Combat Zone Amnesia

Urban social scientists in Boston attempted an experiment to contain the wickedness of mankind with the creation of an adult entertainment area between the bus station on Boylston Street and Chinatown. The city decided to green-light prostitution, drag queens, piano bars, go-go bars, rent boys, and pornography along Washington Street and the blocks running adjacent to that main vein of sin. The Boston Record-American newspaper labeled the effort of containment the 'Combat Zone' and men across New England gravitated to Boston's Decriminalized Zone of Sexuality to cut loose with friends and complete strangers.

The Combat Zone featured top-notch strippers at go-go bars such as the 'Teddy Bare Lounge', the 'Two O'Clock Club', 'Club 66' and the 'Naked I'. LaGrange Street was the hot spot for street whores running out of 'Good Time Charlie's'. Most of the pimps frequented the Sugar Shack. I saw James Brown performed on that stage and my friend Andy K swears that he went to the Sugar Shack with Bill O'Reilly, future famed right-wing propagandist. I was a lesser personage. A taxi driver. I drove strippers home. A fare and maybe the offer of a joint. They were good girls other than selling their bodies for sex. I never thought them bad, but the newspaper attacked the Combat Zone as proof that Satan was walking the Earth.

I wish that I could say they were wrong,but the Combat Zone was too much fun for most men and bad things happened on those wind-blown streets every night. A state trooper was killed on LaGrange Street. That homicide brought on the end of the Combat Zone. although the true killer was the higher rents for downtown properties. Sin is cheap. No sex is expensive.

Few people remember the Combat Zone. It was an aberration. I recall the organ/bass/drum trios supporting the white-skinned strippers. Boston was a white town. I had good luck with the dancers after midnight. I was their ride home and I got them there fast.

It was the best a man could do.