Before the Internet

[revs]

Before internet. Me and my schoolmate. He has got a mental half-dumb brother, bigger than us, and my friend really ordered sometimes to him for buy porn magazines or rent a sextape for us because we was under legal age to do this. I remember that after him bought or rented our things, my friend usually said: "Shit! now get out from here!!! Come back to your fucking room!" And that because the brother wanted to watch a bit of our film.

[bolingo]

It was magazines at first. The first magazine I ever saw was an issue of Penthouse. My cousin, who was my age, had it stashed in his bedroom. We were about 12 years old. Shortly after that, my good friend and I discovered a large stash of magazines that someone left in one of his mom's recently vacated rent houses in a closet. Several issues of Hustler, Penthouse, and Playboy were in a paper grocery bag. My friend took half of them and I took the other half which we both stashed in our respective bedrooms for later viewing...lol.

In the mid to late 80's it was VHS movies, which had really taken off by that time. I remember renting some of those '"cable versions" of hard core films at first then a little later I rented the uncensored vids. I also had two or three VHS tapes that I owned.

[daves69]

The earliest spanking films were, I think, NuWest: http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...8&postcount=65 but from England there were the Janus series. They look very tame now but at the time they were delicious. I especially remember Antonia du Bois in The Disciplinarian. One of the loveliest girls I have ever seen spanked, well caned actually.

With so much on the internet now it is difficult to concentrate on just a few, select items. In the old days that was what you did, enjoying one film or one picture story to the full.

[Jenkinson]

Originally Posted by daves69

With so much on the internet now it is difficult to concentrate on just a few, select items. In the old days that was what you did, enjoying one film or one picture story to the full.

I agree absolutely about concentrating on one or two pieces of erotica at a time. Before the internet miraculously supplied us with unending porn on tap, much of it free of charge, we really savoured whatever we could find – and whatever we could afford. For me, money was a frustrating constraint in my first years as a porn-lover. Sex-shop prices seemed excruciatingly high then – to anybody on a modest income (and especially to somebody still at school!). True, the mass-market top-shelf titles (such as Men Only, Knave, Club International, etc.) were good value in the 1980s, because big print-runs meant economies of scale. Everything else was very expensive. The small censored botch-up editions of Private, Color Climax, and Rodox that were the standard fare in the provincial Private Shops were typically sold for £10 each. Ten pounds in 1983 was the equivalent of about £30 now. Videos were commonly priced at £50 each, so £150 in today’s terms (and preview was usually impossible).

As a teenager fixated on spanking in particular (an extravagant taste at the time), I did Saturday and holiday jobs with the essential aim of funding my porn purchases. In a way, of course, I was happy to part with the money. A new copy of Janus or Roué gave me more intense satisfaction than anything else that I could get for £10, but visits to sex shops were cruelly tantalising. I wanted to take home every mag in sight, but I could usually only afford three or four, a single brown-paper bagful. I sometimes fantasised vaguely about getting myself deliberately locked inside a sex shop overnight so I could work my way through everything on show!

Nowadays the internet has actually made me more selective about porn. I surf at speed through pages of thumb-nail galleries looking for those few glorious shots where the pose, the model, or the look in her eyes sets my cock throbbing instantly. I download those and pay no more attention to the rest. Pre-internet, each magazine seemed precious. Of course, not every set, let alone every picture, had immediate appeal. I had to work at enjoying some of them. I’d think exactly how it would feel to touch the model in a certain place with my hand, tongue, or cock. I’d imagine what I might say to her, and what she might reply. Sometimes I’d think about the photo-session itself. How did the model relate to the photographer? Did she find posing at all exciting? Did she think about the thousands of men who would soon be lusting after her? I also read the texts from cover to cover: the spanking stories, the purported ‘confessions’ of Zena Whitehouse or Louise London, the paragraphs of English, French, and German beside the pictures in the imported titles. Now I think about it, it has been years since I read erotica rather than looked at it.

Even the advertisements could excite me powerfully in the old days. Premium phone-line services were rubbish in my experience, but some of the tag-lines in the adverts were wickedly devised to get a man going. Certain ads in Whitehouse and Parade, though not at all truthful (‘Uncensored XXX hardcore action!’), were arousingly worded. I still relish such preposterous expressions as ‘Sixty-four pages of fly-busting porn!’ and ‘Trouser-testing stuff!’ I never bought any of the spanking audio-tapes advertised in Janus, but I enjoyed re-reading the descriptions of them in every issue and imagining what I was missing. I also frequently pored over the large advert for the video The Disciplinarian, so I certainly envy daves69 his opportunity to cane the bottom of Antonia du Bois!

In short, before the internet I made an imaginative effort to extract every last drop of stimulation from every magazine I ever bought – even if it was mediocre. A magazine had to be very bad indeed for me to derive no thrill from it. Writing this has made me wonder if I should try and revive the lost art of deliberate porn appreciation. On the other hand, I might be only a few clicks away from a set that will give me a hard-on almost before I know it....

