New York City of the 1970s and ’90s was a very different time than today, especially in the amount of unchecked crime which escaped persecution. Underaged prostitution was common on the streets. Hustlers dealt loose cigs, drugs, knives, chains. The Times Square crossroads of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue was a hub famous for looking the other way. And it was here, amidst the mayhem, where a “hardcore-porn palace” known as Show World Center erected to steady business, according to the New York Post.
The Show World Center was a “24/7 carnival of the damned, [which] featured naked girls, couples simulating copulation onstage and triple-X fare to sate every desire,” reports the NYP. “It was, an anti-porn city official said, the ‘flagship of the sex industry of New York.'”
In the adult world, we commemorate it as a place where sexually-explicit business fought for its right to exist, and, for many years, succeeded.
The infamous $400,000, 22,000-square-foot building built in 1975, and expanded in 1977, employed nearly 100 women rotating a day for its second-floor peep show.
“The idea was to create the first porn establishment in Times Square that was upscale,” Josh Alan Friedman, the author of “Tales of Time Square,” tells The Post.
“Most likely, you’d see a couple of naked junkies onstage trying to have sex,” Tim Connelly, one of the retired 1970s performers in the live shows, shares. “And if you were dumb enough to believe the barker [who promised sexually-explicit performances from Swedish beauties], you had a lot of nerve asking for your money back.”
Today, Show World remains as a porn retailer and a relic from the grimier and more liberated NYC of the past. The live nude women are no longer, having been chased out by the local non-adult businesses of a Westin Hotel and a Duane Reade.
“Neighborhood property values have soared and cleanup efforts have worked,” reports the New York Post. “But the final blow to Show World was likely delivered earlier this month — when its owner, Richard Basciano, died at age 91.”
Affluent and affable, tanned and distinctly fashioned with a shark’s tooth around his neck, the “Sultan of Smut,” Richard Basciano, was a real estate millionaire, a boxing enthusiast and the founder of it all. When he passed, he left a full-size boxing ring in his apartment upstairs, above Show World.
At this point, Basciano had been working solo for many years, since his partner, Robert “DiBe” DiBernardo, was murdered by Sammy “The Bull” Gravano in 1986. A story reminiscent of an old New York way of law — supposedly, DiBernardo had slighted mob boss John Gotti, and the mistake was a fatal one. Basciano didn’t get involved — at least not fatally — with mobsters, although he did take swipes a the law, pleading no contest to a coupon scam in 1968 and found liable for a deadly building collapse in Philadelphia, 2013.
“You did not talk to Richard Basciano; you did not make eye contact,” recalls Friedman. “The less you knew about his operation, the better off you were.”
“You did not talk to Richard Basciano; you did not make eye contact. The less you knew about his operation, the better off you were.”
– Josh Alan Friedman
Friedman continues, recounting a mob-like “army” of Basciano’s: “He employed boxers from his ultra-private gym, which occupied a floor of the building, to serve as quarter cashiers. They were tough ghetto guys and functioned as Basciano’s army. They were very good at throwing out anyone who misbehaved. Pimps came in to recruit girls and they got bounced violently.”
Like many adult-oriented businesses, women were the spine of the business, and there was plenty of work for them.
Around 1978, Basciano removed peep-show windows, allowing dancers and patrons to touch one another.
“For 25 cents, patrons watched them gyrating in the nude,” shares The New York Post. “When time — fractions of a minute per quarter — elapsed, metal shutters dropped, blocking the view until more coins were inserted.”
Meanwhile, a light outside the booth announced moonlighting boxers.
“They pounded on the door and shouted, ‘Get your tokens in,’” Friedman recalls, and he describes a non-refundable gold tokens, octagonal, which showed a nude dancer surrounded by musical notes, which he says were employed as currency to deter patrons from stealing from the coin boxes.
“Disco music blasted, aisles were crowded with shamed men,” says Friedman. “The place was more about high anxiety than sex.”
