Remember Adult Cinemas and Drive Ins?

[Iforgetnothing]

The younger generation of porn aficionado never had it so good. Porn is only a few mouse clicks and keystrokes away. In my day, it was shown at theatres and drive ins. I remember the adult bookstore/arcade shops that had the peepshow machines. You put your quarter or token in and watched about a minute of hard core action. Usually as soon as it got good, the machine shut off and you had to put in more coinage.

Now while the younger generation no longer has to worry about fake ID's to get into a movie or sitting in someone's old cumwad in the seat, they have lost something.

First off the "quality". Most of the stuff made today is just plain boring or too extreme and over the top for me. I don't get into abusive stuff, Max Hardcore gives me the creeps and people fucking in a white room doesn't do it for me. Second, they miss out on the risk factor of getting caught or raided and they miss out on all that element of sleaze that made your excursion into porn special. Renting a DVD or downloading a clip has no risk, no sleaze atmosphere and no creepy guy behind the counter to deal with, no prostitutes in the neighbourhood and thus no emotional stress and trauma to make a permanent imprint on the brain.

The upside is, the mafia no longer is in the porn business and the illegal stuff is better policed, of course with that came the underground creeps of the internet, so the creeps just went to another level.

I probably wouldn't have ever ventured into an adult cinema had I not gone into regular film work as I grew up in the Bible Belt and venturing into such had a potential for embarrassment and drama. However I ended up being a projectionist in some of these places and even a cameraman on some of the peep show loops.

What are some of your experiences of the old days? what were your fave haunts? How many of you have worked in any part of the industry?

[brk549]

First pussy I ever saw was at a drivein,have been looking for that movie for years.It was about a farmer and his daughter and she was giving it to everyone.A preacher came by and said he could cure her and sent the farmer out on the roof every night calling for Leroy while the preacher banged away on his daughter.She was one of the prettiest blondes I've ever seen with the blackest bush I've ever seen from what I can remember but that must have been in the 70's.I think the title had Preacherman or something like that in it.

[Iforgetnothing]

Sounds familiar. I might've ran that movie in the 80's at the drive in I used to work at. then again that plot has been recycled a gazillion times over. Saddest thing I saw at that drive in was a complete library of over 300 films was left to rot for many years within the walls and closets of the drive in projection room as the owner wasn't going to pay to have them vaulted properly. The 35mm prints became faded vinegar smelling trash. They were left to to rot when the drive in went to showing first run general release movies in 1990 and sat there until 2008 when the drive in was sold to a church. What was hilarious was when the church bought the property and discovered the films, they had an official blessing and baptism where they ceremonially burned a reel and had the grounds "baptized" with a fire truck. They originally wanted to make a bonfire out of the entire collection, but fortunately the city had ordinances against that with good reason.

[Lord Of The Sith]

I don't remember drive-ins ever showing full on porn. I do remember there was always a midnight movie that was less tame. Normally lots of tits and ass and simulated sex like you got from Playb*y movies in the 80's and 90's. I was lucky enough to get a blow job at a drive in from the sister of a guy my sister was dating. They were forced to take us along and made us sit in the bed of the truck. After about 10 minutes of the midnight movie I found my hand up her shorts fingering her and my dick in her mouth. What a memory.

As for theatres we had a few the most notorious was the Tropicana Hotel. It has since been torn down but it has a small 25 -50 person theatre with a medium sized screen. It was 3.50 to see a film but you wouldn't sit in the chairs. The seats were stained, wet and nasty. I would sit on the chair back with my feet on the seat. No one ever said anything to you. Most people had their face in their chests when they came in trying to hide. They guy who watched the theatre didn't care what happened as long as their was not fighting or blatant prostitution going on. One night around 130 in the morning I was in there drinking a 40 when one of the hookers came in to hide. The cops had got heavy and kicked her off the street a few times and told her if they saw her again that night she was going to jail. I shared smokes and my 40 with her and she let me fuck her. I gave her a ride out of the area afterward and never saw her again. Damn, I miss those theatres.

[Gr8leggz]

I am not old enough to recall drive in adult movies and only discovered adult video arcades in 1996 while on a family trip to California. It was in Albuquerque New Mexico on Central avenue. It was in one of those booths feeding it dollar bills that I discovered Max Hardcore. Now, while I am not a fan of how he treats girls and his fascination with anal and peeing I did appreciate the frilly socks and heels aspect. I've lost many a load in the span of time from 96-98 frequenting those type arcades from Amarillo to Albuqueque.

[Iforgetnothing]

Originally Posted by Lord Of The Sith

I was lucky enough to get a blow job at a drive in from the sister of a guy my sister was dating.

