Shameless Grounds

Shameless Grounds has been, by its own description, a sex-positive cafe since 2011, and it is exactly as unusual and as ordinary as that suggests: a neighbourhood coffee house with sandwiches and a patio, which also happens to be built around the idea that adults should be able to talk about sex without embarrassment.

The idea took shape in late 2009, when the founders concluded that St. Louis needed a non-judgemental gathering place – somewhere that could hold group meetings, classes and presentations that no ordinary cafe would host, and that would be a pleasant place to drink coffee the rest of the time. Shameless Grounds opened on Withnell Avenue in Benton Park and has been there since.

Day to day it works as a cafe. Coffee, sandwiches and salads, a cosy room and a patio, and staff with a reputation for making everyone feel welcome regardless of who they came in with. It is a comfortable place to sit for an hour, and a good many regulars come for nothing more complicated than lunch.

The part that makes it distinctive is the library. Shameless Grounds keeps a human sexuality lending library, open to patrons over eighteen, ranging from biology and history through classical literature to frank pulp fiction. It is a genuine collection rather than a gesture, and for a certain sort of reader it is the reason to make the trip.

The cafe stands in Benton Park, a short walk from Cherokee Street, and it has spent well over a decade quietly being one of the more interesting rooms in south St. Louis.