New York City II — Modern NYC, Queens Massage Parlors, Spitzer, Escort Apps

Times Square did not become a sex district overnight. Its decline was a long economic unwinding that began during the Depression of the 1930s, when the grand movie palaces and Broadway houses of the "Great White Way" lost their anchor tenants and began running cheaper and cheaper fare. By the early 1960s, the process had accelerated dramatically. Former theaters that had hosted Ziegfeld Follies now showed exploitation films and "grindhouse" double features for 99 cents.

A key legal inflection came in 1966 when the first 25-cent coin-operated peep show booth appeared in the district. As one historian later wrote, "the libertarianism of the sixties" had fundamentally shifted the legal definition of "obscene," opening space for the public sale of adult allurements that had previously operated underground.

Within two years, profits from peep shows were substantial enough to drive up commercial rents throughout the area — and the Mafia moved in to collect a share.

" Eighth Avenue, from 42nd to 50th Streets, had acquired a darker nickname: the "Minnesota Strip," coined by NYPD officers because a disproportionate share of the teenage girls turning tricks on that stretch were runaway minors from the Midwest, particularly Minnesota. The name stuck for two decades.

The geography of the Deuce was specific. Every block had its own hierarchy of establishments, from the relatively upscale adult theaters showing new releases on 35mm, to the grimiest basement peep booths charging a quarter for 60 seconds of film.

Show World Center, at 671 Eighth Avenue, was in a category by itself. " It offered X-rated films, adult books and novelties, live sex acts on a rotating stage, and in-store appearances by well-known porn performers. On the second floor, nearly 100 women worked the peep show circuit.

A barker stationed outside promised tourists Swedish beauties; the reality, observers noted, was more commonly a pair of gaunt junkies attempting intercourse onstage. Show World remained open, in various diminished forms, until 2018, when Basciano's estate finally sold the building for redevelopment.

Peepland, at 711 Seventh Avenue, cycled through identities across three decades: Spanish-language cinema, porn palace, briefly a legitimate second-run theater in the mid-1980s, then gay male porn house under the name Jocx Cinema, then Show Follies Center, then finally Peepland. It was a building that never quite committed to any era.

The Circus Cinema, at 1604 Broadway, was one of the earliest and most aggressively prosecuted of the new adult theaters. In 1971, police raided the Circus and arrested its manager and projectionist on obscenity charges carrying up to a year in prison. The defendants were not convicted — and their acquittal effectively signaled to the industry that Times Square's tolerance for explicit material had arrived.

The movement toward what eventually became the formal cleanup of Times Square did not begin with Rudy Giuliani.