The last (porn) picture shows: Once dotted with dozens of adult cinemas, L.A. now has only two (LA Times)
Read the full article by Carolina A. Miranda on LATimes.com
In the 1970s, Los Angeles teemed with dozens of porn theaters. Now only two remain: the Studs and the Tiki. They sit at opposite ends of Santa Monica Boulevard — the former in West Hollywood, the latter in East Hollywood, framing the city in an unseen porno-magnetic field. Both beckon with promises of titillation and, in the case of the Studs, a tag line that reads, “Come explore, relax, and take a load off.” …
Moreover, for the LGBTQ community, gay porn houses became a kind of safe space.
“They weren’t just theater spaces,” says Mike Stabile, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult industry, and director of the documentary “Smut Capital of America.” “You could go in and have these experiences and they were anonymous.”
“Being a young gay man, it’s tremendously nerve-racking, but there was something about the theater,” he says, “that is closed off from the rest of the world.”
Carolina A. Miranda is a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering culture from high to low: museums to murals, art books to comics, documentaries to reaction GIFs. A longtime independent journalist, she has reported on the architecture of skate parks and the intersection of fine art and video games – as well as the adventures of the donut-making Mexican wrestler of East L.A. When she’s not reading about the lives of the artists, she’s recapping action movies on Facebook.