One man’s plan for a San Francisco business? Banned books and naked booksellers
Amid San Francisco’s retail crisis, one man has a business idea he thinks could be wildly lucrative: banned books sold by buck-naked bodies.
That’s what George Davis, a self-proclaimed “body freedom” activist, pitched on Craigslist while looking for a “fit, ambitious,” female chief executive officer to lead his pop-up nudist bookstore in the city’s downtown shopping center, Union Square, from August to December. The ad was first reported by a Bay Area blog.
Why does Davis think the CEO has to be a woman?
“It’s just I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s because it will work. I realize needing a vulva instead of a penis isn’t what’s right, but it’s what will work,” he said in an interview Thursday.
As for the booksellers, they will need to be balanced by gender.
“Booksellers will need to be sexually balanced out, one to one male to female, to take away the sexuality. All women booksellers would be Hooters with books,” he told The Times.
Stripped to its barest concept, his bookstore would employ only nude booksellers and sell only banned books. Davis believes the store will cater largely to the LGBTQ+ community and would draw in crowds looking to ogle and (he hopes) buy.
Book Rack is the second San Gabriel Valley bookstore to face a reckoning this year. The owner of Vroman’s in Pasadena put the store up for sale because he wants to retire.
“International tourists and provincial Americans, will want to come. We will have tons of publicity. . . . If this space makes good money, you can quickly and easily replicate this project in Chicago, NYC, and London,” he wrote in the ad.
Davis, pushing 80 years old, has been flaunting his figure in the nude in San Francisco for decades. He ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco Board of Supervisors twice and mayor once (he won .45% of the vote and lost to Gavin Newsom) and was arrested in 2014 for flouting the city’s new anti-public-nudity ordinance. He called himself a “mini-celebrity” in the ad.
“The Banned Bookstore would carry titles banned both in the US and internationally. The booksellers would be unclothed to demonstrate that the human body and all body parts are normal and natural,” Davis wrote in his pitch.
He added that the lessor of the Union Square site — “think Nordstrom” — had green-lit the birthday suit concept.
But on Thursday, Davis said that the lessor had pulled out of the deal. He is now looking for another 20,000-square-foot space to house the bookstore.
“Our natural, unserved, underserved, or wants to be served markets are businesses related to Burning Man, Leather, BDSM, Fetish, and LGBT+ with high end merchandise, handcrafts and art. Maybe some entertainment space. Think Burning Man theme camp. Remember, one million people attend SF Pride week, 300,000 attend Folsom Street Faire, and 100,000 have been to Burning Man. This is our natural market and scene,” Davis wrote.
Here’s the ad, if you want to reach him.
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