BREWSTER, NY- – Save for the DVD titles surrounding her, such as “Princess in Torment” or “Latina Cherries”; the magazines, such as “Four to a Bed”; or the novelty products, like the bathing-for-two kit called Rub Your Dub Dub, Bonny Brothers appears to be your average suburban mom.
With fashionable eyeglasses, tastefully colored fingernails and gold-hoop earrings, Brothers would look at home at a school fundraiser or behind the front desk of a doctor’s office. But then there’s the penises, or, at least, the cookie cutters, ice-cube trays and pasta in that shape.
“I never imagined I would be here by myself, especially running the store,” said Brothers, 49, a former PTA president and one-time medical receptionist and secretary.
But she is. With the death of her husband, Danny Brothers, from leukemia on Sept. 11, 2005, the missus is now a fixture behind the red door at 141 Main St. in Brewster. Her husband may be gone, but Danny’s Books lives on. The adult entertainment center is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
“It’s a tribute to his strength, his character, his integrity,” she said of her husband, who was an Eagle Scout, Navy veteran and Pop Warner football coach. “It was my job to continue his legacy.”
Bonny Brothers unlocked the store’s door on Nov. 15, the date it first opened in 1977. That was the same year she signed a petition opposing the store. Two years later, she married the proprietor.
“I kind of thought, in the back of my mind, (the store) was going to happen whether you like it or not,” said Brothers, a 1976 Brewster High School graduate who was then working in a now-defunct deli next door.
She has put down new carpet and painted. The store has always attracted some female customers, and Brothers is trying to enlarge that demographic. Home parties (a spinoff being led by her two daughters), ladies’ night at the store (the first was Nov. 17) and bride-and-groom gift baskets are part of those growth plans. Also, the store will soon be online at www.dannysbooksonline.com.
“It’s a 90 percent male clientele,” said Brothers, a Dutchess County resident. “We’re trying to change that, to let everybody know we’re here for everybody.”
What they are is part of an almost $13 billion-a-year industry. Video sales and rentals and novelties account for 43 percent of those adult entertainment industry dollars, according to the Adult Video News Media Network.
“It’s pretty much of an achievement,” Mark Kernes, senior editor with Adult Video News, said of the 30 years. “Let’s face it, adult material is pretty popular. If a store establishes itself in a community, it tends to remain there.”
Zoning regulations have since limited where adult-oriented businesses can open, leaving Danny’s Books by its lonesome in Brewster village and the surrounding town of Southeast. A store called Giggles, featuring lingerie, DVDs, and other items, opened in Carmel about four years ago.
Older businesses still dot Brewster’s Main Street: There’s Brewster Iron Works, Bob’s Diner and the Jack & Jill Billiards Café. But others – the Boone Dog Coffee House, Scally’s Deli, the Bank of New York – have shut down or moved off Main in recent years.
“I always thought it was a pretty cool job,” said Tom Capawana, Brothers’ son-in-law, who gave up his insurance job in Elmira to help run the shop. “It’s a recession-proof industry.”
Geoffrey Reinwald, president of the Brewster Chamber of Commerce, complimented Danny’s Books on its three decades. The store isn’t a chamber member.
“He’s unobtrusive. I don’t hear any complaints. I don’t see any police cars in front of the store,” said Reinwald, who’s with the Fucito Insurance Agency. “You show me any other businesses that have been in the village that long.”
On Thursday, two men stopped by to watch a few minutes of XXX DVDs in the store’s viewing booths. Brothers has switched the booths from individual players to a computerized system. Each dollar paid gets about four minutes of a sexcapade, and $10 brings the ability to fast forward or rewind. Neither man – one in a Volvo wagon, the other in a Chevy SUV – wanted to talk with a reporter.
Brothers, a mother of four and a grandmother of one, said some customers backed out the door as soon as they spied a woman behind the counter. The diehards, though, had a kind word after her husband’s death.
“Those guys would come in and say, ‘How you doing, how are the kids?’ ” she said. “I don’t treat them like they’re buying a pornographic DVD. I treat them like they’re buying a shirt.”
While she may have a $49.99 Primal Bondage Kit on the shelf and Contempo Bareback condoms (“Almost like using nothing at all”) on the counter, she thinks of the store “like any other retail business.”
“I leave here. I go home and play with my grandson. I cook dinner,” Brothers said. “I’m just a normal person, as normal as anybody can be in this life.”