Times Squared:
The Remnants of Sleaze
Written and Photographed by Melinda Maclean |
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Times Square in the daylight just
feels wrong to me. All that synthetic brilliance
and chaos clashing with the natural beauty of the
sunlight hitting the exteriors of buildings, creating
hundreds of reflections within reflections. And
in the evening when the billboards light up and
your eyes are assaulted with crazy swirls of color,
text and images it all feels too overwhelming, and
yet too safe. Times Square has such a rich and storied
history I won’t even attempt to say something
new about it. But as I started working in the area
recently, I became curious if there were any remnants
of the old Times Square, from the 1970’s and
80’s. The famous theatre marquees featuring
porno film titles are long gone; you can walk down
42nd Street and not have to worry about getting
mugged (though you may be harangued by people asking
you if you like comedy); you won’t see hustlers,
prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts or crazy prophetic
old bag ladies, but you can feel the frenetic energy
of a street crowded with people being swept along
in a trance-like state by the spectacle of technology
and commerce.
For a little of the old feeling of sleaze and depravity you have to saunter over to 8th Avenue, the edge of Hells’ Kitchen. If you walk down the stretch along 8th between 42nd and 48th Streets you can catch a glimpse of the old seediness and naughtiness, which made Times Square infamous in the past as a haven of crime and sexual entrepreneurship. At dusk all the neon storefronts and signs of the X-rated video shops transform the street with their grimly beautiful lights. There is the bright red neon sign for The Playpen showing a red pre-911 skyline of the city with a wishing star and a crescent moon. The storefront boasts 128 different channels, live girls, and fantasy booths. As I stood there wondering what it was like upstairs and if I would have to be careful not to slip on the floor, one man, passing by, stopped to look at the girl in the swing kicking her legs up painted on the entrance wall and went up the stairs, for what I assumed was an unplanned visit. These fantasy booths are like a one-man occupancy porno theatre where you can go in, feed a few dollars into a slot and watch an endless variety of videos featuring a wide array of sexual proclivities. Some booths exhibit live girls behind a screen which gets raised for a few minutes and others feature a sliding panel between the adjoining booths where you can see what you neighbor is up to if you are feeling more communal in your desires.
There are several strip clubs like Private Eyes, which
advertise themselves as sports cabarets. These are
no doubt more upscale then the strip clubs of old
– there may be drink minimums and added security
to make it feel more like a bank or a legitimate place
of cash exchanged for services. After the clean up
started happening in the early nineties, many strip
clubs had to relocate or start up in more industrial
area, like Long Island City. Within the Times Square
area itself there are only a handful of strip clubs
left, places like Lace, with sleek and sterile storefronts,
which merge seamlessly with the other storefronts,
barely causing the casual tourist to do a double take.
Rudy's Bar and Grill
Sitting on Hell’s Kitchen
territory, Rudy’s Bar & Grill is a great
dive bar on 8th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets.
The have unusually cheap drinks, free hotdogs to
keep you upright and plenty of old bar flies to
tell you bedtime stories. The other night when I
was taking a few photos of the bar’s exterior
and the shiny faced pig wearing a red jacket that
greets you at the door I noticed that a man seated
at the bar by the window was waving at me and so
I waved back. He proceeded to put up his two fingers
in the shape of a peace sign (the Verizon sign now)
and I smiled at him and waved again like we were
distant cousins, when he put the peace sign up to
his mouth and stuck his tongue out and moved it
up and down between the fingers several times. I
think my cheeks turned as red as the pig’s
jacket.
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Even the Port Authority bus terminal
on the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street, which
used to be the arch temple of seediness and human
misery, feels safer and less ominous. Times Square
is clean, new, and shiny, but duller then an old
penny rusting at the bottom of the train tracks.
Not that I am a fan of crime or degradation, but
I think that totally removing the human element
from Times Square in favor of a corporate theme
park, leaves more to be desired, though the desire
may spring from the darker parts of our psyche.
The basic attraction of Times Square is the same
in a way as it was in the past, thrills and instant
gratification, except now it’s a family of
five eating at the ESPN Zone or shopping at the
Disney store instead of a guy in a trench coat watching
Thanks for the Mammaries or Broadway
Fanny Rose.
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