The first time I ever saw the Janus shop in London I was in my late teens and visiting a theatre with my parents so although spotting it's location was quite exciting in itself, I didn't have to make the decision about whether or not I felt bold enough to enter.
By that time it was already past the era when such shops were allowed to display merchandise in their windows so it was with the famous black facade.
The next time I managed to arrange a trip to London by myself I headed straight over although I think I walked past on the opposite side of the road several times trying to catch a glimpse of someone else either entering or leaving - probably to reassure myself that they looked vaguely normal.
Eventually I did get the courage to go in and was instantly enthralled. Once inside it was a very relaxing place to be and I found you were free to spend however long you wanted browsing through the huge collection of Janus magazines and other spanking related materials. There was always a small selection of canes, tawses and paddles on display as well as VHS tapes and a few books. Books and some of the older materials tended to be sealed-up but the main stock of Janus, Roué, Phoenix, Blushes, Fessée, Cul d'Or etc etc magazines were there for you to browse from cover to cover for as long as you could wish.
I remember on one visit there was the sound outside of a passing police car siren and I momentarily wondered what would happen if the shop was raided by the police when I was there, but the member of staff on duty never showed any flicker of reaction - it probably happened dozens of times each day in that area.
The staff on the cash desk by the door always seemed friendly enough and the fact that there was no pressure to make a purchase even if you'd been there for ages was really good. However, dialogue with the staff tended to be very short and to the point. Just before the ban on CP videos came in I purchased a copy of The Disciplinarian from them and enquired what they'd be doing with leftover stock (hoping there might be a last-minute sale) and was just told they would be sent to alternative outlets. When the short lived Fessée magazine ceased I asked why and was told they had found more lucrative business activities.
I visited many times over the years and must have, cumulatively, spent many hours and and many hundreds of pounds there. I never saw it "busy" - occasionally you were the only customer in the store for a while but usually there were three or four people at a time - I never saw or experienced any conversation between customers which seems odd now - clearly anyone in there for more than a minute shared similar interests but it just didn't seem to be the thing to do. I did occasionally see female customers in other sex shops in Soho but never in Janus - regulars will, however, probably remember the elderly and very wheezy lady who appeared every so often from the back of the shop and make her way down to the cash desk before returning to her secret life behind the scenes.
Evidently the former spanking model Rosaleen Young has visited the shop - probably in it's later years - but it's far from clear whether the shop was open to customers at the time. Also the Janus models Nicola and Priscilla (Janus 23 and 46) did an interview in Janus 48 where they expressed the intention to visit the shop sometime.
It is self-evident that the era of magazine porn is largely over and the rationale for such shops has gone with it. I can't help thinking that today, if there was some sort of CP themed cafe, it would be much more friendly, there would be as many females as males using it, and there would be lots of dialogue between visitors even if they were meeting for the first time. The days of it all seeming a bit seedy and risky are well and truly over.
