It’s difficult to find a place to start with Circus of Books, a film about the notorious book store that sold gay pornography. It’s easier, then, to go into the weeds. To write about personal knowledge of the space. One of the business’ ex-employees is Alaska 5000. I know this because Raja, as a guest on Alaska’s podcast, talked about how the latter’s crankiness and beauty. It’s a combination only the famous drag queen can pull off. She would then feel shock as she learns about a secret place in the business that she wasn’t privy to.

Or anecdotes about other knowledgeable people who ran businesses like this. Margaret Cho’s parents also ran a gay porn business, which would be a part of her routines. Or to write about personal relationships with local versions of these businesses and with pornography in general. I would visit two businesses like Circus, both having different business models. And since internet porn is one of my three jobs I am technically part of the problem.

But the film gets its introductions right. It starts with the political activism in LGBT+ Los Angeles, a plot point that slightly recedes as the film continues. That gay and LGBT+ activism existed in Los Angeles a decade before the business switched owners. These owners are Karen and Barry Mason, parents to the film’s director Rachel. Rachel Mason delights in these visual contrasts, showing her elderly parents sitting on the couch. They reminisce about meeting in a Jewish singles party. She’d show the party itself, two of its guests having different careers than the ones they’ll end up having for the rest of their adult lives.

Karen, one of three sane women bearing the name, was a journalist, and Barry worked both in special effects and invention. Audiences know that a woman directed this because she highlights Karen’s achievements first. A male director would have wrongly started with their dad’s past. That’s true even if both parents’ accomplishments have equal merit, as hers luckily do. The gay porn store, then, was a business opportunity to tide them over while raising a family. A temporary thing before they figured out what they really wanted to do. Barry talks about taking this opportunity. One of the topics include the cocaine addicts who used to own the business, but does so without judgment.

Barry is an open mind, but Mason’s interest as a director belongs to many places. Like to the business’ former employees who would say that he didn’t wear the pants in that family. Hetero-normative thinking, then, exists even in prurient scenes. Yes, interview sections like this perpetuate the idea of the gossipy gay man. These subjects are perpetually in conflict, whether they’re old school gay men who still perpetuate heterosexual binaries. Or in Karen’s case, running a gay porn business as a Jewish woman. She is also a mother to two queer children.

Mason is a queer performance artist, this film being her safest work. And here, she tries to balance the screen time between her family and the community they belong to. But for better or for worse, the family wins out by a hair. She’s an all-around artist and a regular person so of course she has archive footage of her brothers’ bar mitzvahs. Karen contextualizes this footage by saying she has always belonged to a synagogue. She’s incognito like most of the industry. And she kept her business a secret to maintain such a membership.

Although sticking to the family might have been a better decision. Rachel Mason branches out into showing the die-ins and how Reagan passed on the pornography report from one district attorney to another. And sure, showing this footage reminds us of how old that conversation was. But she’s adding anything new in depicting those larger political movements. That said, showing those politicians against LGBT+ rights are a good reminder. That’s true especially now when those spaces are at stake because they face multiple threats. Gay porn stores exist as gathering places as much as drag venues do. Sure, there are different business models and interactions today. And we don’t value pornography enough to archive or keep it. A history disappearing just like the prurience during the Civil War and the Glided Age. But Mason is right in that we are losing something when those places and objects disappear.

Circus of Books is available with a Netflix subscription.