Earth + Salt Brings Sex Toys and Positivity to Burlington 

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• Luke Awtry
• Beth Hankes in Earth + Salt

A dozen dildos line a shelf in Earth + Salt like neon pink and rainbow-colored soldiers waiting for marching orders. In this case, their duty is not to rain down destruction but to deliver sexual pleasure.

Nearby, a center table holds more than 20 vibrators, from the smooth green, leaf-like Wave to the multipronged Rabbit. There are suction toys for clitoral stimulation and masturbation sleeves with different interior textures to upgrade the habitual hand job.

Another shelf holds butt plugs — some quiver, some don't — in an array of sizes. One has an "arm" that stretches across the perineum, the area between the anus and the scrotum or the vulva. Perineum play, it turns out, is a thing.

"We sold a lot of butt stuff for Valentine's Day last year," said Beth Hankes, who opened the Burlington store in August 2021 after eight months of selling sex toys online.

This brick-and-mortar erotica emporium is a unique retail entry in the Queen City. Although the Good Stuff store on Church Street sells a selection of sex toys, Earth + Salt makes the pursuit of orgasm its top priority. Its curated array of products embraces sex-positive pleasure seekers of all stripes — any gender identity, sexual orientation or proclivity for kink — who are at least age 18.

Hankes, 37, has trained as a sex educator and emphasizes sexual wellness, safety, information, and accessibility for marginalized groups and people with disabilities. She approaches her business with a frankness that's meant to make customers comfortable with carnality.

"No matter what you're into, we're going to hopefully be able to serve you in some way," Hankes said on a recent evening, relaxing in a swayback chair in her shop.

Earth + Salt's entrance is off an alley leading to the lower level of the Karma Bird House on Maple Street, but this isn't some dimly lit dungeon down a dark corridor. Hankes' space is bright and airy, with lush green plants and huge front windows. The exposed-brick walls hold artwork, including a framed poster depicting various vulvas. The shop's bookshelf includes titles such as Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters — and How to Get It and Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups and Shame-Free Sex.

Earth + Salt has a section for BDSM (bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism) and offers classes on safe role-play. Among the handcuffs and nipple clamps is a line of leather products by Fairfax-based Dark Desires Vermont, including sensuous woven floggers, slap straps and bundles of rope dyed in jewel tones.

One of the "clit suckers" that Earth + Salt carries is the popular Rose toy, a silky silicone red bud that went viral on TikTok last year. The suction sensation, using air pressure to excite, only hit the sex toy scene about a decade ago, Hankes said.

"They say it's supposed to be like oral sex," she explained. "It's not quite like oral sex."

The shop offers a selection of gaffs, tuckers and binders — undergarments with which individuals can comfortably camouflage genitalia and breasts. Packers let someone without male anatomy have the sensory experience of a phallus. A mini stroker called a Shot Pocket gives someone with a clitoris the sensation of masturbating the way a person with a penis would.

"It's another way to confirm your gender," Hankes said. "Gender issues and concerns and feeling like you're in the wrong body come up so much in sex."

Abigail Western, 21, discovered Earth + Salt on a field trip with a positive-sexuality discussion group for University of Vermont students called the Good Stuff. She and her partner, 21-year-old Dina Retik, dropped by the shop on a January evening to check out the Rose as a replacement for her Satisfyer Pro 2 suction toy, which has 13 intensity settings. It gave out over winter break, Western said.

"As a queer couple, it's nice to come to such an inclusive place [and] get to ask our questions, with no judgment," Retik said.

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• Luke Awtry
• Hemp bondage rope

The couple also visited the Good Stuff store downtown, but Earth + Salt appealed to them more with "queer stuff everywhere" in an "accessible space," Western said. "Just being comfortable in an environment when you're exploring new things is a good plus."

Not all customers know exactly what they want when they come to Earth + Salt. Many start out baffled by the options, employee Nico Walton said. They might not be familiar with the newer products or even with the differences among dildos, vibrators and suction toys.

"A lot of the time, when you talk about sex, we're kind of talking around it, and this is a place that you have to get into the nitty-gritty," Walton said. "I'm surprised by how much people trust us to tell us their most vulnerable aspects and ... to listen to that and give them the help that they're looking for."

Walton and Hankes will walk newcomers around the store and gently prod them for information: What type of touch do they prefer? Do they like more pressure, more intensity? Does tapping or stroking work better for them? What about penetration? Using this approach, Hankes recently helped a customer in her fifties buy her first vibrator.

"Not everyone has words for what they like," Hankes said. "We need to be really warm and welcoming so that people know they can say the things that they struggle to say. And most people do fantastic with it. Even the nervous folks find their way with it. It's just taking the time with people and letting them know it's OK and that we're not going to be surprised by anything they have to say."

Hankes grew up in Pennsylvania and studied art history and studio art at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts; one of her professors there, who is about 30 years older, later became her partner. Around five years ago, Hankes said, she found herself with an urge to explore erotic encounters outside her relationship and sought out a sex therapist. She wanted to sleep with an ex-boyfriend without estranging her partner. At the same time, health problems prevented her from connecting with her sexuality, raising her awareness of the importance of finding harmony between passion and the body.

Her partner supported her in every way, Hankes said: "I think we both knew we had something so special, we wanted to do what we could to maintain the relationship."

Hankes was ready to make a career change, as well. After working for six years in finance and business operations for a big health care company in Boston, she'd grown antsy to resurrect the creativity and sensuality she'd experienced with her art.

For her job, Hankes often traveled to Burlington. In early 2019, she did a two-week artist residency at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. Later that year, during a trip to the city, she and her partner headed out in search of a sex toy shop before dinner at Revolution Kitchen. They found no place that combined the quality of products and the welcoming, cheery atmosphere that Hankes envisioned.

She decided to fill that void.

In the throes of the pandemic in 2020, while Hankes and her partner looked for a place to live in Burlington, she took a remote business course through the locally based Center for Women & Enterprise. She built a website and learned the ins and outs of the sex products business. The three major wholesalers in the industry, she discovered, carried a whopping 20,000 to 40,000 items — many of them cheap and poorly constructed.

"I can actually curate everything to be body-safe and OK to use, because there's plenty of products out there you should actually not be using," Hankes said. "Products made of a jelly, as a jelly texture — those are body-toxic. They off-gas toxins, which is not great."

Lubricants are another concern. "Some of them have glycerin in it, which can cause yeast infections," she said. "And they have a lot of preservatives in them, which can cause irritation. So the amount of potentially hazardous things you could encounter is actually kind of high."

Hankes also looks for tasteful packaging that isn't silly or grotesquely pornographic. In most categories, Earth + Salt carries products in a range of prices. The Wave vibrator costs $29, while an app-controllable couples vibrator called the Chorus runs $190. Dildos cost from $20 to about $70. Pulsating butt plugs are priced around $60. A sleek, stainless steel Pure Wand arouses the G-spot for $120 and comes in a beautiful box lined in fuchsia satin.

Hankes named the shop Earth + Salt to evoke the landscape and the fundamental features of sexual contact: a little bit dirty, a little bit sweaty. The name also suggests the openness and ease that she aims to invite with her business.

"I wanted it to be that place where — if you feel bad about yourself, if you have a struggle, if your sex is mostly happening in sweatpants — you feel comfortable here," Hankes said. "You're going to feel confident and comfortable asking questions you need to ask."