Oh, the days of porno theatres. Back before Times Square was Disneyfied and Giulianized, before real estate madness replaced all manner of independent businesses with “luxury” condos, and before VHS and DVD and streaming made porn viewing something to be done in the privacy of one’s own home, there was a wonderful world of sordid cinema, strippers with stiff cocks, and rampant sex among the patrons.

This info is New York- centric since that’s where we’ve always been based and where we’re extremely familiar with the pornographic thrills that were available in the heyday of commercial sex. Feel free to use the “CONTACT” link to send us your own memories and exploits in San Franciso, L.A., Chicago and other porn capitols.

Most porn theatre aficionados identify the Adonis as the gold standard of NYC XXX theatres. Rumor had it that it was originally built by Ziegfeld for Fanny Brice, but in reality it was a grand art deco period movie theatre, the Tivoli, complete with roof garden and organ (as opposed to the many organs to be seen there in later decades). Like many movie palaces, in the TV era it hit hard times and eventually started running porn. But the Adonis was so famous it inspired a porn movie about a stud, played by legendary Jack Wrangler, and his escapades upstairs and downstairs and behind the screen. It was called, simply, A Night at the Adonis.

Eventually the theatre met its fate when World Wide Plaza, a block-square double tower high rise, went up next door. The prime tenant of the business tower was a high-priced law firm; a partner in the firm insisted that there was no way his firm would sign the lease if their fancy clients had to degrade themselves by looking next door to see a gay porn theatre, so the Adonis was forced out. Rather than renovate the beautiful, historical building, perhaps as a live theatre venue (as had been done with a porn theatre in the East Village), the Adonis was razed and replaced with just the thing New York needed-- another Rite Aid drugstore. A large collection of posters from the cases in front of the theatre, as well as a few of the tables made from marble columns, subsequently would be found at an architectural salvage store in the East Village.

Interestingly, ironically, not long after forcing the closure of this mecca of gay subculture, the same law partner was found dead in the rough part of the Bronx where he had grown up, and where he regularly returned to pick up rough trade hustlers. One of those hustlers murdered him the cheap motel the lawyer had rented for his transaction (he used the old “gay panic” defense). Presumably, the real reason he wanted the Adonis gone was that it hit a little too close to home and was, perhaps, too great a temptation.

Daytime was at least as exciting at the Adonis. The big porn hits featured stars like Leo Ford, Rick “Humongous” Donovan and Al Parker while the action was even hotter in the audience. Wild sex happened onscreen and in the orchestra and balcony seats, in the bathrooms (decorated with metallic wallpaper portraying Hollywood stars and conveniently outfitted with gloryholes), in the makeshift back room behind the screen, even in the mezzanine lobby area. Surrounded by deteriorating deco splendor painted in that shade of blue that somehow was ubiquitous in NYC porn theatres, embellished with plaster reproductions of classical statuary and marble column capitals, patrons would go at it with abandon, in duos, threesomes and out-and-out orgies. The balcony was wall-to-wall sex (watch out for pickpockets). Afternoons seemed to be more crowded than late nights (in fact, on weekdays, the theatre closed at midnight) but on a good day, there would be naked guys in the front row being sucked, blowjobs and handjobs in the orchestra, fucking behind the screen, blowjobs and fucking in the bathrooms, and an orgy in the balcony.

The Adonis didn’t really go away, it just moved a few blocks south to another, smaller, movie theatre formerly known as the Capri, the interior of which was painted the same intense blue, which became a vivid background for the same traditional sexual activity, onscreen and off. This theatre also had two levels, a very active bathroom, and an audience of horny, hard patrons. The Giulani regime closed it down in 1994, after which it became the Playpen, a video store with gloryhole booths in the former New Adonis balcony.

Above, a view of the original Adonis from the notorious balcony and, Left, the "New Adonis," relocated a few blocks south, still on Eighth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen. Consensus was that the original was a better space, but the action stayed just as hot. Certainly it was always busy until the city cracked down on fun.

In addition to the Adonis, there were numerous other opportunities for movie fans to suck and fuck while enjoying the same activities on the screen.

The 55th Street Playhouse was the home of William Higgins movies; it played his classic Leo and Lance for what seemed like two years. The theatre had originally been a horse stable (a rather elegant one, it seems), and as a movie theatre showed Andy Warhol’s movies and other sexually provocative “art films” before embracing gay porn. It was the site of the premiere of the first significant gay porn movie, Boys in the Sand. Most patrons weren't spending much time with their eyes on the screen. It’s hard to watch a film when you have your head between some stud’s legs and his cock thrusting into your throat. And, as at the Adonis and other theatres, the area behind the screen became a back room, with a ledge conveniently positioned should you need something to hold onto while being fucked from behind. It hosted rare appearances by porn stars, including Lee Ryder, who disappointed fans by merely signing autographs with his clothes on rather than revealing his legendarily massive dong.

