A recent viewing, thanks to a tipster, of Guns N Roses' video for "The Garden," complete with footage aplenty of Times Square before Giuliani, brought to mind the old Show World, the adult emporium that once occupied the site of the current Laugh Factory next to the Duane Reade on 42nd and 8th.
In a 1995 article for the Times, Dan Barry wrote, "For two decades, Show World has been the brightest of the gaudy lights in the pornographic firmament of Times Square, so much so that one city official calls it the 'flagship of the sex industry in New York.' But Show World is in trouble. Its light now flickers and may be extinguished....the City Council passed a zoning ordinance designed to smash the clusters of peep shows and pornographic theaters that have cropped up throughout the five boroughs."
It was the beginning of the end for adulthood in Times Square. By 2001, the last of 42nd Street's peeps, Peep-O-Rama, would succumb to development after a lifetime on the Deuce going back to 1950. Its site is now buried under the ever-rising Bank of America Tower--you know, the one that keeps showering pedestrians with shattered glass and construction equipment?
But back to Show World. After the 1995 zoning ordinance, Show World managed to soldier on for another 9 years, its naughty bits whittled away, piece by piece. In 1998, the live girls were gone and the theater space was leased to an Off Off Broadway company called Collapsible Giraffe and Nada Show World, who performed Shakespeare and Chekhov plays on the stages where once naked girls performed live sex acts and something called Face Shows--as the sign said, "Let our girls sit on your face."
View an interview with one of those Show World girls here.
The interior of Show World, as seen in these 2003 photos, was decorated in circus style, complete with high-wire, bicycle-riding, acrobat clowns.
Sweet Dreams Come True--but not according to the sign on the wall. The live girls were gone--they used to stand above the stairs, on the second floor, catcalling and beckoning to the patrons as they climbed through the music and lights.
The video peeps kept running on the first floor until 2004, when the Laugh Factory moved in, today advertising "Family Friendly" comedy. A couple doors down is a new Christian bookstore and gift shop. As the Guns N Roses song ends, as if a farewell to old Times Square, "It sure was glad to know ya, bye bye, so long, bye bye."
7 comments:
Amazing. You would never know this existed if you visit Times Square today. F*king Disney Land for corporations.
Thing is, its not just the zoning regulations that pushed this out. Its the fact that the internet has totally changed the sex trade, from porn to prostitution. These red light districts are somewhat obsolete now in any case.
Um... some of Show World is still there, in the basement at least. At least, that's what this handful of leftover tokens tells me. :)
My friend somehow managed to have an art show inside show world in 2002. Mitch Miller. He had big ugly expandafoamy sculptures in the first room. then there was a dance floor and then there was a stage upstairs where two chinese girls whipped and licked each other in cat suits and there was another room where some guy was just fucking this girl on a table and i watched for a minute and the guy fucking said, it's cool, you can watch and then i went back to dancing with lesbians dry-humping like crazy. probably the most unforgettable experience i've had in nyc minus 9/11
Great picture & post ,
Thanks ,
Tracy Ho
wisdomgettingloaded
Great post, these are the sights and scenes that http://www.citysightsny.com don't show you ha
I was a high echelon employee of Show World. All I can say is that my experiences there taught me more about life and business than the best universities could possibly conjure. Show world was the epitomy of freedom, that we go to war to try to preserve. It was the mindset of a man Rudolf Guilianni that caused the decline of Show World. An arrogant crossdressing Hypocryte who imposed his manner of thinking on the public and those beneath him. A man who could not keep his own family together who in fact destroyed families(Including his Own) livelyhoods and lives. Truly a reflection of the narrowminded majority of brainwashed americans. I am at ease that he has been scrapped as nominee for President. What a horrible disaster that would have been......
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