On February 24, 1998 or there about the New York Court of Appeals issued regulations rigged against pornography. For some reason I passed by Times Square a few days later, as the workers were hauling out the XXX stock. THe Street of Sin was closing for good. Men were actually crying. Devoted lovers of porn And then its replacement. Banal art.
"Art? A good name for a man.” Andy Warhol.
Fuck Guiliani.
New York was a different city in the last century. Neighborhoods were populated by native New Yorkers. Stores served their needs. Bars dotted the avenues as a refuge from the daily wear and tear of urban living. One of my favorites was Billy's Topless on Avenue of the Americas.
The cozy strip club had been opened by Bill Pell in the heyday of the Sexual Revolution and the girls were our friends trying to make a dollar by showing their breasts to working-class drinkers. The music came from a jukebox and the bar treated its guests to free food, while they watched the dancers. There was no cover charge and drinks were cheap as befits a true dive bar. None of the girls had breast implants and few of them gave lap-dances, since lap-dances were a thing of the future in the late-1970s.
The hated Mayor Guiliani waged a war against sleaze. The realtors raised the rents of porno parlors in Times Square and his police enforced a no-nudity ordinance of establishments within 500 feet of a school or place of worship. Billy's second owner fought the forces of good by having the girls wearing bikini tops, but the time of wickedness had passed for New York.
Billy's Topless is gone, but not forgotten by those people in love with a Babylon lost to time.
$2nd Street was synonymous with sin in the 1970s.
Fucking Rudy Guiliani closed the porno shops and XXX theaters.
Disney moved into the vacated premises.
Now 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues belongs to fat people eating fast food.
A hell of gross consumption.
The Minnesota Strip was no heaven, but I liked it fine.
1976.
Nothing like it in the modern age.
Hot pants.
42nd Street was paradise for sin. Satan prowled the streets surrounding the Doo-Wop. It was wickedness at its best and worst. Mayor Guiliani shut it down like Dorothy chucking a bucket of water of the Wicked Witch of the West.
"Who would have thought that some little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?"
A pig like Rudy.
"OHHHHHHH!!! NO!!! I'm going...ohhhhhhh..ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...."
But we will be back.
Both me and Clover.
