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The business of pleasure has turned painful for an estranged Outer Cape couple who are battling over control of two Commercial Street sex toy shops.

Maxine Kroll and Devioune Mayim-Daviau, former lovers who lived together in North Truro until earlier this year, are enmeshed in a bruising civil lawsuit regarding the future of Toys of Eros and Wild Hearts, according to court documents filed in Barnstable Superior Court.

The stores, located within several blocks of each other along Commercial Street, sell a variety of provocative clothing, adult toys and DVDs.

Kroll is also facing three counts of identity fraud, one charge of improper use of a credit card and one charge of possession of a blank credit card stemming from the alleged illegal use of Mayim-Daviau’s credit cards. Kroll is also alleged to have obtained an Oregon driver’s license that shows her picture but contains Mayim-Daviau’s personal information.

For the criminal case, Kroll is represented by Falmouth attorney J. Drew Segadelli, who called the charges ‘’unfounded.’’ Kroll’s pretrial hearing is scheduled for Sept. 27 in Orleans District Court.

‘’I would suggest these present criminal allegations simply arise out of the ex-domestic partner attempting to gain an advantage and/or an upper hand as it relates to the business dispute,’’ Segadelli said.

The Toys of Eros on Commercial Street in Provincetown is one of two sex shops at the center of a bitter business dispute that has landed in court.
(Staff photo by Paul Blackmore)

Troubled company

The business dispute fills a thick folder at Barnstable Superior Court.

Allegations in the original suit, filed by Mayim-Daviau, as well as other counterclaims and affidavits, lay out a sad tale of love and business gone wrong.

Orleans District Court records also show that during 2006, both Mayim-Daviau and Kroll were arraigned on separate charges of assault and battery and violation of a protective order. In both cases, the charges were eventually dropped, though according to Mayim-Daviau’s civil suit, she spent April 22 through April 24 in the Barnstable County Correctional Facility awaiting arraignment.

‘’I just find it very, very sad that two people can go from loving each other and sharing everything to bitterness and trouble,’’ said a source familiar with the situation. ‘’Can the business survive? I doubt it. Can the people survive? That’s my question.’’

The company, Wild Hearts Inc., has not filed federal or state income tax returns for 2004 or 2005, and owes federal and state payroll withholding taxes, according to Mayim-Daviau’s lawsuit.

Court documents state Wild Hearts and Toys of Eros were forced to close temporarily this summer after employees walked out when their paychecks bounced.

The split between the two women has prevented inventory from reaching the stores in a timely manner, documents indicate, allegedly because Mayim-Daviau won’t allow company employees to access a storage area on her property in North Truro.

A July 24 e-mail from Wild Hearts Inc. general manager Fred Biddle to Mayim-Daviau asks Mayim-Daviau to deliver a laundry list of items to the stores, including numerous sex toys and DVDs. ‘’Maxine and I remain concerned about being unable to verify your accounting of inventory,’’ Biddle wrote.

Among other requests, Mayim-Daviau is asking the court to designate her as the majority shareholder of Wild Hearts Inc. and name her as a director and president of the corporation.

Mayim-Daviau also alleges Kroll has barred her from the retail location by blockading the doors and changing the locks.

Ownership contested

Kroll and Mayim-Daviau, romantic partners at the time, purchased Wild Hearts Inc. in 2002 for $327,000, according to the lawsuit. The business consists of two leased locations in Provincetown and a retail Web site.

Mayim-Daviau made an initial investment of approximately $227,600 toward the purchase price, while Kroll kicked in $80,000, according to Mayim-Daviau’s suit. But a 2003 Internal Revenue Service document, filed to specify how much stock in the company each partner owned, indicated Kroll owned 50 percent of the shares, Mayim-Daviau owned 47 percent of the shares, with a minority owner, Lois Bruckno of Pennsylvania, owning 3 percent of the business.

Bruckno, who had previously been a business partner with Kroll in Delaware, filed a counterclaim in Barnstable Superior Court alleging Mayim-Daviau may have removed corporate funds for personal use and Mayim-Daviau has intimidated company employees.

An Aug. 21 affidavit by Wild Hearts employee Kerry Schwarz alleges Mayim-Daviau and her ‘’gang of friends’’ have been hanging out in front of the Wild Hearts store on Commercial Street and staring at her as she leaves the store. ‘’This activity makes me feel intimidated and anxious,’’ the affidavit states.

