Yesterday I spent the afternoon walking the streets of Manhattan. In the evening I went by this adult video shop and peep show nested on 8th Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. It is one of the few remaining in the area and reminded me just how different Times Square looked at the time I came to live in the City in 1993 and their neon-lit windows seemed to define New York.Mind you, unlike many who miss the squalor and "grittiness" of the old Times Square, I don't miss the insecurity, the street prostitution, the corner crack sales or the trash. But there's also something about the cleaned up, tourist ready spectacle of lightbulbs and Disney theaters that saps the soul as well.
For some reason, it made me feel nostalgic.
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I remember Times Square 1970! I was 17 years old and I just finished watching the movie "Midnight Cowboy" rated X in Bklyn where I lived. Out of curiosity I went to Times Square to check out all the cowboys standing in the doorways selling their bodies and lo and behold! There they were! They wore skin thigh jeans with big fat protruding bulges ready for grabbing. As I walked along 42nd Street marveling at the atmosphere of sin and hellish brimstone. A heavy set black man standing in the doorway call me over to him. He said he was a tourist from Africa and offered me $50 to have sex with him in his hotel room. Mind you, I was 17, young and naïve, the whole incident scared me. I ran home to mother and never returned to Times Square until I was in my twenties. I went there with a friend/future lover to see the sensational Linda Loveless in Deepthroat. Standing room only and we stood on the line for an hour just to get in the theater..
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