As his hulking bodyguards hoisted his gold-plated wheelchair over the threshold of a swank new Hustler Hollywood store back in December of '06, a crowd of 200-plus greeted porn magnate Larry Flynt with the sort of spontaneous chant usually reserved for the likes of Jerry Springer or Howard Stern: "Lar-ry, Lar-ry, Lar-ry!" Little old ladies and Iraqi war vets. Truck drivers and Scottsdale hotties. Reporters and pimp daddies. All there to press the great man's sagging flesh and celebrate the grand opening of an idea: A sex shop as gleaming and stylish as a Nordstrom, as hip and trendy as an Urban Outfitters, but with sections devoted to kinky lingerie and vinyl bustiers, adult books and novelties, vibrators, and XXX-rated DVDs.

On one wall of the 10,000-square-foot orange-and-cream themed erotic emporium read the store's motto, "Relax... it's only sex." And while Flynt signed books and body parts, it was clear that the reason folks were so enthused was that Flynt had brought a touch of Hollywood decadence to Sand Land, and made that decadence as uncontroversial as an ice cream parlor, though no less titillating in the process. Even more than the magazines and the books that Flynt's Hustler empire mass-produces, the Hustler Hollywood stores are his ultimate triumph over America's prudes. Somewhere, Jerry Falwell's 300-pound corpse is rolling over. Of this, you can be sure.