I moved to New York in the final gasps of the Smut Era. 8th Avenue was lined with peep shows and little porn theatres. Girls working their way through college, as the signs said. Sex workers greeted cars as they came out of the Lincoln Tunnel. They had their areas of congregation. 42nd Street was a line of boarded-up XXX movie houses. I arrived right before The Lion King opened on 42nd Street, which transformed 42nd Street into the … cliched monstrosity it is now. Now I don’t want to get it twisted. Economic resurgence is good. Having Times Square as a place more welcoming to tourists is good. But … the cost we paid was very very high. To have an Applebee’s open on 42nd Street is a travesty. You come to New York as a tourist and you choose to eat at Applebee’s? What the fuck is wrong with you. I didn’t move to New York to join suburban values/taste. In my first year in grad school, I spent a lot of time wandering around New York, taking pictures. I had no idea I was capturing the end of the era, that all of these places would be gutted, all the sex workers would move to Montreal or to friendlier climes … and in place of all these old-school rat-trap burlesque houses would be … Starbucks and Applebee’s and Chipotle.
The Playpen – on 8th Avenue – hung on longer than some of the other venues. When the late afternoon light hit it a certain way, it looked magical. The magic of smut.
Those are gorgeous photos.
// The magic of smut.//
You may have watched the series Ozark. Buddy Dieker (Harris Yulin’s character) has a great line. “Literature lifts us up, but smut binds us to the earth.” Earth magic. In neon. Such a noble gas.
I never saw Ozark – I love all those people so I eventually should catch up with it.
Yeah, I loved the seedy honesty of the porn district. It was not an uplifting place, and often rather scary – New York was much more dangerous when I moved there than what it was just a short time later when the streets had been “cleaned up”. But we lost a lot of texture. There are plenty of G-rated spaces in this world, and in New York City. But to have the whole place be a G-rated zone is very depressing.
The lost towers in the neon sign.
oh my gosh, wow, I hadn’t even noticed that. Thank you for pointing it out.
A lot of this era is captured in the series The Deuce, which is about how the porn industry developed, and overlapped with other businesses (prostitution, policing, politics). Each of its three seasons is set in a different year (1971/72, 1978, 1985), so we see both the city and the business change, along with the main characters. Made by many of the same folks who made The Wire, it gives a chance for its actors and actresses to do what in many cases must be their career best. Even the song chosen to play during each season’s title sequence is spot on: Curtis Mayfield’s “If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go” (1971/72), Elvis Costello’s “This Year’s Girl” (1978), and Blondie’s “Dreaming” (1985). I went to City College in 1980 and ’81 and this is how I remember the city.
I really gotta get on The Deuce!
I feel fortunate that my childhood impressions of New York were early 80s impressions (maybe even late 70s? I forget). The subways covered in graffiti – Port Authority was a HELLHOLE – and kind of scary – it was a very intimidating city and you had to be on your guard. But that made it exciting. All those porn shops and porn theatres in the THICK of things on 42nd Street – I remember that! By the time I arrived for grad school – it was late 90s, and everything was boarded up. A ghost town. Then the Lion King arrived and so began to re-building of 42nd Street – with tourist traps and a huge McDonalds and Madame Tussauds and all the rest. I look at the pictures I took of the boarded-up street and can’t believe it’s the same place.
Maybe the Deuce will be my next binge-watch after I finish off The X-Files.