[okcomputer]

I did the usual graduation from peeking a look at my Dad's magazine and occasional hardcore video stash to buying my own Razzle, Escort and Ravers collection during the 90's. Which was quite a feat as I was cripplingly shy back then. I did go on frequent holiday trips down to London which inevitably involved a sneaky venture into Soho and it's dodgy illicit thrills to be purchased. I picked up a few hardcore mags centring on lesion topics, mostly Colour Climax Lesbian Love, which was very hit and miss as they had hardcore scenes on the inner pages folded on view and sealed (which would inevitably be a softer product enfolded in a harder content wrap!!!). The vids were even more random, even though I never bought a non hardcore video in my ventures. Just the seediness of these temporary shops with hard video boxes, or even laminates of the sleeves and being handed your selection for £30-£40. Only to discover you'd received something entirely different and often a fuzzy 3rd or 4th generation copy.
I did get a decent 'Ben Dover' video and a terrible quality copy of what should have been a 'Buttslammers' movie but was a German dubbed Lesbian flick quite similar but of nigh on unwatchable quality. The worst was one 3 scene video of a French guy screwing the most uninterested and/or unattractive girls going. The film looked grey too and was probably the most dull, grotty and unarousing porno I'd ever seen.
What we put up with back then! They definitely saw us coming!

[silksnsc]

I was the unfortunate combination of a very prudish mother (who I found out was anything but later in life, but that's a different story) and a very curious boy. I remember seeing a topless set in 'Titbits' when I would have been 5 or 6 and in all honesty it started there! Advanced to 'hedgerow' porn from about 8, copies of Mayfair found in the park...etc.
A friend gave me a copy of 'Club International' when I was 11, which was also the time I started wanking. From there on, I used to get anything I could, found my Dads collection and from age 14 was bold enough to go and buy them from the newsagent. Escort always my personal favourite.
When I was 15 stayed with my brother and his wife and as usual had a rummage when they were out and found a VHS, remember it to this day...'inside Desiree Cousteau'. Carried onto into my 20's by which time I was travelling with work a fair bit into Europe, always made sure to pick up the latest copies of Private and Pirate (early to mid 90's lots of the same models in Escort were going full HC in Private, very exciting).
My wife doesn't really get off on porn particularly but has always been cool about it and luckily for me been happy to pose for me too, so we have a few thousand of own our photos too. But of course no magazine collection left, the internet has killed it off. I do miss it if I'm honest, particularly the hard back best of Privates!

[Pinkpapercut]

Originally Posted by old alal

Pinkpapercut we must have bumped into each other, or more likely waited for each other to come out of the shop, as I visited all the shops in Manchester you refer to. The Shudehill Book Centre is now (as I'm sure you know) the wine bar half of the Lower Turks Head, which opened last year after "opening soon" for some 25 years or so. Also I'm please you refer to Manchester's legacy.

Thanks for this, old alal. I'm sorry to hear the Shudehill Book Centre has gone. I can't say I'm surprised though.

I guess the knocking shop with which it shared a street entrance has also gone, as the entrance was directly next to the Turk's Head. When in the Book Centre I was sometimes aware of the Working Girls going up and down the stairs but was never tempted myself - never been one for prostitutes.

Thanks for the information. Since the Summer of 2014 I've been very distracted, first by severe illness and later and more recently by what I can most simply describe as a family problem so I've not been up Shude Hill for a couple of years - no need with almost everything I want being available free on the net somewhere.

The brothers who ran it were typical geezers but were remarkably friendly and helpful once you got to know them.

Their prices were reasonable, they would source obscure material for you for no extra cost, and once DVDs became the norm they would often give hard core DVDs away if they were a bit scuffed - one would buy a new cased DVD or two and out they would bring a flew spindles of caseless discs, sometimes slightly scuffed but perfectly playable and they would say "have a look through and take a couple - free".

As I said in my first post in this thread, in Manchester I've always found the staff of porno shops helpful, not counting the shops that were official licensed sex shops which were almost uniformly run by scam artists.

Scam artists seemed to be the norm in Soho the last time I visited in the late 80s - I do realise that Soho has been transformed since then into gay village.

I tended to keep to Manchester's "Book Exchanges" which were at core porn outlets, or to backstreet newsagents specialising in porn mags. These unofficial shops were usually cheaper, sold the genuine article, sold the hard core originals rather than the laughable Sullivan fake-ups, and had soft and hard-core to suit almost every taste.

I'm sure you found the same thing.

[Pinkpapercut]

Originally Posted by daves69

The earliest spanking films were, I think, NuWest: http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...8&postcount=65 but from England there were the Janus series. They look very tame now but at the time they were delicious.

Given that I'm as obsessed by the female bottom as you are (I've seen all your posts and enjoyed them) I went through a long phase of buying spanking mags and videos. They were easy to find here in the Manchester UK area but expensive. Janus in particular was available on the top shelf or magazine racks of many ordinary newsagents.

I particularly favoured Janus, to a lesser degree Roue, and in the late 80s Fessee. I was never much a fan of Harrison Marks' Kane - given his history in soft porn it should have been excellent but it looked shabby and the photosets were rarely convincing.

Nicola Redway (see link below) was for me what Antonia du Bois was for you.

