"People no longer have money to spend on sexual pleasures": in Paris, the inexorable collapse of sex shops

On Rue Saint-Denis ( ^1st and ^2nd arrondissements of Paris), a passer-by, clearly unfamiliar with the area , seems completely stunned by the collection of pink Eiffel Tower-shaped dildos – dubbed “La Tour est folle” – displayed in the window, whose compulsive neon lights and garishly colored frontage pierce the darkness on this July night. “Where have we ended up?” we hear him whisper, laughing, to his companion, pointing to the mannequins in maid outfits in the Paris sexy boutique.

Laughing embarrassedly, he explains: "This is the third sex shop on our route: I've never seen so many in such a short time and in one place!" What would he have said twenty years ago, when the neighborhood had twice as many? The thirty-year-old is unaware that his steps have led him to one of the historic hotspots of Parisian prostitution , the breeding ground on which these outdated temples of lust were established more than fifty years ago, today on the slope of an inexorable decline.

The figure provided by the Paris Urban Planning Workshop (Apur) in its 2023 census is unequivocal in this regard: the number of these sex shops that sprang up in the wake of May 1968 literally collapsed at the turn of the 2000s, falling from 127 in 2003 to 65 in 2023. A drop of 50% in twenty years which accelerated particularly quickly between 2020 and 2023, when the number of stores fell by 7.1%.

If, in Pigalle ( ^9th and ^18th arrondissements), the other hot spot of Parisian sex trade, the folklore around the Moulin Rouge still maintains a semblance of activity essentially due to tourism – on Boulevard de Clichy, there are today 24 sex shops – the Saint-Denis district, less conducive to postcard scenery, has experienced a massacre: less than ten shops (compared to 38 in 2003) are struggling to maintain their business.

"Well, you can see for yourself, it's not crowded, it's not doing very well, especially in the last two years," confirms Mathieu*, the young salesman we discover looking somewhat idle at the checkout located behind the thick, opaque red plastic curtains that block the entrance. A symptom of the slump: "At the start, we had fifteen booths, we only have...