Label
Circus of Books
1980s
4001 West Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
Donated by the Mason Family
Circus of Books may be a visually simple sign, but its serif channel letters, which hold glowing red neon, are an important symbol of the Los Angeles LGBTQ community. The bookstore and gay pornography shop first opened in West Hollywood as “Book Circus” in the 1960s before it was sold to Barry and Karen Mason in 1982. To save a nickel, Barry decided to repurpose the original plexiglass sign by cutting it in half and flipping it to read “Circus Books.” After years of success in West Hollywood, they opened the Silver Lake branch on Sunset Boulevard. Both locations were important gay cruising spots. The bookstore also sold science fiction books, Bibles, foreign newspapers, and novels by LGBTQ writers. The bookstore survived crackdowns and prosecutions on pornography, as well as the height of the AIDS epidemic. It is an important testament to the spirit of Los Angeles’ LGBTQ community. Due to more easily accessible gay pornography and dating apps such as Grindr, the bookstore’s popularity began to decline. The Silverlake location closed in 2016 and, three years later, the West Hollywood location closed. The owners’ daughter, Rachel Mason, created a documentary about the family business and her parents' unlikely success as porn producers and distributors called "Circus of Books", distributed by Netflix in 2020.