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<\/p>\nBack in the 1970s and early \u201980s, 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue stewed with illicit activity. Underage prostitutes wearing hot-pants and high-tops propositioned middle-aged men. Hustlers peddled loose joints, switchblades and freshly heisted gold chains. A tourist got chased, naked, onto the Times Square subway station\u2019s third rail.<\/p>\n
In the middle of this urban mayhem was a glitzy, hardcore-porn palace called Show World Center. A 24\/7 carnival of the damned, it featured naked girls, couples simulating copulation onstage and triple-X fare to sate every desire. It was, an anti-porn city official said, the \u201cflagship of the sex industry of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
The notorious, 22,000-square-foot den originally opened in 1975, built at a cost of $400,000, and went through an upgrade in 1977. Each day, nearly 100 women worked a rotating peep show on the second floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea was to create the first porn establishment in Times Square that was upscale,\u201d Josh Alan Friedman, the author of 1986\u2019s \u201cTales of Time Square,\u201d tells The Post.<\/p>\n
A barker outside promised sexually explicit performances that featured Swedish beauties with impressive attributes. The reality was different.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost likely, you\u2019d see a couple of naked junkies onstage trying to have sex,\u201d says Tim Connelly, who performed in the live shows during the late 1970s. \u201cAnd if you were dumb enough to believe the barker, you had a lot of nerve asking for your money back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, what remains of Show World as a porn retailer \u2014 and a relic from a grittier, more lascivious Big Apple \u2014 trundles along as a shadow of its former self. The live nude girls are gone, chased out by a Westin Hotel across the street and a Duane Reade on the corner. Neighborhood property values have soared and cleanup efforts have worked.<\/p>\n
But the final blow to Show World was likely delivered earlier this month \u2014 when its owner, Richard Basciano, died at age 91.<\/p>\n[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”435″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_thumbnails” override_thumbnail_settings=”0″ thumbnail_width=”240″ thumbnail_height=”160″ thumbnail_crop=”1″ images_per_page=”6″ number_of_columns=”0″ ajax_pagination=”1″ show_all_in_lightbox=”1″ use_imagebrowser_effect=”0″ show_slideshow_link=”1″ slideshow_link_text=”[Show slideshow]” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]A boxing enthusiast and real-estate millionaire known as the Sultan of Smut, Basciano was well-tanned, with a shark\u2019s tooth around his neck. At the time of his death, he had a full-sized boxing ring in his apartment upstairs from Show World.<\/p>\n
Basciano\u2019s partner, Robert \u201cDiBe\u201d DiBernardo, was murdered by Sammy \u201cThe Bull\u201d Gravano in 1986. Supposedly, he somehow slighted mob boss John Gotti. Basciano \u2014 who pleaded no contest to a 1968 coupon scam and was found liable for a deadly 2013 Philadelphia building collapse \u2014 made no such mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did not talk to Richard Basciano; you did not make eye contact,\u201d remembers Friedman. \u201cThe less you knew about his operation the better off you were.\u201d<\/p>\n
Show World workers underscored the point. \u201cHe employed boxers from his ultra-private gym, which occupied a floor of the building, to serve as quarter cashiers,\u201d Friedman says. \u201cThey were tough ghetto-guys and functioned as Basciano\u2019s army. They were very good at throwing out anyone who misbehaved. Pimps came in to recruit girls and they got bounced violently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girls were the spine of the business. For 25-cents, patrons watched them gyrating in the nude. When time \u2014 fractions of a minute per quarter \u2014 elapsed, metal shutters dropped, blocking the view until more coins were inserted.<\/p>\n
Simultaneously, a light outside the booth signaled the moonlighting boxers. \u201cThey pounded on the door and shouted, \u2018Get your tokens in,\u2019 \u201d Friedman recalls, adding that non-refundable octagonal gold tokens, depicting a naked dancer with floating musical notes, replaced quarters to deter patrons from busting into coin boxes. \u201cDisco music blasted, aisles were crowded with shamed men . . . The place was more about high anxiety than sex.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides the token system, other Show World innovations included high-tech rigging for the movie booths, which showed seconds of triple-X footage for 25-cents.<\/p>\n
Thus, porn videos replaced 8-millimeter loops, offering 10 different titles per booth. Business truly boomed when Basciano removed peep-show windows around 1978, allowing dancers to reach in, touch patrons and be touched in turn. Aggressive women made hundreds per shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything that you can imagine being done through a porthole for a $1 tip was done,\u201d says Friedman. \u201cAll kinds of body parts went through those portholes.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Proximity to Broadway theaters gave Show World an undeserved air of legitimacy. \u201cIt was the pits of show biz, but it was still show biz,\u201d Friedman says. \u201cThere was low-life glamor to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides, for some porn stars, appearing at Show World was a lucrative gas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went on stage, did what I wanted to myself and was completely naked \u2014 I appreciated that,\u201d says porn actress Nina Hartley. \u201cAfter the set, I did a Q&A and posed nude for Polaroids with the patrons\u201d who paid for the privilege and got to touch PG areas of Hartley\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
