As you may know if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I enjoy some vintage gay pulp fiction, even having read and reviewed a few. But if you go on eBay, it’s not usual to find these books going for anywhere to $50 – $250+, most in the latter range. So imagine my surprise when I found a place in San Francisco that sells a very large selection of these books, in excellent condition, where most are $25 – $65! The store is called Bolerium Books. You have to make an appointment to visit, and once inside the building, it’s on the third floor. No plans to be in San Francisco? No worries, you can order online, just visit the site! They have much more than just gay pulp books, but that was my primary interest. They had about four full bookcases worth!
I was so captivated, I didn’t even think to take pics of the store itself. But it definitely has the look of a typical, haphazard used book store–which I personally find charming. You can find some pics online if you want to search.
I was able to get a close look at condition and take a closer look if the book was something I’d be interested in. The books were arranged alphabetically by author (books that are written by “anonymous” are in their own section). I was already armed with a list of books I was interested in, but ran across a few titles I didn’t know about. Some of these I actually bought, and some I realized that while I liked the cover, I didn’t feel I actually needed to own the book as a whole. I do try to read them, and I want to read something of interest to me. But here’s a few covers I ran across that I hadn’t seen before, and were noteworthy to me.
One book I posted about here once before I finally got to see in person, Boy Whore. And it’s noted for having color photographs peppered inside the book, which is unusual. I was tempted to purchase it, but ultimately decided not to… I already had six other books, and spent $200. But here were a few of my favorite color pics. In the last pic, you can get a slight view of the store shelves.
Remember, if not in town, I strongly recommend their website. I had already used it to have some books sent to me, before I realized I could visit them in person. Their website search is very good, has all the info, and pretty up to date. In fact, after I bought many of their books, I checked the website the next day for the titles I purchased, and they were already marked as out of stock.
In case you were wondering, these were the six books I did end up purchasing… as you can see, I couldn’t quite resist “Boy Lover”, lol. Most were $25-$35, Fruit Punch was the most expensive at $65.
You can also probably tell I have sort of a theme, haha. But this is more of a historical fascination. Obviously in today’s world, make sure you are only working with legal age guys. And let’s be clear that while I do like twinks, I do not engage or endorse any underage sex acts. That should go without saying.
Instead, I treat these books as artifacts of a different time, and pure fantasy only. Honestly, I get uncomfortable when these books do mention underage stuff (and it unfortunately seems to happen quite a bit). I just keep remembering it was a different time, and since it’s fiction, I mentally raise their age up to a legal limit when I read them to make it palatable. I also view these titles with a sense of campy humor, similar to horror movies with names like “Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl-a-Rama” (that’s a real movie!) or “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” (which is not a real movie, but was mentioned in the film Kentucky Fried Movie). Which is to say I’m not taking them seriously or at face value. But I do enjoy the titles and cover art, and I appreciate the bravery it took for these authors and publishers to put these sorts of books out in a time where they were not socially acceptable. That’s why I enjoy collecting them.
