Ever been to a porn theater?

[hobbs]

I'm old enough to remember going to porn theaters a few times in New York City even before they showed hard core sex. ( There were hard core stag type films on 8mm but they were not shown in public adult movie houses.)

These were smelly filthy theaters with almost all lone guys sitting at least a seat apart from each other. Some were open 24 hours and often times a drifter or some poor traveler stuck between bus changes would just find a seat and sleep. There was a fair amount of jerking off of course. The floors were often sticky....you can figure that out. These were not pleasant places to go. You can get a brief glimpse of what one was really like if you watch "Taxi Driver". DeNiro takes his girl to a porn movie on 42nd street, doesn't have a clue how inappropriate it was to go there on a date. I'm pretty sure that was shot in a real XXX movie house right there.

A few years after hardcore stuff started getting played, "Deep Throat" came out and it got a lot of attention and hype because it was actually funny and pretty well produced and professional looking. It made a lot of money in theaters and other higher budget porn films started making the rounds. Porn was somewhat legitimized as a campy art form and couples started going to at least a few of the cleaner adult theaters.

The funniest movie title I ever saw was on the marquee of the one adult film theater on Main Street in Newburg, New York. In big letters it said."Now showing XXX: A Cunning Stunt" I was driving by, almost went off the road laughing so hard.

[OtisOne]

Originally Posted by LargeBreastFan

... The advent of VCR/DVD ended it.

Well, maybe not DVD, but home players and the rise of video production over film certainly spelled the doom of the porn cinema house. Small screens also meant the end of production values we had come to expect.

[oldster]

Am in my 50's now and grew up on Long island, NY. Went to college in NYC and would go to theatres, book stores,, and strip clubs in Times Square after classes on Fridays. Had the experience of going to Time Square during the late 1970's so there was a mix of theatres showing full lenth features, bookstores with the loop rooms, and my favorite strip club the Melody Burlesque

Later moved to S Fla which is loaded with strip clubs, book shops and back in early 1980's there were still some theatres in Miami as well as in building next to book shop in Pompano on U.S. 1 .

Up here is PB County there was a small book shop for many years extending into late 1980's that had bookshop, booths showing loops, and a small theatre. Went there one night and there was an older woman working the cash register. Business was light(no one in the place but her and I) and she locked up the place early and we went wild in there for about 6 hours that night. Going at it in loop booths, using a bunch of sex toys, lubes, etc and basically we just went nuts.

I believe the era of porn theatres faded with the advent of VHS tapes.

Now that I'm a bit older, married to a former stripper....we still go to sex shops but the places are no where near as wild as 20-30 years ago.

Strip clubs are still just as wild as years ago, and it helps being married to a former stripper who is bi. we go to some of the clubs she had worked in the past and hook up with dancers now and then.

[Sunny-Boy]

I lived in London in 1968/69 and went to a John Lindsay theatre opposite Leicester Square tube station. It was a members only place and therefore was well organized and safe but I do remember many punters having a raincoat over their laps. Honestly don't recall any gay activities but being gay was illegal in the UK at that time. Later in the 70's I was a semi-regular at a theatre in Birmingham's Bullring. That's the first place I recall Swedish Erotica loops and that began my interest in the Connie Peterson, Eileen Wells and others. Amsterdam had many theatres that showed continous loops also and I recall seeing Lasse Braun flicks there. Again they appeared safe and clean and devoid of cruisers. In the USA, I visited very large traditional theatres in Cleveland (saw Pink Champagne) and New Orleans. They have gone now and I don't recall seeing a porno on the big screen since 1984 or so. I think the VHS and now the DVD for home viewing have supplanted the big movie houses.

[Mad Koala Bear]

Originally Posted by Sunny-Boy

. Honestly don't recall any gay activities but being gay was illegal in the UK at that time.

Just to clarrify that point if I may; the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised homosexual behaviour between adults over 21, in private, so by the time you referred to (68/69)it was not a criminal offence as such.

[mrgr8shag]

Back in the mid 80s there was a drive inn in my small town that went pron. I never paid for it, but the nearby woods made for easy viewing and was ultimately the reason it had to shut down...that and the old man in the trench coat a few trees away.

Good times.

[Castilian]

I went to some in the nineties, London, Madrid, Barcelona... pretty creepy.

[Randy Coxburn]

Porn theaters were way before my time.

Where I live, they closed a handful of them some time ago. They were built as standard cinemas in the middle of downtown shopping arcades and during the 1980s these often ran Italian softcore films (Edwige Fenech et al) in-between cheapo martial arts movies before going full hardcore at some point in the 90s. By the 2000s they were basically havens for cruising and drug dealing and basically everybody stayed away from those shopping arcades unless it was really necessary. The funniest thing is that there was a work by a renowned painter in the lobby of one of those movie houses, but had deteriorated because no one took care of it after switching to an all-porn format.

[muggly]

When I lived in Bradford W. Yorkshire in the late 1970s I think there were 2 such theatres but the membership was too much for me at that time. In 1980 a old cinema in North Staffs was refurbished and became a porn theatre, again for members only but registration was free and for less than £2 you could watch the TV screen in the small theatre room to watch mainly Swedish Erotica or for £5 you could go into the bigger theatre where a full size cinema screen showed porn films in full. Also as an extra treat there was the occasional stripper too. The seating was rarely fully occupied so it gave plenty of guys the chance to get their cock out for productive wanking. The films were very good and I am still trying to trace one where a black girl and a white girl use milk filled dildos on each other with climaxes that were quite exhilarating and messy. A guy who was in the film played a blind man who fucked his girl with his white cane.

[pharoahegypt]

Originally Posted by Sunny-Boy

I lived in London in 1968/69 and went to a John Lindsay theatre opposite Leicester Square tube station. It was a members only place and therefore was well organized and safe but I do remember many punters having a raincoat over their laps. Honestly don't recall any gay activities but being gay was illegal in the UK at that time. Later in the 70's I was a semi-regular at a theatre in Birmingham's Bullring. That's the first place I recall Swedish Erotica loops and that began my interest in the Connie Peterson, Eileen Wells and others. Amsterdam had many theatres that showed continous loops also and I recall seeing Lasse Braun flicks there. Again they appeared safe and clean and devoid of cruisers. In the USA, I visited very large traditional theatres in Cleveland (saw Pink Champagne) and New Orleans. They have gone now and I don't recall seeing a porno on the big screen since 1984 or so. I think the VHS and now the DVD for home viewing have supplanted the big movie houses.

That place still exists, if we're talking about the same place, opposite what was the Midland Red bus garage? In fact pretty much the only building from the old Bullring that does. Was the Sunset Strip Cinema Club, but now called Adultworld.