Iva doesn’t stay in her chair for long though. She likes to putter around, helping customers and offering advice such as “Never let anyone bullshit you.” She’s also happy to gossip. On the way out, Iva gives every customer a Hershey's Kiss, or if you’re lucky, she’ll slip you one of her beloved Caramel Nips from her stash hidden behind her big gray desk.

Personal customer service is what makes Iva’s business successful enough for her to own a house in Leonia, New Jersey, and for her to contribute roughly $200 a month to children’s charities. Iva views charity as her leisure-time activity.

“I don’t know how to dance, so I used to do more charity work,” Iva said. “On 39th street I used to make blankets and give it to the homeless and buy food for the homeless. God has been good to me, so I’m good to others.”

               Since she was a young woman, most of Iva’s time has been spent working hard, just as her parents did before her. Iva was born in a hick town in Puerto Rico where the animals roamed the streets and people walked around doing drugs. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a housewife. She grew up with 11 brothers and sisters, most of whom are dead now. She does not remember much from her childhood though.

               “I was born so poor that you don’t have time to think of anything except where your next meal is coming from, but I never went hungry,” Iva said.

               Iva got her first big break when she was fifteen years old; she immigrated to the United States with her aunt and uncle, leaving her immediate family behind. From there, Iva started working in New York at a lady’s clothing store that doesn’t exist anymore on 162 West 21st street. At that store, she worked as the secretary, collector, manager and saleslady.

In her mid-twenties, Iva got her second big break. Her boss died in a car accident and the family decided to sell the business to Iva for only $20,000.

               “The business was me,” Iva said. “They couldn’t have done anything without me, I was the brains.”

               After that, Iva expanded the business to sell children’s clothing and eventually moved into the current space that she’s in now. Unfortunately the business wasn’t profiting, so in 2001, on the verge of closing shop, the Bures decided to try something new: a sex shop.

               The idea of opening a sex shop was actually her son Jimmy’s idea. Jimmy and Iva have been running the shop together for years.

“We get along perfect,” said Iva as she rested her head on her son’s broad chest and patted him with her hand. “Jimmy is good, honest, sincere, and helpful.”

Jimmy runs the less colorful, yet slightly more daunting back portion of the store that holds sex toys, vibrators, oils, and other sex novelties. Iva muttered and smacked her lips when asked about the back section, “I don’t know nothing about it. Ever since my husband died I feel nothing down there.”

Iva says that the hardest thing she’s ever gone through is when her husband passed away twenty years ago. Her husband, George Bure, was described as a tall, good looking Greek man who was a good provider and a good friend. George and Iva met when Iva was in her 30s at a business college on 137th street that isn’t there anymore.

For Iva, it was love at first sight.

“When I saw him, I said, ‘I’m going to marry him,’” Iva said. “However, his mother was a Greek bitch. She wanted to bring a Greek girl from Greece to marry George.”

To escape the disapproval of George’s mother, Bure and her husband eloped in Connecticut.

“The old bitch didn’t know!” Iva cackled.

Iva’s relationship with her mother-in-law may have been strained, but her relationship with her husband was never troubled. They had three kids and frequently travelled.

“We’d go on one trip and already be planning for the next,” Iva said.

               Iva has been to nearly every island in the Caribbean and numerous countries throughout Europe. She still travels a little, however nowadays she rarely misses a day of work. She’s content to run her small sex shop and chat with her customers daily.

AJ’s gets all sorts of customers coming into the shop, whether it be 87-year-olds from South America looking for sex tapes, an older lady from Atlanta, Georgia looking for an autograph or a strip club house mom buying stockings. None of it shocks Iva though, who takes it all in an energetic stride. Iva Bure has seen it all and she doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

She said, “Age is just a number.”