A second affidavit by Schwarz alleges that on July 4, Schwarz was stopped by Mayim-Daviau in the stairwell of the Wild Hearts store. ‘’She demanded that I give her the bank bag,’’ reads Schwarz’s affidavit. ‘’Despite knowing I was not supposed to give her the bank bag I felt I had to or I wouldn’t be able to get by her on the steps.’’

Judge intervenes

On Aug. 23, Barnstable Superior Court associate justice Christopher Muse issued a temporary order in the case appointing Wellfleet accountant George Malloy to serve as receiver of the company while the mess is sorted out. The order instructs Malloy to review financial records, determine preliminarily the amounts each partner invested in the company, seek tax return deadline extensions, and prepare tax returns for 2004 and 2005.

Muse ordered that Malloy assume control of corporation assets, including bank accounts, inventory and accounts receivable. He also ordered that all inventory be consolidated and secured, and that access to the inventory be provided to designated employees.

Muse also ordered that seven $1,500 weekly paychecks be tendered to Mayim-Daviau, and that Malloy determine when Kroll and Mayim-Daviau may be present at the stores.

Through Fred Biddle, Malloy declined to comment for this report.

Kroll also declined to comment. Her attorney in the civil case, Gerald Garnick of Hyannis, also declined to comment.

Through an office assistant, Mayim-Daviau’s attorney Edward Veara declined to comment on the case. Mayim-Daviau did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment and could not be located at her last given address.

Ronny Hazel, who owns Shop Therapy, a Commercial Street business that sells sex toys and videos, among other things, said he was sorry to hear of the trouble going on down the street at Toys of Eros and Wild Hearts. Hazel also said he wasn’t sure whether his competitors’ legal trouble had helped sales at his store.

‘’They’re more of a boutique, and we’re more for working class heroes,’’ he said. ‘’But I do know this: sex sells.’’

I am posing this question because of all the anti-straight Provincetown news articles floating around.

There are more gay owned homes and businesses in Provincetown than those owned by straights (thought I doubt there was ever a questionnaire about anyone’s sexual preferences and ownership) so I am not asking about tax revenue.

What would Provincetown be like without straight travelers?

Customers pole-dancing for discounts at a Provincetown salon have been stripped of their summer fun.

Owner Dougie Freeman installed a stripper pole at West End Salon & Spa on Sunday for “Dancing for Discounts,” a summer promotion offering appealing prices for customers who dance at the pole.

The salon was offering a $1 discount for every minute a customer shook and shimmied at the pole, for up to five minutes.
“This is actually a wholesome activity,” Freeman says. “There’s no nudity involved.”
Unfortunately, he failed to get an entertainment license, and yesterday, town officials said the pole must go.
“I feel kind of like an artist who’s been nailed to a cross,” Freeman says, adding that he is disappointed but not bitter.

The heartbroken Freeman says he went to Town Hall in February to get permission to have the pole. He thought he made all the right moves but forgot to save the last dance for the licensing board.

“Dancing is construed as entertainment,” says Elizabeth Hartsgrove, the town’s licensing agent.
Freeman said he plans to go through the process to get an entertainment license to run the steamy discount at his spa. That could take four to five months.

In the case of the new Provincetown Art Museum, which opened on Commercial Street in May, the problem was how to put a big thing in a small place.

How, in the pleasantly tiny streets of this much-loved town, do you shoehorn in a 20,000-square-foot building without letting it dominate?

Twenty thousand square feet is more than a third the area of a football field. Provincetown, by contrast, is something of a toy town. Its streets and buildings are not only small, they feel unplanned. Provincetown looks random and jumbled: a series of happy accidents. That’s why it feels so comfortable, like mismatched old clothes.

Like the town itself, the houses tend to look as if their parts had been assembled rather than designed. Wings, windows, dormers, garages , and decks have been added over the years. The town becomes a collection of architectural bric-a-brac.

The architects of the Art Museum are Jorge Silvetti and Rodolfo Machado, who both teach at Harvard. Lately they’ve won praise nationally for their daring and superb renovation and expansion of the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. They’re also the architects of recent theaters and apartments at the Boston Center for the Arts. Less happily, they designed Harvard’s One Western Avenue housing, so little loved by then-Harvard president Lawrence Summers that he ordered trees planted to screen it from view.

Machado and Silvetti, both of whom vacation in Provincetown, clearly understand the DNA of the place. They get their museum pretty much exactly right. It’s balanced on a tightrope. It’s unafraid to look like the important civic building that it is, but it finds ways not to be grand or imposing.

