By Lina Khouri
Tucked away in the corner of Bank Street and Lisgar, stands the Bible House. It has a new neighbour: a sex shop. Venus Envy Inc. moved into a new location across the street in September.
Connie Landry-Wight, manager of the Bible House in Centretown, does not feel threatened nor does she hold anything against her neighbouring store.
“Sex is God’s idea,” Landry-Wight says. “I’m not scandalized by it but if you don’t know what its purpose is, you will misuse it.
“Am I surprised that Venus Envy moved here? No.”
If anything, Landry-Wight says the sex and love store somehow validates the Bibles and guidance books she sells.
“When people ask me, ‘look what’s just next to you’, I say ‘Good, you can only see the light when it’s dark. When they walk out of Venus Envy, I think they can see this alternative,” Landry-Wight says.
“The darker my surrounding is, the more useful my store is,” she adds.
Wildes, Sweet Seduction Lingerie and After Stonewall bookstore all boast alternative lifestyle products and colourful displays, some with mannequins sporting clothes that leave very little to the imagination.
All of these are only a ten-minute walk from the Bible House.
Landry-Wight says she does not believe Venus Envy’s presence will have a significant impact on her customers. She says she just chooses to sell something that fulfils people in a different way.
“I have nothing against these people (across the street),” Landry-Wight says. “I love them. I have to be held accountable for only what I offer people.”
The customers have also noticed the contrast between the two stores.
“I wonder if they have a good relationship,” Venus Envy customer Megan says.
She says she was amused by the variety that this small street corner has to offer.
Venus Envy owner Shelley Taylor says she thought nothing of being across from a bible store when she moved in.
She says her customers soon started asking her and her staff how they felt about being so close to a religious-themed store.
“Customers say it all the time. We’re so surprised how often it comes up.
“It’s actually getting a little old, we’re not sure why it excites people so much,” Taylor wrote in an e-mail from her store in Halifax.
Taylor and her employees now respond by saying the manager of the Bible House seems friendly, and there is no inherent contradiction between Christianity and sex.
The Bible House, which has been at its current location since 1922, has seen a wide variety of neighbouring businesses over the years.
Landry-Wight says that in her fifteen years working there, she has seen the location currently occupied by Venus Envy transformed many times.
It was once the headquarters of a local homosexual group, a Tae Kwon-Do dojo and now Venus Envy.