PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire- from www.seacoastonline.com- — Thirty years ago, Linda and Jim Rossetti were making and selling pizzas out of a Daniel Street shop, the name of which Linda no longer recalls.
“We were killing ourselves making pizzas,” she said. “Morning, noon and night.”
When the couple realized the businessman next door was making more money collecting quarters from his adult video booths, the Rossettis decided to adopt his business model, ditched the pizza pans and opened the Fifth Wheel on the southbound side of the Route 1 Bypass.
Their first customer was a state trooper.
“When he walked in, my husband pushed me under the desk because he thought it was some kind of bust,” said Linda. “But he just wanted a greeting card.”
Jim had been a trucker, so they adopted the Fifth Wheel trucker term for their store and stocked some belt buckles and other doo-dads they thought might interest long-distance drivers.
“It didn’t sell,” she said. “So we went all-adult and the name stuck.”
Back then, an entire wall of the converted gas station held adult magazines. Now magazines take up just 2 percent of its inventory.
Films were sold on reel-to-reel, said Linda, who was a 29-year-old newlywed when the store opened May 15, 1979. VHS tapes, then discs followed.
Now, she said, “We have everything imaginable and some things that are unimaginable.”
That includes dancing poles, herbal supplements Linda claims are “better than Viagra” and both high and low-tech toys. There are adult greeting cards, locking toy chests, novelties and the old standby movies and magazines.
“Are you all set with batteries?” she asks a customer who was checking out Thursday afternoon.
After three decades of handling adult materials, Linda can not be embarrassed. As proof, she pulls a DVD box with an explicit image from one of her shelves, holds it up and says, “To me, this is like a can of Campbell’s soup.”
According to Linda, no one from the city or the state ever stopped in the Fifth Wheel to look around or mandate a license until last year (the city disputes this), when the city health office ordered dismantling of the video booths. She insists that was a blessing because subsequent remodeling left her with space to stock lingerie (up to size 6X) and other retail items.
The Internet hasn’t made a dent in business, said Linda, at least as measured by a Web site she created to sell adult items.
“I made two sales on it,” she said. “People want to come in and see. People want it now.”
And by people, that means an increasingly larger female clientele. When the Herald stopped by last Thursday, female customers outnumbered males by 5 to 1.
When the Rossettis retire, they said, their daughter, Julie, will take over the business. Their daughter-in-law currently makes lollipops in shapes mimicking various body parts, which sell near the front counter and are licensed through the city with an official food permit.
“I can’t complain,” said Linda. “When people come in here, they’re happy.”