The owners of the Crossroads pornographic bookstore and peep show at 42nd and Broadway – converted in May into a travelers’ information center operated by the police after a transaction in which the owners were bought out for $81,000 – are reported planning to resume business less than a block from their old location.
On May 26, after a two-year effort to evict the bookstore, the police center opened amid a flurry of speechmaking and toasts by Mayor Beame and Police Commissioner Michael J. Codd and other city officials.
But now, according to Times Square merchants and the city’s Midtown Enforcement Project, the owners of the former store plan to lease a one-story building at 228 West 42nd Street, near Seventh Avenue. The city says it is powerless to stop the bookstore owners from reopening because they are not violating any laws. The building, in the hub of the city’s commercial sex district, now houses a Playland amusement arcade. During the 1940s and 1950s it housed the Hubert Museum, a sideshow with a fat lady, a flea circus and strong-man acts. But in recent years, since the closing of the museum, it has become a reputed hangout for “chicken hawks,” older men in search of young male prostitutes.
If the move by Crossroads is completed, it will illustrate the rapidity with which sex establishments can re-emerge after they have been closed, but it would also give an indication of the huge profits such establishments can make – allowing them to pay much higher rents than non-sex-oriented businesses in the area.
NYT Raab 7/11/77
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