Games are played to reduce the apparent scale. Tall interior spaces are disguised by a Commercial Street facade that’s divided into three horizontal stripes of different materials. The lowest stripe is mostly glass, so a passing pedestrian can see directly into the museum and view its art. Next to the entrance, though, the glass disappears and is replaced by a concrete wall, the surface of which retains the grain of the wood mold the concrete was poured into. This so-called board-formed concrete, says the architect, ``references wood” without being actually woody. It’s a clue that the museum is seeking to look both like and unlike Provincetown.

The middle stripe is surfaced with wood shingles, like much of Provincetown, but these shingles are custom Spanish cedar, sometimes called Cigar Box Cedar. They’re applied in a rare pattern called Dutch lap, which means they overlap not only top to bottom, like any shingles, but also side to side. The shingles, like the concrete, remind you of Provincetown without quite replicating it. Incidentally, they don’t really keep the weather out. The weatherproof layer is behind them.

The third and top stripe is also Spanish cedar, but it’s not shingles, it’s horizontal strips of wood that seem to wrap the building like a streamline-fashioned radio grille. In a couple of places, they become a louver where they cross in front of a window.

All these materials and textures, and there are others, form a collage like the one an abstract artist might make. Visually, they break a big building into smaller parts. Collaging in architecture—the free-spirited mixing of unlike materials—is a delicate game. Famed modernist Marcel Breuer, who loved to play it, was sometimes dismissed as an `` exterior decorator.”

If the game went just a little further at Provincetown, the museum might bear a fatal resemblance to the sample wall of a salesroom. But it stops short of that. It’s a varied and handsome building. As with these architects’ fine Honan-Allston branch of the Boston Public Library, there’s a clear homage to the work of the 20th-century Finnish master Alvar Aalto, designer of the great Baker Hall dorm at MIT.

Not everything is new. The museum was already here, occupying old and decaying buildings. Some parts were demolished, and some were smoothly merged with the new work. One of those that were retained stands next to the new facade on Commercial Street, thus becoming yet another surface in the collage. It’s a dumb-looking Georgian-style house, with white clapboard walls and nine windows arranged symmetrically around a door. Nothing about its proportions feels right. But the frank contrast of new and old is pleasing, like a father arm in arm with his taller son. ``They express the dual identity” of the old museum and its new additions, says Christine McCarthy, the museum’s director.

Indoors, the museum is a delight. The galleries are high and wide and so arranged that you can take them all in—new ones and old ones—with one looping walk. They’re beautifully lighted from skylights, which face north to avoid direct sun. Their backs, facing south, bear photovoltaic panels. There’s artificial light too, but it automatically dims as daylight increases. The whole building, in fact, is a serious attempt at green architecture. The museum expects a silver LEED rating (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) from the US Green Building Council. A $550,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation, about 10 percent of the museum’s cost, is contingent on achieving that certification.

Besides galleries, there’s a shop, office and workroom space, a classroom and studio for art students, and a pair of outdoor sculpture courts. An enormous new basement is mostly for art storage. For the first time, the museum is climate controlled.

Of normal museum amenities, I missed only a coffee shop, but there’s one right across the street. Perhaps the museum will replace its new front lawn, which is a dorky suburban grass patch that doesn’t belong here, with some pleasant paving and outdoor chairs and tables.

The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, under different names, has been around since 1899. It collects only art by artists who have spent at least some time on the Outer Cape. But that’s an amazingly varied list, including, for example, Milton Avery, Robert Motherwell, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Red Grooms, and most famously Hans Hofmann, who ran a modernist art school starting in 1934. Works by Wolf Kahn, Nancy Webb, and Penelope Jencks are currently on view. The museum now owns 2,000 works by 600 artists. It runs an accredited year-round art school. In short, it’s a thriving and vital place, worth a visit.

Robert Campbell, the Globe’s architecture critic, can be reached at camglobe@aol.com

Provincetown’s Commercial Street enters the 2006 season with more uncertainty than usual. For those who see the street not so much as an outrageous outpost but more as an economic vanguard, a harbinger of where the broader Cape economy is headed, that’s cause for general concern.

Long-time observers of Commercial Street in Provincetown are nearly unanimous:

There are more For Rent signs on retail storefronts, closer to the start of the season, than anyone has seen in decades.

“No question,” says Candace Collins Boden, executive director of the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce, who has been watching the street for more than 30 years and also happens to be one of its landlords - the Chamber rents out five shops, all in the downtown bull’s eye between town hall and MacMillan Wharf.

