Including the Catholic-rich country of Mexico where a new three-story, 80,000-square-foot sex-themed shopping mall recently opened in the capitol city.
The $12 million mall called Sex Plaza has nearly 100 stores that sell the latest ClubJenna videos, racy lingerie, sex toys and BDSM gear. Its interior has skylights and marbled floors.
In the food court, exotic dancers strip with scanty underwear. Instead of after-dinner mints, restaurateurs hand out condoms.
And that’s not all. Strip clubs, a live sex show club and an X-rated theater are tenants. The mall even has a museum and bookstore — all this just around the corner from the majestic Palace of Fine Arts and a Krispy Kreme donut shop.
The retail center already is attracting hand-holding couples and groups of women curious about the offerings (male strippers dance daily at noon in the food court).
Sex Plaza is the brainchild of Alberto Kibrit, 24, who dreamed up the idea for the shopping center at the right time.
Kibrit, in his own survey, said that the country had only 60 shops before he developed his sex mall, despite that Mexicans spend $1 billion a year in online and offline adult entertainment as well as sex shops.
“The good thing about this industry is that sex is for everyone, whether you’re rich or poor, fat or skinny, young or old,” he said. “And sex is for every day, it’s not just for special occasions.”
Kibrit tested his idea for the mall at two “sex expos” he staged in 2004 and in February. He modeled them after AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo he visited in Las Vegas.
His goal was to attract 20,000 sex-crazed individuals, but by the time the first expo closed, it had drawn 80,000.
Promoters are eager to book American adult stars for the mall’s inauguration next month, but now city officials are still unsure they want the sex plaza even after giving tentative approval.
Complaints have made officials consider backing away from final approval of the project, said Gerardo Zapata, a city spokesman.
“There have been verbal complaints, there have been written complaints, there have been complaints to the media,” Zapata said. “The problem is that this is a plaza that has been openly declared a sex plaza. We have never had anything like that in Mexico.”
