why not just put the directions on the board for subway to Manhattan? I’d like to know too, and couldn’t get through to them by phone. Can probably figure it out from a subway map though.
Lou—but does that mean the WHOLE theater is therefore being changed into a family place? Enquiring minds, I think, want especially to know that. Will the X-rated areas still be considered, in other words, profitable enough to be kept, or have they decided to bring in Indian families in the area—which would have to mean the rest was shut down, those 2 things do not survive together. Or would the Fair not tell you this part even on the new phone call?
‘one must learn to like one’s friends’ should have read ‘one must learn to like anyone one is thrown into the presence of as if they were exactly like one’s own friends’
It’s not bad if you don’t care about the Fair, and only are worried about whether its owners turn a profit, mp775.
Have you even read this thread? For those who like to go there, why should we be interested in changing it? Anyway, they do have a lot of customers as it is, just not for the big screen. On the weekends, it IS packed. Anyway, if you want to know about it, read the thread and the article saps posts above.
Now that that’s out of the way, the only thing I know that’s wrong with Bollywood is that I hate it, but that’s neither here nor there. I suppose I really ought to forget about the Fair as it was and decide to adopt a somewhat more Sri Lankan mindset, one must learn to like one’s friends these days and adjust, what with outsourcing to places like Elmhurst, so I shall now change my focus from the customers to the South Asian staff. I’m sure they can’t wait to visit me at home and invite me to theirs…
Exactly, if they are not already planning to drive the wholesome audiences in hook, line and sinker. How ordinary. Right after such a good article about the Last Grindhouse. Nothing is sacred any more.
This sounds bad, alto. Like it may be the same thing happening to the Fair as happened to the Earle and the Fresh Meadows place to me. If the Post article came out today, how long was it since the author visited? There was no mention of the Bollywood posters. But it could be that, since the main auditorium has very few viewers that they indeed are going to use Indian films there, possibly for the staff and also neighborhood people, but I don’t know. I’m sure they wouldn’t be putting them up for decoration, and now I remember that, even though not many sat down in the theater, some watched it standing up or even from the lobby. I don’t like the sound of it, and hope this doesn’t signal the end.
Damn! The restaurant really did close, and it was so first-rate. But thanks for printing and linking to this, I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. I love it that they mentioned Cinema Treasures, and it’s really a good article anyway—better than I usually associate with the Post.
Scott—that’s super and I’d like to see the book. I just looked it up at NYPL and they don’t have it, will search later. In the meantime, let us know something about it. I’m very envious you own the marquee signs—that’s fantastic! I’ve felt that way about signs before, and been glad when they’ve been preserved, like the old PanAm signs which are, I think, now in Florida, but preserved (I’ve always hated looking up Park and seeing MetLife, which seems to indicate death, whereas the old PanAm logo was part of the zingy period of New York when things were lighter and there was a real chic, not this low hum of computers and fax machines that the city feels like now. I used to go to both the Eros and the Venus on rare occasions, but think that is wonderful of you to have preserved the signs. Almost all this heritage that we took for granted in the 70s has been destroyed—not just the fun ways of life that went with some of them, but even the relics. You’re a real inspiration, I have to say.
Very true, and thanks, actually. However, mention of the film about the theater was appropriate, not commentary that was tangential about life-styles. It is necessary that you recognize that there are some people on these threads of gay porno houses do take the opportunity to make unnecessary remarks while pretending to be sincere.
I realize that saying this may get me banned from this forum, but I don’t care, because this thread and the one for the Fair is full of such stuff, and you should direct your moderating at the first offender, not those who try to get them to stop.
Warren—you are a homophobe and a nuisance. You are not trying to get people to practice safe sex, which everybody is aware that they should be doing anyway, whether or not they are. You come here to make self-righteous pronouncements about people’s lifestyles, to be a boring missionary that nobody wants to hear from.
Most of the New York original cases of AIDS came from the bathhouses and heavy bars like the Mineshaft, not from movie theaters, where sexual activity was more restricted. You want to police gays, and tell them they should hear your message when it is very transparent that you are trying to make a moral point about certain kinds of sex acts, which are not nearly all in themselves dangerous anyway, and the others are dangerous only if unprotected.
Most of the video versions have long had warnings at the beginnings of the films warning people NOT to engage in what they see on the screen. You are not really worth talking to, since you are obviously not very bright, but since you won’t shut your redneck mouth, I do agree with fairytale that you ought to be shut out of here.
Or why don’t you go stand out in front of the baths or the Fair and preach like some vulgar street evangelist? That’s what you are anyway, isn’t it? Or probably just some homely troll who wants to bother guys that like to get laid.
‘Oklahoma Cowboy’—The Back Row was probably not filmed there, because I frequented the place during most of its history (without EVER getting one of the above personnel’s Famous STD’s), and I think I would have known. You can write this one guy BJ at his blog, BJ’s Pornology, and ask him, he’ll know. I’ve exchanged some videos and info with him, and he’s an encyclopedia of 70s gay movies. Friendly, and will answer your email right away. Just put BJ’s Pornology into Google and you’ll find him straightaway.
‘A Night at the Adonis’ is well before AIDS, but that doesn’t stop professional bores from giving insufferable and uninformative and hateful sermons. What an idiotic thing to say, Nameless Bore. I warned them at the Fair about you, and they’ve made sure to cut out all smoking, after you reported them. You are obviously on a homophobic crusade under the guise of old movie house expertise (you may have some, but who would care now…) Why don’t you start your own preachy blog or just go teach Sunday School in a red state?