“I’ve seen it go up and down, up and down, but about a month and a half ago, I counted 18 empties,” she recalls. “That’s a lot. I’m guessing we may be down to about 13 or so, and a few more will fill in during May. But even so, that just doesn’t look good, or healthy.”

There’s no widespread panic, but according to a handful of reports, landlords have started dropping their asking prices. Others are musing about Commercial Street’s symbolism and fate, weighing just how much overhead the traffic can bear, wondering if the evolving nature of the town and its housing market are redefining what for generations has been one of the Cape’s busiest, healthiest (and funkiest, and most seasonal) downtowns.

If anyone doubts that, consider this:

Commercial Street rents in the downtown, meaning six to eight blocks on both sides of town hall, can run as high as $120,000 to $140,000—for a season that is the shortest of the Cape’s short summer, as few as eight weeks of truly high action.

Even very small retail spaces, only a few hundred feet square, can command as much as $40,000 a season downtown. Heading east and west, prices drop, but not off the table; in the West End, for example, which has become more fashionable in recent years, side-by-side storefronts rented for $50,000 and $75,000 last year (the larger one measuring about 1000 square feet). Both tenants threw in the towel and vacated; a new owner of the building is charging this year’s occupants significantly less.

Longtime tenants, working with what some might argue are smarter, less greedy landlords, aren’t being charged top end, often offering back stability and good relationships in return. Collins Boden reports, for example, that one Chamber tenant downtown is still being charged $26,000 for prime space that has been occupied for years. The Chamber is charging only $18,000 to $20,000 for each of its four shops around the corner on Lopes Square, still in the very center of town; that’s certainly below typical market, but then again, the storefronts are only 150 to 200 square feet, and not right on Commercial Street.

Gregg Russo at Atlantic Bay/Sotheby’s International Realty, another longtime and astute observer of the town, says that he has prominent retail properties available in the West End that are 500 to 600 feet, renting for $35,000 to $40,000.

“I think there’s going to be a last-minute push,” he says. “You know, it’s easy to forget from year to year what’s empty, and then people make unrealistic comparisons. Or they see a landmark store, an obvious store that’s empty, and then it seems like there are a lot of them, but in reality it’s only a handful.”

One interesting anomaly about the Provincetown market is that unlike most places, landlords don’t charge a strict per-square-foot price. “It’s location, and only location,” says Collins Boden. “I was shocked when I first realized that, and outsiders will always ask about the square-foot cost, but it doesn’t apply.” And the only retail space that will rent, she adds, is street level. “Upstairs? Forget it. In Provincetown, you won’t get anyone in there.”

Others who have studied the market say that a rough average of per-square-foot rents across town would be about $65, but the variation is so great that the figure seems contrived.

Russo calls the overall market “a bit slow,” acknowledging that even some smart, realistic landlords are having trouble filling their shops. Then there are the landlords who want rents “like telephone numbers,” he smiles. “There’s no basis to them.”

If there ever was, it lay in Commercial Street’s years of outrageous foot traffic. Day trippers by car and boat, weekly renters, seasonal renters, chic second homeowners, all joined in the melting pot, creating a retail dynamic that allowed T-shirt shops and high fashion boutiques to coexist. East End art galleries could move five-figure paintings while knick-knack shops sold cheap sunglasses nearby. A restaurant sporting $20 entr�es could prosper within hailing distance of a successful $2 hotdog stand.

Those days are not over, but new economics have made the street less elastic. At issue is not just retail rents, but the 800-pound gorilla in every Provincetown discussion; the housing market.

“Real estate is the engine that runs this world, we all know that,” says Collins Boden. “Prospective retailers are looking at the cost of rents, but then they’re also looking at the cost of living here, and find it very daunting. It’s that combination that certainly has created this situation.” Without a place to live � let alone any confidence that summer employees could find a place to live � newcomers are not inclined to sign expensive shop leases.

So Provincetown’s Commercial Street enters the 2006 season with more uncertainty than usual. For those who see the street not so much as an outrageous outpost but more as an economic vanguard, a harbinger of where the broader Cape economy is headed, that’s cause for general concern. And without doubt, the factors reshaping the street are present across the Cape.

But also without doubt, Gregg Russo’s scaled-back, more optimistic perspective has merit too:

“They’ve been predicting the demise of Provincetown since I first came here,” he says (and he’s been in real estate since 1982). “This is a very fluid place, and that’s what it will continue to be.”

All materials on this site copyright 2001-2006 by The Cape Cod Voice, all rights reserved. Reproduction by permission only.