I can't figure out whether it's permitted to link to the Janus website - I know the VEF Rules say we should post no content but this is just a link to the site, so please Mods remove the following link if it isn't or message me to ask me to do so:

http://www.janusworldwide.com/a-glim...nicola-redway/

I think when I first started buying these magazines cost about £3 which quickly rose to £6 and then £10 a copy. I had a full run of the "new numeration Janus" for a while, up until about 1990. At first I usually bought them, later they became so expensive that (I blush) I often shop-lifted them from a dozy local newsagent's carousel. The stupid things we do when we're in our teens and twenties.

I stopped buying spanking mags etc when I was about 30 so my memories only go up to about 1992.

I really loved the rippling bum-cheek impact photos that Janus in particular specialized in.

Most of the early videos I bought in the back streets of Manchester were Janus and Roue spanking videos, inevitable lo-res - it was interesting to see spankees I found attractive moving around and talking but there's something very static about most spanking videos, a brief preamble that setting the scene then the girl is bent over something - a knee, an item of furniture - and it's then 15 minutes of mostly close-ups of a bottom being spanked. so I preferred the magazine sets. That and many of the spanking videos I had were back-street copies rather than originals.

I could never take to the US spanking material I found, I think for a very simple reason: the uniforms, work clothes, business wear and milieu of UK spanking magazines were a milieu I could easily project myself into and of course, in UK videos the accents of the girls were familiar and everyday for me.

As I say, UK spanking mags were easy to find here in the Manchester UK area. The only one I missed in local shops was an early issue featuring the illustrator and porn actress, the gamine Lynn Paula Russell AKA Paula Meadows and I eventually bought that from the Janus Shop on Old Compton Street in Soho, the only Soho porn outlet I ever went into that wasn't a scruffy musty pit of scammers.

It's a shame most of these mags/vids are on the "banned content" list at VEF but I'm sure the mods have excellent reasons.

The one thing I miss most about the pre-internet days are those little Indian newsagents that were always fully stocked with adult mags. One stands out, a small little shop, walk in past the counter straight to the back, up a step to be greeted to a real den of top shelf mags. The good thing was nobody else really ventured to the back, apart from buying porn of course because everything else they sold was on the lower floor, so you could snoop around until your heart was content. The lady who worked there would always put the light on for me because it was quite dark there. It was actually quite a frustrating experience, but in a good way because choosing what to buy was the hard part. First mags to look for on the loaded shelves was escort, razzle, club, mayfair,, club, mensworld, men only, knave & fiesta job done. Usually they had plenty of back issues of these too. Then you'd glance around and see playbirds, lovebirds, derriere, rustler etc, then the American mags, fox, gallery, swank, club us, high society, genesis, juggs etc but if you looked a little harder (no pun intended) you'd find a lot of stronger euro mags in between other mags on the shelf, private, triple x, pirate, sex, sometimes buttman, even pleasure. On top of that they'd have the mag bundles, £3 for 2 or 3 british mags, then £4 or so for some American mags that usually had a crappy mag in the middle but you'd always find a good back issue or 2 this way. I'd always wish I'd brought more cash with me when I visited there and a larger wheelbarrow. Really was a fascinating little shop but sadly no more. I often wonder, do any still exist today?

[HeeBee]

Well now this is an interesting thread. A few responses spring to mind.

Lads Mags - Brought up in the 60s/70s by a single mother there was no hidden stash to discover. But in the mid 70's the more courageous of my schoolmates would collect contributions and buy a stash to be furtively shared. I can't even remember the titles, I think "New Directions" may have been one. Later in the 70's, I started buying my own but quickly settled on Fiesta as the only one (an occasional Whitehouse).
Something that surprises me a little is that in this entire thread, Fiesta is barely (!) mentioned. I remember a newsagent telling me, in the early 80's, that his sales of Fiesta were way ahead of all it's competitors. But this was a high street store in a small village, perhaps there was a selection bias. I sure loved Firkin the Cat. "Stop licking yer arses and pay attention!"

Slang - I remember in the mid 70's, sitting in the student union bar and someone mentioned AC/DC. I thought maybe I knew what it meant, but I wasn't sure. So I asked my mates. Of course, there was a lot of guffaws and "You Mean You Don't Know???", but no-one volunteered to tell me. I'm sure that everyone was thinking "I think I know, but what if I'm wrong? I'll look like a complete fool!".
Of course now, with urb4nd1ct10n4ry.com and the like, there is no doubt.

Movies - Under the microscopic gaze of a soul-less witch for a wife (now, thankfully ex) and having a yearning to watch beautiful women casting their modesty aside (as though all they wished was to please me), I struggled to find a way to satisfy this appetite. I heard that if one became a trusted customer of a video tape rental shop in the next town, he had some 'under the counter' material that could be rented. But becoming the trusted customer was logistically a problem. I did manage to buy a couple of Uncle Fiona's VHS cassettes by telling my neighbour that I was buying a suprise present for my wife, then wrote back to get me off the mailing list at that other address, but what a palaver! They were thrown out many years ago, but thanks to the valiant efforts of the VEF contributors, I have them back and many others! Cheers guys!

There are many other ways that the interwibble makes a difference, but these are three that spring to mind.