1978 — have plainly taken their toll. His voice sounds like the offspring of a rattle and a whisper.
Yet a smile played on his lips as he surveyed the latest addition to his empire of magazines, sex toys and branded Hustler clothing. His million-dollar new store has an excellent chance of proving that sex — and Flynt’s fame — make for an effective engine of redevelopment.
Defying neighbors who opposed the new store, San Jose customers lined up 60-deep to meet the man who did time in jail and took a landscape-changing case against evangelist Jerry Falwell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Because I had written a sympathetic column about the impact of the new store on the neighborhood last July, Flynt’s people carved out a few minutes for me to interview him before the autograph session began. Flynt had flown up from Los Angeles for the occasion.
One of my first questions was: Why here? Why this tired old Business Circle shopping center, a place that has barely seen a fresh light bulb since 1960?
“We had the hunch that people have the same interest in sex here as everywhere else,’’ Flynt told me. “It’s a place to shop where they can buy a lot of things that you can’t find in regular stores.’’
Then I had to ask about how his adversaries helped create his celebrity. If Flynt were starting today as a hard-core pornographer, people would shrug. He would own nothing near the fame. His take on that?
“I paved the way for a lot of them,’’ Flynt said with a smile, acknowledging the point but not yielding his place in history. “My case is taught in law schools all over the country.’’
What about opening a brick-and-mortar place in the age of digital shopping? Wasn’t he fighting the tide, even if his store resembled a high-toned Victoria’s Secret?
Flynt, who is famous for personally checking the sales numbers of his stores, told me that Hustler also has a vigorous online operation. And the new San Jose store has had encouraging initial sales, he added.
Claiming that he has helped change the cultural fabric of America, Flynt noted that his chain has sold more than 200 varieties of sex toys.
None of the folks eager to get Flynt’s autograph — and pause for selfies and fist-bumps — would seriously contest his claim. That much you could take that to the bank.
“I’m happy to have Larry in the neighborhood,’’ said one customer, Eric Lyon, who was clutching a copy of “One Nation Under Sex,’’ Flynt’s 2001 book on the history of U.S. sex scandals. “There’s been a lot of discussion, but personally, I’m happy to have him occupy the old building.’’
