In Cleveland in the late 1960s and into the 70s there were several movie theaters that showed full on porn movies. There were also a few strip clubs that featured the likes of Honeysuckle Divine.
I saw one porn star there that I was quite smitten with. She was a full figured Latin lady that was well known at the time. Damn if I can remember her name. I think she had a sister in the biz also. She would get nekkid and insert props. If she spied a young inexperienced guy she would beckon him on stage and help him strip, then give him a bit of a hand job and maybe a suck or two before sending him back to his friends to redress all flustered. The cops would occasionally step in the back of the room and watch for a bit. Next door was the bar, Stage Door Johnny’s, where the high buck “champagne” was sold and probably a lot more.
In the same part of town when you stopped at a light ladies would come up to the car soliciting, several at a time.
Ohhh…just remembered. This is going farther than I planned, but what the heck.
We had The Stoplite bar with a woman I’m told could pop out ping pong balls and eggs. She could also pick up a roll of stacked quarters and “spit out” the amount called for and supposedly play the flute. You don’t see that kind of entertainment today!
I also heard stories about the drive-ins showing x-rated movies late at night, and was skeptical. Seeing other people say this makes me think that these kids weren’t all making it up.
Also, in Des Moines, the newspaper classified ads had a section for “Outcall Models”. When I took my gap year in the early 1980s, I worked with a woman who had grown up in a small farming community about an hour away, and had always heard that hookers in the big city openly plied their trade, and wondered where they were because she never saw anything she could interpret that way. Yes, they did, at night in the red-light district, and she added, “And they advertise in the newspaper, too.”
Ever after that theater closed, “1536” was DSM’s version of Kleenex for x-rated movie theaters (ETA) in that “1536” became a generic name for a porno theater. That was the theater’s street number, and my parents are old enough to remember when it was a respectable movie theater in a decent neighborhood. :dubious:
In the city where I live now, a strip club about a mile from my home FINALLY got shut down for - you guessed it - not paying taxes. Hundreds of police calls, including at least one for an on-site murder, didn’t get them shut down. All kinds of complaints from the neighbors didn’t get them shut down. Reports of underage girls stripping there didn’t get them shut down. But not paying taxes? Stick a fork in them - they’re done. Thank heavens; it was a very dangerous place.
There’s a “video store” that calls itself that simply because it always has, and while they do sell some videos, most likely their business is mostly sex toys and other kinds of gag bridal shower gifts that are too risque for Spencer’s.
Des Moines also had a Playboy Club for a very short time; it didn’t last in large part because it simply didn’t have the population base that other Playboy Clubs did.
One of my very favorite “Golden Age” porn stars, she always gave one the impression that she truly was there for the sex, rather than the money. Taschen published a beautiful book about her titled “50 Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior.”
My hometown of Kansas City was surprisingly explicit during the Seventies - a whole bunch of porn theaters (the Old Chelsea, the Dove, the Strand) the “Time To Read” newsstand downtown with hardcore porn magazines one shelf over from the music mags, the Fairyland drive-in showing hard core as the last feature of a triple bill, strippers at the Folly Burlesque, a Playboy Club at (if I remember correctly) the Hotel President - I visited the last as a kid when my dad performed magic there. As our family vacation home was at a nudist camp, scantily dressed women were not an issue.
60s and 70s Pittsburgh had a major “live sex shows”/porn/strip scene; at least the strippers are still going well. Scranton was going pretty well along those lines as well and even Kingston has a strip club last I heard. I am betting most major cities had some sort of semi-red-light adult entertainment and my bet is a lot of it was centered on one street or area. Maybe not as central to everything as Pittsburgh’s Liberty Avenue though.
We had a soft-core porn drive-in theater in West Texas that we routinely sneaked into in high school. (I looked 18, so would drive in with a bunch of buddies hidden in the car.) That was on the edge of town. It closed eventually, then another one inside town changed to that format before being burned down in a mysterious arson fire.
There was also a hard-core porn theater called the Flick Theater. It was the subject of the occasional protest from the Christian Crazies. News cameras would shoot the theater’s name from an angle so that it would look like the Fuck Theater.
And then I lived in Bangkok. You want to talk about all kinds of in-your-face (literally) live sex shows. Oh, yowzah. Although not necessarily the best, the most spctacularly showy was perhaps the old Supergirl Bar’s live sex on the Harley-Davidson being lowered from the ceiling. Rolling Stone magazine even mentioned that. Not to be outdone, Super Pussy Bar (really) had a show featuring live sex on and in a convertible.