A block south, on 54th, was the David Cinema, which, by the 1980s, was fairly run down. Although it showed Centurions of Rome, at the time the most expensive gay porn ever made (rumored to have been financed by money from the Brinks robbery) for the most part it was second rate in both film and audience.

The Big Top, a bit further east, upstairs from a straight porn theatre, featured the usual porn viewing and audience sex.

Most of the porn palaces were in midtown, but in the southernmost regions of the West Village, one could visit West World, which was especially active late nights. The sizable backroom had various areas and amenities, although there was plenty of action in the seats.

In the East Village, the Jewel, also known as the Bijou, was hot daytime and late night. Like most porn theatres (other than the Eros and Venus), it began life in the golden age of Hollywood, in this case as the Lyric. By the early ‘90s, by virtue of its location, it was often full of horny ACT UP members, who alternated discussions of activism with sucking and fucking in the theatre, behind the screen, and downstairs in the booths or the dungeon-themed jail cells.

A few blocks away was another Bijou, Bijou 82, also known as Club 82. Located down a flight of stairs behind an unmarked door on East 4th Street, it had previously been a well-known venue for drag performances in the 1950s and '60s, and in the 1970s featured punk rock bands, but by 1992 was a porn theatre with a warren of booths, where, particularly late on weekend nights, a crowd of hot guys could be found luring partners in for some fucking and sucking, often starting the action in the theatre seats.

And then there were the theatres that featured not only porn video, but also live shows, whether strippers displaying their stiff cocks before offering them up for rent, or, at the Show Palace, full out sex shows.

The Show Palace multiplex originally featured only house dancers, who would do individual shows, stroking their cocks, culminating in a duo performing on a large bench upholstered in pleather, usually sucking each other’s cocks but occasionally fucking. Once in a while, a porn star would grace their stage, generally not the biggest names. Some of the boys were known for blowing their loads onstage (they got paid a bonus); 1980s porn stud Michael Ram could shoot multiple loads each day. The boys would circulate in the audience, where the patrons would often be jacking off, and it was not unusual to see the dancers having their cocks sucked, sliding onto a fan’s cock to ride for a few minutes, or bent over the railing by the stairwell having their boycunts eaten out.

In the second theatre, there were additional videos, lots of patrons having sex, and every now and then, an event the theatre would announce as “Mardi Gras,” when the house dancers would perform and then participate in a sexual free-for-all with the audience, with cocks being sucked and ridden. A beautiful boy named Benjie would sit on one first row audience member’s cock while sucking the cock of another standing in the next row. In the third theatre, the “O.K. Corral,” there was an actual fence in addition to the movie screen and some seating. The performers never worked that room, but everything else was certainly worked.

Eventually the Show Palace began booking gay porn stars for a week at a time. Some of the biggest names—and cocks—in porn would strip and stroke five shows a day (six on weekends), and often would decide to have fun with members of the audience, both during and after their shows. Some, of course, took advantage of their time offstage to earn additional income, but most were also more than willing to select from the members of the audience for strictly recreational fucking and sucking, often at the rundown area hotels where the theatre booked them for the week.

Eventually the Show Palace began booking gay porn stars for a week at a time. Some of the biggest names—and cocks—in porn would strip and stroke five shows a day (six on weekends). Among the luminaries who Played the Palace: Jake Andrews, Matt Gunther, Trent Reed, Blade Thompson, Cliff Parker, Chip Daniels, Melchor, Kevin Kramer, Jim Bentley, Danny Brown, Jared Clark, Lou Cass, Chad Knight, Danny Sommers, Tony Davis, Marc Saber, Tony Acosta and many other priapic princes of porn. Most of the porn stars would work the audience, getting stroked and sucked and on occasion sucking an appealing audience cock. Some, of course, took advantage of their time offstage to earn additional income, but most were also more than willing to select from the members of the audience for strictly recreational fucking and sucking, often at the rundown area hotels where the theatre booked them for the week. After all, most porn stars truly are horny sluts who love sex. Use the link above to read about SEX WITH PORN STARS.