Other performances went less smoothly. Tim Connelly remembers an audience member who became impatient during a comedic lead-up to the sex: \u201cHe walked to the stage and said, \u2018F \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 the broad.\u2019 I told him to shut up. Then I saw his gun. I was buck-naked and the guy had a pistol on me! Everybody started going crazy; I grabbed the woman I was with and we walked off stage. The guy put the gun back in his coat and left. Meanwhile my knees were weak and the audience-members were stomping their feet, wanting us to come back out and finish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Show World drew a diverse crowd of men in search of cheap, illicit thrills. Friedman recalls soap opera stars and a musician from the Philharmonic turning up. Jonathan Ames, who\u2019d go on to be a successful novelist and write about Show World in \u201cI Pass Like the Night,\u201d ranked among the sex-shop patrons when he was an 18-year-old kid from New Jersey.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was almost an adult version of an arcade \u2014 but instead of skee-ball machines there were private booths of shame,\u201d Ames says. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I liked going. It wasn\u2019t like going to a Yankees game. You didn\u2019t necessarily feel good about it. And I had a sense that there were lifers in there, guys who went all the time, and I didn\u2019t want to end up like one of them. There was a cautionary component to Show World.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drugs, disease and death undid whatever good times could be eked out of a place like Show World. First there was AIDS, which had a chilling effect. \u201cThere were fewer girls there, gay people were dying left and right, everyone was scared,\u201d Friedman says. \u201cShow World may not have been happy-happy in its prime, but it was exciting and dirty and horny and crowded.\u201d In the midst of AIDS, that was no longer true.<\/p>\n
As the 1980s ground on, Tim Connelly remembers the scourge of crack adding to the damper. \u201cSuddenly things got skeevier,\u201d he says. \u201c[Customers] looked scarier than they used to. If a girl walked out to get coffee, there was always a decent chance she was not coming back. Half of them were drug addicts.\u201d<\/p>\n
By around 1985, the peep-show windows had been glassed in for good. Workers reacted badly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the last day [of open windows], I\u2019ve been told that everyone was screaming and crying in the dressing room,\u201d recounts Sheila McClear, author of \u201cThe Last of the Live Nude Girls.\u201d \u201cThey were saying [to managers], \u2018We have kids to support!\u2019 You\u2019re talking uneducated people who were making middle-class incomes \u2014 all cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compounding the problems, porn enterprises around Times Square started getting shut down by authorities. Plain-clothes cops became increasingly common and so did arrests \u2014 Connelly got busted one night, and was expected to return to Show World for the remainder of his shift.<\/p>\n
In March 1991, a 21-year-old performer who worked a one-on-one fantasy booth \u2014 nicknamed \u201cconfessionals\u201d for the one-way-mirror that separated customers from girls \u2014 got stabbed to death by a patron.<\/p>\n
Further restrictions \u2014 via zoning laws and the 40\/60 rule, which forced sex-shop owners to maintain 60 percent non-sexual stock \u2014 ate into profits. Beginning in 1998, Show World would grow increasingly smaller as hypnotism shows and a comedy club took over spaces that once hosted explicit activities around the clock.<\/p>\n
Show World shrunk to a tamed-down, fractional footprint of what it had been: crossword-puzzle books are for sale in the basement. And yet Basciano hung on as property values continued to rise.<\/p>\n
His sudden death leaves people wondering about the fate of Show World. It is unclear who inherited the property. Basciano leaves behind his wife Lois and three daughters, all from a previous marriage; no will has yet been made public.<\/p>\n
Sounding bummed, Friedman speculates: \u201cNow it will probably get torn down and become some horrible skyscraper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Back in the 1970s and early \u201980s, 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue stewed with illicit activity. Underage prostitutes wearing hot-pants and high-tops propositioned middle-aged men. Hustlers peddled loose joints, switchblades and freshly heisted gold chains. A tourist got chased, naked, onto the Times Square subway station\u2019s third rail. In the middle of this urban mayhem …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[391],"tags":[2379,2378],"yoast_head":"\n