This reminds me of a story I must share. About 20 years ago, the best show in Bangkok was in the old G Spot Bar in the Nana Plaza red-light complex. A live lesbian shower show with two couples. One December, my buddy from upcountry was in town and my wife in Israel. She was an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University for 30 years and at that time was working on a project that was partially funded by Hebrew University in Jerusalem and so had to make a couple of trips there. This was one of them. So it was the 25th, and my buddy and I had a small Christmas dinner, then hit G Spot Bar. No show that night. We asked the staff, “Hey, where’s the show?” “No show tonight. It’s Christmas.” !!! Both our jaws hit the floor. “But this is a Buddhist country!” Turns out the police had gone around to all the bars that day and informed them there could be nothing too lewd for fear of offending Christian tourists. We were wondering just what the hell devoutly Christian tourists would be doing in Nana Plaza on Christmas night, let alone in G Spot Bar. But there you had it.
I was serving in Pearl Harbor from 1982 through 1990. When you say red light district, do you mean the one on the side streets between Kalakaua and the Ala Wai canal, or do you mean the one on Hotel Street?
‘Cos the one on Hotel Street was thriving when I left in December, 1990. I don’t recall seeing many street walkers near Waikiki, but there were several strip clubs operating there, with no shortage of customers. There were also some adult bookstores on the mauka side of Kalakaua.
I brought my family to Oahu in early 2017. We didn’t drive through downtown at all, and only once through Waikiki. If any “classing up the place” had happened in Waikiki, I couldn’t see it (I didn’t see or look for any strip clubs or adult bookstores, though).
As I stated above, I only ventured there at night once in the late 70’s / early 80’s, but it much wilder before that. Despite the police substation on the corner of Nuuanu and Hotel, there were still lots of hookers on the streets.
AFAIK, there aren’t any stripclubs in Waikiki anymore and the few adult stores cater to the Japanese tourists. There’s still rows of stripclubs lining Keeamoku St and and Kapiolani Blvd. It’s been years since I’ve been to Waikiki, but there were still hookers on Kuhio St. the last time I passed through.
“During the 1970s and '80s, the area around Hotel Street - the city’s “red light” district - still served as an image for the whole of Chinatown. One writer enjoyed the ambiance: “The bards, night clubs, adult film and book shops which comprise this sub-area are concentrated on Hotel Street, forming a colorful and gaily-lit night scene.” But many found the area repugnant. Slowly, more upscale businesses began to take over the area. The installation of a new police substation in Chinatown helped decrease crime in the area.”
The next time you visit Hawaii. Drive down Nuuanu Ave. at night and look down Hotel St. (only Buses are allowed through). You probably won’t recognize it. There are nightclubs and restaurants on Nuuanu Ave. and “real people” walk around the area.
While I never saw any adverts for live sex shows while I was in Hawaii, there was one incident at a little club on Kalanianaole Highway in Pearl City.
One of the dancers came up on the stage and started her routine. After undressing, she reached into a little bag she had brought with her and took out a Taro Patch doll (like a Cabbage Patch Kid, but Hawaiian-themed). This doll had been modified; it was equipped with a, ummm, marital aid, which the young lady played with for a while, finally inserting it into her undercarriage for all to see. The device was apparently itself modified; as a grand finale to her act, she made mayonnaise squirt out of it. Onto herself, I feel I should add.
I never saw anything like that on a stage again. I’m pretty sure it was illegal.
I literally LMAO because I remember Taro Patch dolls.
Sometime during the late 70’s or so, the newspapers stopped carrying adult ads, possibly tied to the Chinatown cleanup and I believe the live sex shows stopped before that.
BTW, Kamehameha Hwy runs through Pearl City, Kalanianaole Hwy is on the other side of the island towards Koko Head. Perfectly understandable since I still don’t know where Kamehameha Hwy becomes Nimitz Hwy which in turn changes to Ala Moana Blvd somewhere along the way. And I’ve live here all my life!
Did you drive down Kuhio Ave. or Kalakaua Ave? Kuhio hasn’t changed much, but Kalakaua is way flashier and brighter than it was in the 80’s / 90’s. I’ve always hated going to Waikiki, but I hate it even more now.
