A Word About Erotic Museum: Plastics

Business was frisky Saturday at the new Erotic Museum in Hollywood, where visitors said curiosity drew them to the unusual collection of pinups, curios and unmentionables.

“I expected the museum to be more sleazy. I didn’t think it would be done so well,” Michael Talianis, 67, said as his wife, Suzi, 57, played with an interactive exhibit that involved the unordinary uses of plastics.

The Westlake Village couple happen to own an extensive erotic art collection. “I had my second wife done in plaster,” Talianis said.

Suzi Talianis, wife No. 3, said she’s “been trying to get rid of that since we’ve been married.”

Owners of the Hollywood Boulevard museum, which debuted to a crowd of more than 100 on Friday, said they hoped to provoke many such conversations about sex, a topic they believe is still taboo, even in Southern California.

For example, museum co-owner Boris Smorodinsky said he would bring his mother to the museum if she were still alive. “But my mother-in-law is very excited about it. We want to entertain people, educate them and inspire them,” he said. “We want to show people that it’s OK to talk about sex.”

At first blush, the Erotic Museum doesn’t appear unusual, until one steps into the gift shop and notices that the lamp for sale is not of the shape or sort that might be found at Lamps Plus.

For $12.95, visitors may step behind a black curtain into the museum proper. They are greeted with a television monitor showing an old stag film. It gets better or worse from there, depending on one’s comfort level with photos of naked people.

“Well, it beats looking at everyone’s name on the sidewalk,” said Jerry, 49, an engineer visiting Los Angeles on business who was too embarrassed to give his last name. “My cousin is also in town, and I was looking for something to see that’s different.” He and his cousin, in fact, were examining a display that featured design documents submitted to the U.S. Patent Office for an innovative -- and perhaps unsafe -- exercise device.

Tim and Melissa Wright of Lake Forest also were making their way through the exhibits. They had seen the musical “Chicago” the night before and, in their pursuit of more culture, wanted to see if the museum lived up to the hype it had generated on the Internet. Tim, 34, pointed out that the couple were not the type who attended peep shows. “But this is like a museum -- a place where you can go and learn and talk about things you don’t talk about,” he said.