Fleshing Out a Porn King’s Decorating Dreams

Debra Rosenbaum had a story to tell, but the chances of her ever getting a word in seemed dim at this Hollywood art gallery show targeting the young and hip.

Around her, people seeking to be noticed chattered noisily among and about themselves like a flock of wild parakeets.

Rosenbaum stood by quietly while a fledgling film producer explained how his father cornered him one day and nervously revealed that he was a CIA operative.

His story was winding down when I heard Rosenbaum’s friend, Edie Pereira, introduce her, saying she helped design “the interior of the new Hustler cafe.”

The Hustler cafe? What Hustler cafe?

I took a long look at Rosenbaum who, standing 5 feet even and sporting a girlish smile, looked like someone who would shield her eyes from Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt’s famous work.

Only in Los Angeles, I thought, could I attend an art show and bump into someone who researched tropical color schemes and furniture arrangements for a porn king. I attended a good share of gallery showings in Atlanta in the four years I lived there and, trust me, erotica never came up in the conversation.

I turned to Rosenbaum to start a conversation, but I needed an ice-breaker. Lacking one, I decided on the direct approach.

“What’s this about you and Hustler?”

*

Rosenbaum talked about her work the way some people talk about baking cookies. First of all, she said, the place is called Hustler Hollywood, not the Hustler cafe.

Then she launched into a description of Hustler Hollywood, with its lacquered wood floors and color-coordinated sex-toy room--what furniture adorned the place, the color of each room and the mood the color meant to convey.

We exchanged business cards, and later I called her at work for more details on how this came about. The call surprised her. She thought I was kidding. “Maybe you should talk to my boss,” she said. “It’s their company, and they’re the ones who really did the work.”

Danna Sigal, co-owner of the Santa Monica architectural firm of Godfredsen/Sigal, got on the phone and picked up the story.

Her firm was helping Flynt design another store when he called out of the blue and asked if they could help with this project.

Thus began a three-week whirlwind in which Flynt’s daughter, Theresa Flynt-Gaerke, Rosenbaum and Sigal all pitched in to convert a former Boston Market fast-food joint into the crown jewel of porn emporiums.

“Sophisticated” is what Sigal called the establishment, which sells gourmet coffee and hardcover books along with expensive Hustler sweatshirts and, of course, smut in a presence reminiscent of the luxurious Barneys New York retail clothing chain.

Gone are the dark-tinted windows that adorn most porn businesses. Hustler Hollywood’s 10-foot-tall plate-glass windows offer a naked view inside to anyone who walks by on Sunset Boulevard.

The result is a place that could serve as a backdrop to a video for a love song if the porn were removed.

Daughter Theresa wanted cool colors, so soft lilac was slathered on the walls surrounding the porn tapes and lingerie. The cashier island was colored margarine yellow and crowned with a chandelier featuring phallic-shaped lightbulbs.

Larry Flynt, said Sigal, likes red, so she made the sex-toy room as red as a ripened tomato. “It’s hot and steamy,” she chirped. “You get excited when you’re in there.”

*

Rosenbaum’s friend Pereira, the woman who unwittingly tipped me off about her, served as a sort of technical assistant during the designing. She was exposed to things she’d never seen before.

Surrounded by fake male appendages, Pereira said her credo was pretty much to look but not touch. No, she didn’t feel so much as a sensual tingle.

Maybe Flynt had people like Pereira in mind when he scrawled a billboard-sized greeting facing the door.

Relax, it reads. It’s just sex.