The Las Vegas Arts District gained a new business recently—much to the chagrin of some of the area’s supporters. The Love Store opened at 251 E. Charleston Boulevard, which community members are bemoaning on social media because of its proximity to the also-new Las Vegas Healing Garden, despite the shop buying its plot well before the October 1 shooting. They also find its placement anathema to establishing an arts district. Cue hand-wringing over the neighborhood’s identity, which seems like a dramatic, perspective-less reaction by a community known for advocating the freedom of expression.
The store’s opening highlights the diminishing arts presence in the Arts District, and how it can once again be rich with galleries (with regular operating hours), performance spaces and low-rent housing for creative types—a vital need for the culture of Las Vegas. But it’s not evolving in that direction, and it won’t come any quicker by discouraging businesses outside that paradigm. Main Street alone is evidence that entrepreneurs—and patrons—are more interested in places where creative people eat, drink and shop. Elsewhere in the District, numerous galleries have shuttered, mostly because not enough Las Vegans buy the art sold there. The Love Store should be the least of the District’s concerns.
Not only does the Centennial Plan—the city’s long-term strategy for developing Downtown—allow for general retail development, it doesn’t bar a business like the Love Store, which, per the Review-Journal, doesn’t technically qualify as an actual sex shop. In fact, it’s a tasteful, female-friendly and department store-like boutique mostly stocked with clothing and the type of R-rated goods one can find at suburban malls. The store’s wall facing the Healing Garden features murals that depict not lust, but flowers, birds and expressions of Vegas pride.
And speaking of which: Do those going full NIMBY on the Love Store remember what city they live in? While it’s reasonably awkward explaining why an adult-product retailer would be so close to a heartfelt expression of community such as the Healing Garden, it’s indicative of the unique dynamic of Las Vegas, its identity considerably shaped by sex. Anyone who still hasn’t come to terms with that—hey, there’s always Water Street.