In addition to the peep show business, Show World screened seconds of triple-X footage in movie booths for 25 cents, offering 10 unique titles per booth.
“Anything that you can imagine being done through a porthole for a $1 tip was done,” Friedman shares. “All kinds of body parts went through those portholes.”
The proximity of the Times Square location to Broadway theaters gave Show World an underbelly name of note.
“It was the pits of show biz, but it was still show biz,” Friedman says. “There was low-life glamour to it.”
And for some porn stars, appearing at Show World was like the big time.
“I went on stage, did what I wanted to myself and was completely naked — I appreciated that,” says adult star Nina Hartley. “After the set, I did a Q&A and posed nude for Polaroids with the patrons.”
These sorts of meet-and-greets with adult entertainers are far less common than they used to be, perhaps because they were difficult to control.
Connelly recounts a harrowing experience which followed an audience member of an adult performance who was impatient for sex: “He walked to the stage and said, ‘F – – – the broad.’ 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.”
Show World grew a diverse crowd from New York City’s adult underbelly.
Jonathan Ames, who’d go on to be a successful novelist and write about Show World in “I Pass Like the Night,” ranked among the sex-shop patrons when he was an 18-year-old kid from New Jersey.
“It was almost an adult version of an arcade — but instead of skee-ball machines there were private booths of shame,” recalls Jonathan Ames, who wrote about Show World in his novel, “I Pass Like the Night.” “I don’t know if I liked going. It wasn’t like going to a Yankees game. You didn’t 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’t want to end up like one of them. There was a cautionary component to Show World.”
Through the ’80s, drugs and the AIDS epidemic took a toll on the fun.
“Show World may not have been happy-happy in its prime, but it was exciting and dirty and horny and crowded,” says Friedman, adding that through the AIDS crisis, there were more dark times than light.
“Show World may not have been happy-happy in its prime, but it was exciting and dirty and horny and crowded.
– Friedman
“Suddenly things got skeevier,” Connely adds. “[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.”
By around 1985, the peep-show had closed its windows for good, to the disappointment of many.
“On the last day [of open windows], I’ve been told that everyone was screaming and crying in the dressing room,” says Sheila McClear, author of “The Last of the Live Nude Girls.” “They were saying [to managers], ‘We have kids to support!’ You’re talking uneducated people who were making middle-class incomes — all cash.”
In 1986, under President Reagan, the National Obscenity Enforcement Unit was assembled, led by Attorney General Edwin Meese III. The task force was assembled, made up of anti-pornography lawyers, intended to intimidate porn peddlers out of business or to eliminate them through legal means, if necessary.
In November 1987, President Ronald Reagan (R) gave a speech in which he pledged to anti-pornography activists to put “purveyors” adult magazines and films out of business, according to the Washington Post. “Your industry’s days are numbered,” he warned.
Porn enterprises around Times Square were shuttering. Undercover cops increased their presence and arrests — Connelly was busted one night. Porn hubs still in operation had to go underground, making them more dangerous.
According to the New York Post, in March 1991, a 21-year-old performer in one of Show World’s fantasy booths — nicknamed “confessionals” for the one-way mirror which partitioned the performer from the patron — was stabbed and killed by her customer.
“Further restrictions — via zoning laws and the 40/60 rule, which forced sex-shop owners to maintain 60 percent non-sexual stock — ate into profits,” reports the New York Post.
Through the ’90s, Show World shrank until it was a diminished version of what it was, but Basciano held on to the structure as property values continued to rise.
The sudden death of Basciano leaves many wondering what will happen to Show World. Basciano leaves behind a wife, Lois, and three daughters from a previous marriage. No explications from a will have been publicized. It is unclear if anyone is destined to inherit the once-famous porn capital of New York City.
Read the original story and see photos of the Show World Center in its time on the New York Post here.
Read the Washington Post here.