The Show Palace's primary competition for live porn was the Gaiety, made more infamous when it was used for Madonna’s overpriced, poorly-made book, Sex. Long before the Immaterial Girl usurped and monetized yet another facet of gay culture, gay men from NYC and elsewhere knew the Gaiety as the place to see the most beautiful naked boys onstage. Weekdays were more lowkey and more convenient for audience sex (nothing like getting a blowjob while you watch hot boys flaunt their hardons onstage). Weekends featured a lineup of two dozen studs and sometimes had a party atmosphere, with groups of guys coming together… um, arriving together… which drove the audience sexcapades further toward the rear. Of the theatre. The finale featured the entire lineup of that week’s dancers onstage, fully erect, dancing to pop music played by a DJ/announcer famous for both his mysterious voice and for his extra large cock, which was on display when he worked as one of the dancers, “Mario.” He would go on to a career as the leather-clad promoter of backroom sex parties at various bars.

There were always questions about how the Gaiety managed to survive so long after the Giuliani sex police began targeting gay establishments. There were rumors of bribery, as well as of money laundering to explain how the club could afford its rent, but more likely it had a long-term lease signed when Times Square was a place tourists avoided (except those who wanted to avail themselves of the myriad of unique experiences the neighborhood offered).

The woman who ran the place was notoriously hostile and cheap; most performers were paid only a couple hundred dollars for a week of work, and used their shows primarily to advertise their services as hookers. Tricks could be turned backstage or in a nearby location, often the Edison Hotel next door, where some of the boys would stay. There seems to have been a circuit, with traveling dancers appearing once a month for a week. There were also local dancers, who developed fan bases of guys who showed their appreciation in a variety of ways, from renting the boy to shooting loads during the show. Jason (a/k/a Dirk Van Damme), Dino, Stephen, and future porn legends Joey Stefano, Domino, Chris Williams and Carlos Morales were frequent performers, and many a hot local boy had a past that included dining at the Howard Johnson’s downstairs between their shows (and tricks).

Eventually, the really hot, gay local boys were supplanted by gay-for-pay body builders shipped in from Canada for a week, and, as the Giuliani regime cracked down on commercial sex establishments, audience stroking was discouraged and then forbidden (leading to a resurgence of old-school raincoats on laps).

Domino, Chris, Jason, Ivan and Joey Stefano. All but Joey worked at the Gaiety before doing their first porn movies. Jason was the most spectacular Gaiety Boy, and had a fan base to match the size of his huge cock; he was featured in numerous magazine spreads and in a stripper video and a solo stroke scene for Catalina, as Dirk Van Damme. Ivan would become notorious bareback porn whore Carlos Morales, returning to the stage after his video career faded, this time as a hardcore cocksucking go-go boy at the Cock and assorted large-scale sex parties. Chris started his career with a fake ID in Washington DC, as an underage naked dancer and prostitute. Domino's specialty was writhing on the floor of the Gaiety stage, displaying the ass that would prove to be quite accommodating in Falcon videos. And Joey, well, you can read the book.... he was perhaps the most famous of the hundreds of hot boys who worked their hard cocks onstage and backstage at the notorious theatre.

While the Show Palace had the sluttiest dancers and the Gaiety had the hottest, for a period there was a Goldilocks “just right” alternative, the interection of a salacious Venn diagram.. The Follies, DC’s venue for naked hardon dancers, opened a New York branch, and was the first in town to regularly feature porn stars (Brian Hawks, Tim Kramer, Lance, and the legendary Leo Ford). Like the Gaiety, the finale of each show required each boy to display a rock hard cock; going in the backroom right before that event was a feast for the eyes (and sometimes the mouths) of audience members, as the studs worked their rods up for their grand entrance. After the show, they would line up along the wall in their underwear (or, for a few savvy self-promoters, totally naked), available for rent.

The back area featured a lounge and a maze of theatrical flats to contain audience interaction and rental opportunities. Conveniently, the theatre also had a hot ticket taker who would happily host you, if you were hot enough, in the restroom and suck your load down his throat after you were worked up. As at the Show Palace and the Gaiety, the audience often jacked off watching the show and had sex during the movies that filled the time between performances. The performers would generally come out in the audience, during, and sometime between, shows and offer their rigid tools for stroking and sucking in the hopes of tips or a profitable assignation backstage after the show.

Blond Ambition: Some of the biggest... names appearing at the Follies: Leo Ford in front of his Follies poster, Leo the way his fans loved him, Lance, Tim Kramer and Brian Hawkes Below: Leo Ford performing at the Follies in the mid 1980s, giving the audience their money's worth

When the Follies closed, the Show Palace saw its opportunity to feature porn stars, generally requiring them to appear on the Wednesday night broadcast of the unintentionally hilarious Robin Byrd Show, stripping and taking viewer phone calls on a public access porn broadcast hosted by a somewhat bizarre and usually stoned 1970s porn starlet who eventually became very, very rich from phone sex lines.

