Home

Back to Essays

Neighborhoods

The strip in midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth Avenues called "the Deuce" used to be lined by porn theaters but now the area seems safe for families. Gone are most of the peep shows, prostitutes and three-card-Monte scam artists.

Maria Alvarado coordinates tourism services for the Times Square Business Improvement District. "One summer, when I was about to give birth to my first child, I came down to have lunch with my husband, who worked on 43rd and Sixth. I took the E train, so I had to walk down 42nd. Here I was, eight months pregnant, and I was offered everything from sex to cocaine."

In 1978 more than twice as many street crimes were reported on the block as on any other block in the entire city. In 1984 the city planning-commission chair said that 42nd "is the one street where the city has lost control."

Walt Disney Company numbers among the new merchants. Its wholesome image is everything Times Square was not. After two decades of abandoned plans, stalled construction and expensive lawsuits, Times Square's makeover is "one of the great success stories of 20th century urban America," says Brendan Sexton, president of the Municipal Art Society.

"New York City's government is acting against the pollution of the social atmosphere," wrote George Will in the 11/11/96 edition of Newsweek. "The city says those effects [of pornography] include decreased property values, retarded economic development, damage to neighborhood character and to children. And when such businesses are clustered, there is increased illegal sexual activities and other crime, as well as loitering and littering and other nuisances. The new zoning law will disperse such businesses...

"The pornographers say that precisely probing the various secondary effects is problematic. However, precision should not be necessary. One does not need a moral micrometer to gauge that the sex industry turned Times Square into a slum...

"Selling pornography is not a crime, but by catering to, and inflaming, vulgarians' sensibilities, it contributes to the coarsening of the culture which erodes civility."

Saturday Night Live offered this perspective on its news break. "The citizens committee to clean up New York's porn-infested areas continued its series of rallies today, as a huge, throbbing, pulsating crowd sprang erect from nowhere and forced its way into the steaming nether regions surrounding the sweaty intersection of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Second Street. Thrusting, driving pushing its way into the usually receptive neighborhood, the excited throng, now grown to five times its original size rammed itself again and again and again into the quivering, perspiring musty darkness, fluctuating between eager anticipation and trembling revulsion. Now suddenly the tumescent crowd and the irresistible area were one heaving, alternately melting and thawing turgid entity, ascending to heights heretofore inexperienced. Then with a gigantic, soul-searching heart-stopping series of eruptions, it was over. Afterwards, the crowd had a cigarette and went home."

Almost all representatives of traditional values believe porn does to individuals what it supposedly did to Times Square - turn them into sewers. Politicians, civic leaders, citizen groups, the religious and law enforcement overwhelmingly agree that sex shops increase crime and deteriorate neighborhoods. Though the secular elite in academia, media and law usually disagree with these claims, few of them want to live in areas close to sex shops.

Columnist Don Boyett served on The Orlando Sentinel's editorial board for years. He remembers property owners pleading for support to clean up South Orange Blossom Trail, filled with crime, strip joints and porn shops. Their primary interest: crime and plummeting property values.

"Drive into Seminole County from the south on U.S. Highway 17-92 and what is the first thing that hits you? A large billboard advertising a nude bar's clothing boutique…

"Next thing you notice are blaring signs in front of scrub parlors, nudie bars and clearly non-family video shops.

"Is this the sort of seedy community you would invest in? Would that picture cause you to say, 'Hey, I'd like to live in this community'?

"Those who live and own traditional businesses in that area now are concerned. It's not just property values. They know porn brings drugs; drugs bring other crimes. Most people don't want to live near enterprises considered sordid. Not even the owners of those businesses live next door." (Sentinel 7/4/97)

At the end of the 20th Century, zoning restrictions against sex shops remain a favorite weapon of local governments trying to reduce crime and clean up their communities.

The following article is rewritten from the 12-18-95 LA TIMES.

Dozens of Buena Park residents turned out last week to applaud the demise of the neighborhood's Pussycat Theater. The scene illustrated the deep disdain that much of the public has for adult cinemas and why city officials across Orange County have long battled to rid their communities of such businesses.

The war is almost won: The closing of the Pussycat leaves just one X-rated cinema in Orange County--the Studio Theatre, also in Buena Park. Two decades ago, the county had nearly a dozen adult theaters.

