Bonnie Sum Yan-yu is a shop assistant at Fetish Fashion, the controversial rubber, leatherwear and sex toy outlet in Hollywood Road, Central. It's her first full-time job after stints as a waitress and bartender. With four months in the shop under her belt, Bonnie, 21, has had more than her fair share of surprises and insights into the darker side of human nature. Born and raised in the territory, she has never been abroad and is saving up to visit friends in Australia, Britain and the United States. What's on your mind? How lucky I am to be normal. A lot of people come in to the shop and just want to talk dirty to me. They obviously have no one else to talk to and have no intention of buying any of the products. One guy came into the shop and talked for a while then left; the next thing I got a disgusting fax from him describing his fantasies - he was really weird. Do you ever feel threatened? Not really, mostly they're just sad people who mean no real harm and, anyway, we're quite near the police station in Hollywood Road. So do you get many policemen coming into the shop? Yeah, it's quite strange. Sometimes they come in in full uniform. When they first popped in I thought there was a problem, but they just looked around, played with some of the toys and made jokes. They were really friendly. They didn't buy anything because they couldn't walk around on the beat with those sorts of things in their pockets! What's your most popular product? With clothes it's definitely rubberwear that is most popular. Hong Kong people seem to like rubber as opposed to leather but we do sell a lot of leather G-strings. The toys are very popular too. Who comes into the shop? You have to be 18 to come into the shop and we get men and women from that age up to their 70s. A lot of very rich people come in and flash their money about. One guy was being awkward wanting to buy just the bra of an underwear set, when I said he had to buy the whole set he slapped $60,000 on the counter and said he had loads of money and could buy what he wanted. Another man brought his wife in and I don't think she knew what sort of shop it was. She started shouting at the top of her voice that he shouldn't have dared bring her here. Has anyone famous come in? When we were at the old shop in Lyndhurst Terrace we used to see Chris Patten nearby but he never came in. If they did I couldn't tell you anyway because of customer confidentiality. Why did you have to move to Hollywood Road? The shop was in a residential block and a lot of people had a problem with what we were selling and even with the sign we had outside. The new shop is in commercial building and in a basement so there's no problem; it's better for business. Acceptance is not so easy here, it'd be a lot simpler running a shop like this in London or New York.