The owners of the Show Palace (who also owned the premiere theatre featuring hardcore shows by female porn stars and strippers) briefly opened two additional theatres for gay men, one in a small theatre adjacent to their straight showcase, and one in a separate location, christened Joxx. Or Jocx. Some x-inclusive variation on the word. As it booked in the headliner from the Show Palace for a second week, it was generally redundant, and short-lived, notable primarily for the first onstage appearance of a scuzzy boy from New Jersey who auditioned with a dildo borrowed from porn actor Tony Davis. With a serious makeover, he became superstar bottom and heroin addict Joey Stefano.

Across from the Adonis and next door to the straight-porn Venus was another mythologically named theatre, the Eros, which also offered naked and erect dancers. Far down the feeding chain in every way from the Gaiety and Show Palace, the Eros was a true dive, and most of the dancers were essentially right off the streets, hustling the audience to turn bargain-priced tricks in the back. There were occasional but rare exceptions, as when Falcon video twink Jim Moore made an appearance (he must not have been aware of the better options for a clean-cut blond porn starlet). But the real draw was a beautiful 20-year-old Brazilian boy named Johnny, who was the first stud working the audience after the hardon finale, which included a promenade down the aisle, providing opportunities to stroke stripper cock—or perhaps suck it if the dancer was amenable. Rather than go backstage and put his underwear on, Johnny would hop off the stage and work the audience while they worked his still rock hard cock. Rumor had it he had a wife and kids back in Brazil.

Street trade could be found hustling in the adjacent parking lot. Sadly, when addiction derailed the career of Falcon beauty and Gaiety boy Chris Williams, he, too, was seen leaning against the parked cars, trying to score one thing or another.

Finally, there was another short-lived stripper theatre in or near the same spot that had been West World. The boys were first-rate, but since the city had been regularly cracking down and audience activity was forbidden, this place didn’t last long, although steroidal stars Tom Chase and Tom Katt made an appearance on the stage—which was an actual stage, though most of the shows took place in the space next door, in a room with folding chairs.

Aside from the theatres, there were so many additional spaces to have sex with the many, many hot and horny gay men of New York. Les Hommes on the Upper West Side and the Unicorn in Chelsea were under the same management and each had its heyday when the neighborhood in which it was located was crawling with homos. The concepts were essentially the same—an area set up like a small movie theatre with porn and cocksucking, a room for cruising and group action, and a maze of video booths for one or more guys, often showing off their hard cocks in hopes of luring a partner or several into the booth for sucking and fucking. Les Hommes began as a larger, nicer space that later relocated upstairs and was soon rundown. The Unicorn had booths and a lounge upstairs, more booths and several areas for group action in the basement. As the city began a campaign of repression, management showed non-sexual, gay-themed movies in the lounge area, but the booths were generally busy with X-rated videos and even more X-rated activities.

There was at one time, downstairs from the Show Palace, a booth space where, for a single admission price, horny men could find booths full of waiting studs. And of course, Midtown, Chelsea and the Village (east and west) offered a selection of video stores with backrooms, gloryholes, and booths, populated with a range of hot guys.

The entrances to the Unicorn and Les Hommes, and the "legitimate" video sales section of theinterior of the Unicorn, leading to the lounge and fuck booths in back.

Alas, real estate and repression led to the closure of so many of these landmarks of libertine behavior. First, closet case mayor Ed Koch took revenge on his critics in the gay community who lambasted his inaction on AIDS, and he began cracking down on commercial sex. While Koch’s successor, David Dinkins, had more important priorities, “America’s Mayor” and future deranged, alcoholic conspiracy theorist Rudolph Giuliani escalated the targeting of porn in all its variations, sending in spies to report on sexual activity and forcing the closure of many sex establishments (in addition to nightclubs and bars) in order to suburbanize New York for the comfort of his voter base. And the final nail in the coffin was Mike Bloomberg’s philosophy that “New York is a luxury item,” which entailed escalating rents and real estate prices, forcing the closure of the few venues still open.

And of course, as it led to so many changes in popular culture, the internet also had a hand in destroying commercial sex establishments. As gay men assimilated and became increasingly domesticated and mainstream, their eternal sex drive found less-public outlets. Grindr, Manhunt, BBRT, and all the other internet hookup sites changed the landscape as, rather than simply going to a theatre or sex club filled with willing potential partners, checking out the available merchandise, and getting down to business, gay men instead spent endless hours scrolling and swiping and negotiating and often ending the day unfulfilled and horny.

And rather than enjoy an explicit encounter with their pants around their ankles, being sucked or ridden while watching similar activities performed onscreen by men who became legitimate gay culture icons, they were fixated on a computer screen, watching increasingly amateur porn.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is progress….