The main reason for this decline is the triumph of video. "The business is shifting into other areas like computer pornography on the Internet," said Monique Nelson, executive director of the antipornography group Enough is Enough, based in Santa Ana. "Just like any other business, it's changing with the times."

That has led some urban planning experts to question the wisdom and fairness of government campaigns against adult cinemas. Under pressure from residents, some cities have adopted unworkable antipornography ordinances and pursued quixotic legal battles. At times, city councils have acted over the objections of their own staff attorneys.

"It's a sticky issue because many of us say these businesses are bad things," said Scott Bollens, an associate professor of urban planning at UC Irvine. "But it raises a larger issue about whether cities are stepping on basic rights to suit their own self-interest."

Public aversion to X-rated theaters and other adult businesses such as nude juice bars and strip clubs is being voiced across the nation. But opponents have been especially vocal in Orange County, which is home

to many people who fled urban centers in search of quiet, "family-oriented" neighborhoods.

"I think people see [adult businesses] as a sign of moral decay that they don't want in their suburban areas," Bollens said.

City officials have responded to voters' wishes by adopting a string of laws targeting adult businesses. Although the ordinances have generally succeeded in restricting new businesses, many rules targeting

existing establishments have been struck down in court.

Legal setbacks didn't stop some cities. Santa Ana, for example, spent $700,000 and filed 42 lawsuits in a bid to close a theater in the Old Honer Plaza shopping center. The city pursued its case for 11 years, even after many officials saw clearly that it would never prevail. The hearings became so routine that an Orange County Superior Court judge allowed the theater's attorney to make his arguments by telephone. Finally, in 1987, the city gave up.

The cinema shut down three years later, but its closing had much more to do with economics than government pressure. Like adult movie houses across the nation, it simply could not compete with the proliferation

Of X-rated videotapes.

During the 1980s, tapes became the primary outlet for adult entertainment, said Jeffrey J. Douglas, an attorney and spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, the industry's trade association. Most adult movies are not even distributed on film anymore, he said, forcing

Some adult theaters to use VCRs for their feature presentations.

The shifting focus of filmmakers also dealt a blow to the theaters. In the 1970s, the industry favored big-budget "general interest" adult movies such as "Deep Throat," "The Devil in Miss Jones" and "Sodom and Gomorrah." But today, movies are produced with the aim of satisfying the

tastes of specific segments of the market, Douglas said.

"There used to be 100 or so movies released a year. Now, there are literally thousands of titles," he said. "People are aiming for a smaller portion of the market and making fewer general interest films. That makes it harder for theaters to draw decent crowds." (LA TIMES 12-18-95)

Attorney Robert M. Calica defended the Town of Islip's anti-porn shop ordinance in federal court. He wrote in NEWSDAY:

"THE MASSIVE RELOCATION of peep shows, strip clubs and other forms of adult entertainment now approved by the state's top court has nothing to do with your First Amendment constitutional rights and everything to do with good, old-fashioned, dry, boring, municipal zoning codes. "The Court of Appeals used a Long Island law as a blueprint when it backed New York City's ordinance that forces the relocation of some 84 percent of the city's 177 adult-entertainment businesses. In doing so, the Court simply recognized what city planners have known for over 100 years, namely, that its citizens must live, work and be entertained -but not necessarily in the same place. The goal of a good zoning program is to preserve the quality of life. Civil libertarians decry the new law, but neither the New York City law, nor the one that preceded it in the Town of Islip in the late '80s, is aimed at suppressing free speech.

"Municipal planning serves a vital function in preserving and protecting residential neighborhoods, the same way it is meant to protect and defend "mom and apple pie." Simply put, sexually explicit businesses are not in harmony with family living, schools or places of worship, and therefore should not be located in the same zoning district. As the Court of Appeals explained, neither the New York City law nor the one it was patterned after in the Town of Islip is aimed at free speech, but only at preserving the quality of life that Americans deserve, be it on the streets of Times Square or on the Main Street of any town in Long Island. "Furthermore, even with zoning regulation of adult entertainment, the law does not mandate that such entertainment venues be simply a short stroll away. Suburban New Yorkers have long been accustomed to traveling, some even great distances, to shop at a mall, to see a movie or to attend the theater. The Constitution does not forbid requiring the New York City patrons of an adult business to take a taxi, subway or bus to get there."