Rainbow Road

109 West Grant Street, Minneapolis, MN

Rainbow Road was not the first LGBT bookstore in the Twin Cities—some may argue that the Amazon Feminist/True Colors Bookstore holds that distinction. However, and considering Amazon’s beginning as a feminist vendor, the title is arguably best reserved for A Brother’s Touch Books. The bookstore opened on the northeast corner of Nicollet Avenue and Franklin Avenue in 1983.(1) Later, it operated at 2327 Hennepin Avenue. (2)

A Brother's Touch Ad, 1985. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

A Brother’s Touch blazed a trail before Rainbow Road opened south of Loring Park 1995.(3) Harvey Hertz, the former owner of Brother’s Touch, challenged a City of Minneapolis pornography ordinance and lost in 1985.(4) Despite the defeat, this case helped to establish boundaries with the City—officials realized that the era of unchallenged aggressive restriction was ending.

Rainbow Road ad from Lavender Magazine, 1997. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GBLT Studies.

Unlike its older competition, Rainbow Road opened without attempting to affect the same level of community activism. While the former opened in the midst of the nightmarish AIDS crisis, Rainbow Road opened in an era of ever-increasing GLBT acceptance—it opened the same year that “Jeffrey” brought an HIV/AIDS love story to movie theaters nationwide.(5) The establishment easily adapted to a consumer-based market—presently, it sells a combination of x-rated material and GLBT gifts. Rainbow Road’s owner, Jim Connelly, remarked upon the demise of A Brother’s Touch in an interview with City Pages in 2003. “[As] the concept of the consumer changes, I change along with it. You have to evolve, you can't just wait for somebody to come in and buy a product from you because you're reaching out to the gay community.”(6) He continued. “Certainly you can't expect them to come back and buy if you give them bad service, or if you're rude, or if you don't have the product they want. I mean, straight people don't go to straight businesses because they're straight; they go there because there's a product there that they want to buy.” Rainbow Road's storefront, located within a shopping strip at Lasalle Aveneu and Grant Street.

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(1) Hicks, Dylan. "Brother from Another Planet: Gay bookstore A Brother's Touch thrived when queer culture existed behind closed doors. What it couldn't survive was life in the mainstream" City Pages, 6/18/2003. http://www.citypages.com/2003-06-18/news/brother-from-another-planet/1

(2) According to the establishment's sign, which is stored at the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

(3)Hicks, Ibid.

(4) Ibid.

(5) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113464/

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)