Truck and Barter

Sometimes, when you're researching Wal-Mart, the oddest things pop up, like the apparently well-lit Castle Megastore:

Keeping the customers from embarrassment is key here at Castle Megastore, on East Fifth Avenue across from Merrill Field. It's just after 9 on a recent Wednesday morning, and Arthur is restocking shelves at Anchorage's new adults-only shop, with pornography, lingerie, sex manuals and naughty toys.

For years the same handful of porn stores have served customers in town, but now there's something for them that's bigger, brighter and quite different. Also, it's quite busy.

The kicker...

Everybody wants a brighter, safer porn store...

It seems so. Stephanie Simon wrote up a different chain last December:

ABILENE, Kan. — Outside, the prairie lies dark and still. In the windowless gray building by the Interstate 70 offramp, a clerk with a tired face rings up sex toys. "Need batteries for that?" she asks politely, again and again.

Two women in prim business suits gawk at a shelf of raunchy gag gifts, giggling. A truck driver searches thousands of DVDs for a pornographic movie. Near the Love Sling of Ecstasy, a wife confers with her husband by cellphone as she studies a tidy display of vibrators, hundreds of them, in every size and color.

Adult "superstores" like this are popping up all over rural America — brightly lighted, clean, as well-organized and well-stocked as a Wal-Mart.

However, according to Luke Ford, the Castle chain has had some serious financial trouble in the past, and has been accused of stiffing vendors.

My advice for these stores is to just be like every other store; most small-store owners know that placing giant condom balloons on store roofs will attract both wanted and unwanted attention.