June 17th, 2011 -- by Dr. Faustus
PZ’s Finds
Big-time science blogger PZ Myers has a post reminiscing about a type of business known in his youth, but now largely vanished.
Maybe you don’t remember 70s-era porn shops. Maybe you weren’t even born then. But the like of these beasts is something that we’ll not see again. They were beautiful.
Yes they were, in their own strange way. But you’ll have to read further in the post to find out what he was actually looking for. (As a hint, I spent much of my youth looking for the same sort of thing…)
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Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=7006
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=7006
I was too young to see these in the 70s, but they persisted in declining form into the early 1990s. Complete with the segregation of the “Ebony” porn, which I always found to be a mystifying artifact of a long-lost and completely unlamented era.
God I remember those from the late 80s. The twenty-somethings I mentor now hardly believe me when I describe a time when porn was rare, and required a fair amount of work and bravery to find more than the basics. Hell, I was near on thirty the first time I saw that Penthouse finally had penetrations, and I bet my Dad can recall the first time Playboy showed bush. Times change, and surprisingly often for the better…
I knew crossover would happen sooner or later. Pharyngula is my home page and I have been reading here for sooo long.
The inner-city porn and live sex entertainment blocks are almost dead. Houston’s died when the Pink Pussycat moved to Greenway. I also experienced The Block in Baltimore, and that little porn strip in the shadow of the FBI building in DC in the 80s and 90’s. Even so, these shops thrive on the Richmond Strip,and Westheimer in Houston, and are spread throughout the suburbs, particularly along I45 and 290. How they make it in the age of digital porn is beyond me. And then there are the “salons”. Every half abandoned retail strip in Houston has one. There’s one 200ft from my home right next to the Consulate of a nation where they would kill people for working in or going to such a place. Coincidence? I don’t think so.