The pastel pink walls are the first giveaway that the Well Red Damsel is not your typical musty old independent bookstore. Labels on the bookshelves include "LGBTQ+," "Fantasy," "Paranormal," "Dark" — all subgenres within the store's romance novel specialty.
An irreverent tease in big bold letters is painted on one wall with an arrow pointing to a back room: "More smut this way," it says.
But the biggest sign that there is something special going on at Well Red Damsel is the customers. There are a lot of them.
Owner Natasha Meyer says Wisconsin didn't have any romance bookstores before this year. She opened in June, and in less than three months, her business has become one of Wauwatosa's biggest success stories, capitalizing on an underserved niche that may not seem quite so niche anymore, given how many people have been flocking to her store at 6429 W. North Ave.
Meyer's grand opening on June 21 had customers lined up along the sidewalk, and East Tosa was the scene of an even bigger extravaganza last weekend when Meyer and 21 other North Avenue locations hosted a book crawl featuring 70 authors and vendors that drew romance fans from around the region and even from outside Wisconsin.
Meyer estimates more than 2,000 people came to her store and the other participating locations on Sept. 6, based on the number of "passports" she printed and handed out, and the actual turnout likely was even higher. (Demand was so great, she ran out of passports.)
"It's a good escape," Meyer told Tosa Forward News in explaining why she reads, loves and now sells romance novels. "The world is a crazy place, and its fun to escape into another world."