A Whole Bag of Crazy: Sordid Tales of Hookers, Weed, and Grindhouse Movies by Pete Chiarella

Author:Pete Chiarella [Chiarella, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Happy Cloud Media, LLC
Published: 2018-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Abe Beame, Porn Buster

People might think that Rudy Giuliani was the guy who cleaned up Times Square. Abe Beame tried to do it back in the ‘70s. Beame was bound and determined to padlock every sex related business in the city. He, personally, led a few of the raids. Past efforts to clean up the place were costly. Beame’s “Operation Clean Sweep” was going to be different. He was trying to pass a zoning law that would reduce the number of sex related businesses from 245 to 41. The law, however, failed to pass.

Abe was undaunted and raids were conducted on six peep shows and a topples/bottomless bar called Jax’s Three Ring Circus, which was a juice bar. Jax was closed up. Show World was closed for their live sex shows, but it was actually a fire “sprinkler” violation. Abe was photographed a couple of days later in front of the shuttered Show World, which reopened three weeks later. Five of the closed peeps were back up and running a couple of days after they were closed. A three-day rally to “get rid of killer porn” was laughed at and failed miserably.

Live sex shows, which appeared in the mid ‘70s, were the bane of Abe’s existence. The first one started at the Hollywood Theater on 8th Avenue. The Avon 7, the Avon 42nd, The Doll, and The Avon Love Theater all followed suit. Show World, always on the cutting edge of porn, had two or three mini theaters showing, at first, lame skits with simulated sex. This quickly went to hardcore. Show World took the hit in 1977 when Abe, accompanied by fifty policemen, personally tacked the closure notice on Show World’s door. This was over maybe a mere sprinkling system violation. At a press conference by the manager of Show World, he called the bust “a grandstand play by the senile and demented boss of a crippled city administration.” It was an election year, why else would this bullshit go on? It accomplished nothing.

Abe also pushed the rounding up of streetwalkers in ‘76 during the Democratic Convention. The Civil Liberties Union got into the act and the city was forced to stop the practice. Then the number of street hookers exploded and the girls became more aggressive toward pedestrians until the delegates arrived in town. Time Magazine even ran a cover story on the smut biz called The Porno Plague, which exposed nothing that we didn’t know all ready. It is worth noting, historically, that NYC, in general, was filthy and crime ridden. The city was almost bankrupt; there was a garbage strike with uncollected bags of trash almost ten feet high. Rats and other vermin flourished here. Add to this equation the gas shortage, high unemployment, etc. “Fun City” it wasn’t for most, but for me, life just went on.

Top: Zappa time, plus a car we destroyed.

Middle: My “shop” and early Flea Market set up. Bottom: Me and Norm Brill.

Top: Me and Norman Brill at the Sexpo. We sold $25K of VHS Tapes.

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