Copyright 2006 by The Cape Cod Voice, all rights reserved. Reproduced by permission. 

Technologically savvy, wary of the anti-gay set and eager to be of help to fellow lesbians, Sue Beckwith registered the Internet domain name Lesbian.com as soon as she knew how.

More than a decade later, Beckwith, of St. Louis, and the Web site’s two other producers have decided to sell the name - and are asking for $2 million.

When Beckwith registered the name in 1995 - a move that cost a mere $35 or so - she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do with Lesbian.com. But after several conversations with activism-minded friends, they decided the site would be used to promote resources and services for lesbians nationwide and beyond.

In 1999, a site geared toward just that was introduced. There, visitors can link to information on health issues, sexuality, the arts, where to vacation and countless other matters of interest to lesbians. It is owned by Beckwith Technology Services, a privately held corporation in Austin, Texas, that was started by Beckwith.

“It’s been a big part of who I am,” said St. Louisan Mel Braman, 46, one of the site’s co-producers. “It’s a big part of my identity.”

But now, Braman and Beckwith said, the time has come to let someone else take it to another level.

The perfect buyer, both women said, would be someone keen on making Lesbian.com an even better resource. “It would be someone who is in touch with the online lesbian space,” Beckwith said.

However, she and her co-producers realize the domain name may attract not only those of a like mind and purpose, but potential buyers interested mainly in investment possibilities, or in promoting pornography.

The site has had suitors before. Not long after Beckwith registered the name, a porn business offered to buy it for $250,000, but she turned it down, she said.

This time, the decision isn’t entirely up to her, and she’s not sure how she’d feel if a porn business ended up first in line.

“I’m just going to cross that bridge when I come to it,” said Beckwith, 51. “It would have to be a very lucrative offer.”

As for the $2 million price tag, industry experts don’t think it’s out of line. Internet domain names have produced huge payoffs. Sex.com, for example, went this year for an estimated $14 million, according to Zetetic, a company that appraises domain names and tracks their sales.

Jeremiah Johnston, general counsel with Sedo.com, a company in Cambridge, Mass., that buys and sells domain names and Web sites, said $2 million might be a bit inflated for Lesbian.com’s final price. “But as far as an asking price, it’s definitely in the ballpark,” he said.

Boosting its value, he said, is that the domain name uses a single, simple, recognizable word that has a target audience. Also of help is that it ends with “.com,” as opposed to a more obscure address ending.

Jim Thornburn, a manager with GoDaddy.com, a company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that specializes in selling domain names via auctions, said in an e-mail that $2 million is a good price for Lesbian.com, especially in light of sex.com’s sale price.

“If there are several interested parties from the pornography industry bidding, which is fairly likely with this domain, the price could go for a substantially larger sum,” Thornburn added. “Million-dollar domain names are rare, but when it happens, it’s usually because the name has either an established business behind it or because its potential as a key word or for type-in traffic is extremely high. . . . This name does not have a lot of traffic compared to other sites such as gay.com but has great type-in potential.”

Lesbian.com logs about 600,000 page views per month, according to Beckwith. And when Google users type in “lesbian” when searching for information, Lesbian.com is the first site listed.

But because the site was never intended to become a major moneymaker, it lacks certain components valuable to advertisers. For one, the site does not use “Internet cookies,” which leave trails that show what sites have been visited. The lack of cookies prevents the site from passing on information about its visitors to advertisers.

But keeping visitors from being traced is important to the site’s producers, Beckwith said.

“There are a lot of places in the world where being a lesbian is against the law and even just saying you’re a lesbian out loud can put your well-being in jeopardy,” she explained. “We not only want them to feel safe, we want them to be safe.”

If the domain name’s new owner wants to make money, there is clearly an audience to be tapped. The total buying power of the nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adult population this year is projected to be $641 billion, according to a study by Witeck-Combs Communications and Packaged Facts.

Lesbian.com now sells advertisements ranging from $200 to $700 a month. It does not accept ads from anyone promoting hate or discrimination, and it doesn’t accept banner ads from pornographic sites. It also prefers to accept ads from those with personnel policies that support domestic-partner relationships.

“We make just enough to get by as part-time work,” Beckwith said. “We’ve never really tried to make it more than that.”

As for how the site’s producers are going about selling the name, they’ve sent a news release to wire services that serve gay and lesbian publications but haven’t gone far beyond that, Beckwith said. They already have received inquiries, though, she said.

Given the uniqueness of the domain name, that’s to be expected.

“There’s only one in the whole world,” Beckwith said.

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