I had my first threesome at the Playtime Drive In, I even remember the date, March 5, 1985. Upstairs from the snack bar was the projection booth which was also a small apartment. The guy who ran the flea market during the day always had young girls, booze and pot up in the apartment as he lived there. One girl who worked the snack bar (and I heard that she was fucking the owner) always liked to hang out up there and party with the other girls. She was really trashed that night and started hitting on me. I ended up fucking her in one of the bedrooms. An hour or so later, another young girl whom I had just met that night stuck her head in and asked, "Mind if I cuddle with you two?" Ah gee, honey, you'll have to twist my arm. Awesome night. Like a naive moron, I assumed that since she was in an adult theatre, she was over 18. I found out later that she was a 16 year old runaway. Never got into trouble over that though.

As for theatres we had a few the most notorious was the Tropicana Hotel. .

There was a time when Jacksonville's downtown was a porn district. They wiped it all out in 1981, or at least 98% of it. The most notorious theatres were The Ellwest, which was owned by the so called "Scarface of porn", George Michael Thevis. There was also the Roxy which was the one I worked briefly in the summer of 1977. It had well earned reputation for being haunted, I could write a whole blog here on the haunts I experienced,the place was fucking creepy. I remember one old man that was a regular, he would always ask the woman at the ticket booth if there was any lesbian action in the movie and all through the movie he would yell, "I want to see some lickedty split Lesbian action, damnit!"

[Lord Of The Sith]

There was always the odd couple, who would make out or fuck, or weird old man in the theatre. Like the old wino who used to sit in the front corner in his old ratty clothes with a bottle of gin in a paper bag. He'd fall asleep and snore about half way through the film. The hookers would sometime bring johns in for a blow job and as long as they weren't blatant about it the doorman never cared. I stopped going the night a woman presumably a prostitute got into an argument with a pimp or john and stabbed him. At that point I figured I was better off buying films or renting them and watching them at home.

[Iforgetnothing]

Damn that wino got around, we had him too,lol. I only went in the theatre once or twice as a patron, the rest of the time I was working in the projection booth. The Roxy had the old carbon arc projectors from the 30's, it was an old theatre. From the booth you could see all the shenanigan's that went on, it was an eye opening experience for the girl I was dating at the time. She was kind of a loud, vocal girl, especially if she had had a drink or two and she would visit me in the booth (hell, she was my chauffeur at the time as I had no driver's license then) and look down and yell, "Look at those guys, they're having a circle jerk!" We used to get a group that would sit on a back row and watch each other jerk off.
The Roxy also had a permanent reflecting pool in front of the screen where it flooded during the summer rainy season. You could see rats swimming across and the first 3 rows of seats were unusable. Kind of ironic that a porn theatre would be located on Beaver Street as the Roxy was.

[Gbnf]

I'll tell you a strange story:
When I was a teenager, I belonged to an orchestra.
There was an older person there, in the same section, and we became friends.
It got to the point where he used to pick me up and drive me to the rehearsals every Monday night.
One night, he told me we weren't going to play, but he would take me to see a movie in the next town over.
I was oblivious and went along for the ride.
We wound up at an old theater that was showing X-rated films.
All I remember is it was huge and there were more than a few people spread out throughout the red velvet seats.
I felt very uncomfortable about this, but he assured me it would be exciting.
I went inside and watched the film, all the while feeling very horny, as I was young, and full of you-know-what.
I was a religious person at the time, so this conflicted me - feeling this way.
The film was lost to the memory of my mind, and I only remembered one scene: a man was wrapped in saran wrap and a woman tried to go after him with a knife.
It was only after viewing movies here that I realized this was 'Babyface', so it would have to be around the time that film was making the rounds (1977?).
I also remember after the feature, there were endless loops of hippies having sex, but this got rather tedious after a while.
It was only after looking back, that I realized how strange it was this person should take me to this place to see this film, but with the benefit of experience and hindsight, realized he was trying to fuck me himself, and was trying to see if I would be accepting to this.
Typical pedophile behavior, I'm told...

[Iforgetnothing]

I'm sure much of that went on in the theatres. I didn't mingle with the crowd when I worked there, it was too risky as I was just shy of my 18th birthday then. It was illegal for me to even be in the place, much less working. I had to quit when there was a local election the next year and the religious types started picketing the theatre.
The weirdest thing happened to me there was my last night. The projectionist is usually the last one to leave and I was alone when the patrons filed out as the credits rolled. When I locked up, I went into the arcade room to unload the change out of the machines (usually around 100-150 bucks in each machine and there were 6 of them),I heard the last of the film run out on the speakers. I put the money into the drop safe and went back upstairs to rewind the films,clean the lamphouses and put in new carbon rods. When I got there, the films had been rewound and rethreaded for the next day.Brand new carbons,clean lamphouses. I have no idea how that happened unless the manager had come in and done it during the time I was servicing the loop machines.He would have had to have come in and done it and left in less than 15 minutes and made absolutely no noise which is unlikely.