There used to be a peep show palace right here
This worn sign, located just south of 8th Avenue on 42nd Street in New York City, is all that remains of Show World Center, at one time the most-popular peep show emporium in New York City. UntappedCities.com called it “The McDonald’s of Sex.” I give it more credit than that. It was the Disneyland of Sex. It was Disneyland for men, especially men who had just gotten off work, had hard-ons from looking at their sexy secretary or co-worker all day and needed to bust a nut before they hopped on the train or bus to go home.
As Robert Brenner at UntappedCities wrote, “Show World Center occupied the first four stories of a 12-story building, and had 22,000 square feet of retail space. It had something for everyone: X-rated films, peepshows, adult books, live sex acts—e.g., a woman who shot hardboiled eggs from her vajayjay into the audience, like a t-shirt cannon—and in-store appearances by name porn stars.”
One of those porn stars was Trinity Loren. Back in the mid-’80s, I took a show (that was the parlance) from big-busted, blonde Trinity on the second floor, the one with the peep show booths that had a window separating the customer from the girl. Trinity showed me her tits, talked dirty to me and me only and fucked her pussy with a variety of dildos.
Another time, on the third floor, the infamous Triple Treat Theater, I watched Kitten Natividad suck and fuck some guy. Yes, they had live sex on-stage back then. Another time, during a lezzie show, one of the girls inserted a string of anal beads deep inside her partner’s asshole and asked, “Anyone want to pull them out? Ten bucks.” I still regret not taking her up on the offer. If I remember correctly, nobody did. Can you imagine that? Ten bucks to pull anal beads out of a girl’s ass? Bargain!
I walked past that old Show World Center sign several weeks ago when I was in New York. Where once there were live nude girls on stage, now there’s a two-story Duane Reade drug store. Just what New York needs, another Duane Reade. I wondered if the customers I saw through the second floor window realized they were standing in the spots where dancers used to peek out from their booths and yell, “Need a mop!” Turning Show World Center into a so-called respectable establishment had to be a clean up job on the scale of Chernobyl. Wrote the website Vanishing New York, “for 40 years, Show World was here, smelling of bleach and orange-scented mop water, doing its service for New Yorkers, commuters, and tourists alike.”
Show World fell to New York’s oppressive zoning laws that turned 42nd Street and the surrounding area into a giant tourist trap. It’s a lot safer to walk down 42nd Street than it used to be, but it’s not nearly as much fun.