Hollywood—Jack Deveau has been dead a good while, and Hand in Hand Films and all the old porno studios are long gone, replaced with the things straight to video from Czech Republic, etc. You mean the vhs doesn’t have ‘Moonlight Serenade’ on it? Anyway, I think eBay’s naughtybids site has it pretty frequently. Impossible to find those old titles in regular porno stores any more—things like ‘Adam and Yves’ are long gone, and one early 70’s that was terrific, showed at the Mini-Cinema, once right in Rockefeller Cinema, was ‘Gay Guide to Hawaii’. It’s probably been completely lost, and was probably never even on vhs.
Hey! That’s a terrific description. I’ll remember to check out the posters up front, which I’ve never done somehow. The ‘food establishment’ has been closed the last few times I’ve been, but it has a good smaller cafe that connects from the theater itself, and the Stella d'Argento you also can walk into from the Fair as well as from the street. Food is excellent in either case, but I fear they are closed—maybe just some renovation, but I went several months back and then again last week, and it was closed both times. Their big screen is good, but I never have wanted to see anything they’ve had showing there, because you don’t know beforehand, and have probably already seen it, etc.,
Yes, that’s good about the littleParkwiththeTrees, except I think parks were not among the sacred sites of Navaho, Comanches, etc., more like Japanese, as with ‘Noshitsu andtheThousandCherryTrees’. Also, LittlePark, I’m devastated if you leave us, because we can’t see your wiener in here anyway, too many damn screens. You are now in your late 30s, though, and should realizing that ‘engaging in forums’ is not necessarily considered one and the same as noblesse oblige.
Don’t believe a word about the ‘wiener adventure.’ SNL had a skit with a phone sex girl who forfeited the money when the client said ‘wiener.’ Go put some mustard on your own and see if you can find a bun for it. All porno movies in Manhattan were $5 in the 70’s and I don’t think anything kin Queens was doing ‘old pervert’ porno yet.
‘“mm,” I doubt that the closing of the Fair Theatre would be a loss to anyone but the owners’
This is what is so tiresome, since several people have said they enjoy the place. Now someone comes and tells them that it won’t be a loss to them, because they should prefer something else, or whatever else this arbiter of taste thinks they should do. It’s insulting that he should say that to people who, for example, travel all the way from Brooklyn for the relaxing feel they get at this theater. I agree with mikemovies that the management should be alerted that an inspector may show up about the smoking.
I agree with mikemovies, that is truly one of the jerkiest things I’ve heard, interfering with somebody else’s club. The place is not my favourite thing, but I’ve had some good times there, and it’s ridiculous to interfere with someone else’s club. Have you really the energy to now go out and try to get all cigarette smoking policed in all private housing—because that is the only way you are going to make sure that a ‘cigarette addict’ does not get careless. I hope you get nowhere with your infantile 311 complaint.
the old Adonis had a restroom on the balcony level with one of those old 70’s silver disco light fixtures for awhile. Things were done quite out in the open as well as in comparative privacy. There was a phone booth on the second floor that was always ringing, people would call in for dirty talk.
I met Wrangler and Whiting at a wedding of mutual friends in 1990, but had thought they were already married. someone said here they didn’t marry till 1994. I talked to them a good bit, as both Margaret and I were performers in the wedding ceremony. They were very funny, real Beverly Hills characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Playpen is still there, but I’ve never been inside. I think it lasted as the ‘New Adonis’ for 5 years, till 1995, in any case a few years. It was full of campy Greek statues and became filthy after a year—broken chairs, toilets, everything. They had taken the old ‘Adonis Superstar’ photos (from the film ‘A Night at the Adonis’, which I saw at the old theater just after they filmed it there) on black velvet from the old theater and placed them back up at the new place. The same cashiers worked both theaters for years, and one of them, a woman named Bertha, was in the film ‘A Night at the Adonis.
(continuing) I had heard that the old theater, obviously the Tivoli, had been built by B. Rose for F. Brice, that was what everybody used to say. I remember seeing ‘A Night at the Adonis’ there right after it was filmed inside there, and I’ve got a review of the film on IMDB. by 1987 at least, the balcony had collapsed and the place went all the way downhill. It closed in 1989 and moved down to the west side of 8th at 44th. The old marquee bore the words ‘Move to 44th Street’. The theater there (correct as shown in a photo above) did become the Playpen, which still exists—I’d forgotten how ugly the colours are.
Wonderfully informative thread which I look forward to reading in detail later. To clear up anything I may have missed in skimming, I can definitely tell you about the 2 Adonises, having gone to both of them quite a lot. The old one was truly a pleasure, and was on 8th, between 50th and 51st, and has, as noted, been demolished for that high rise. When I first started going in 1976, it was clean and stayed that way for a few years, there were quaint old-fashioned signs about ‘The Male Flagship Theater of the Nation’ and outside the balcony theater was a spacious are with quaint wicker chairs, which sank into disrepair by the early 80s.
I fully agree with flip-flops philosophy, even though I can’t say I care that much for the Fair. I hope it lasts, though, as all this slippage into Virtual Reality is very depressing. Glad he mentioned the restaurant, the Stella d'Argento, which has excellent old-fashioned Southern Italian fare in the dining room which can be entered either from the theater or the street, and the smaller adjacent room, where there is a simpler menu which opens directly from the theater. Very cozy and relaxing.
I just got through to them, you can use the F, Q or B, get off at Kings Highway and walk to 711 Kings Hwy., where the show is.
why not just put the directions on the board for subway to Manhattan? I’d like to know too, and couldn’t get through to them by phone. Can probably figure it out from a subway map though.
Lou—but does that mean the WHOLE theater is therefore being changed into a family place? Enquiring minds, I think, want especially to know that. Will the X-rated areas still be considered, in other words, profitable enough to be kept, or have they decided to bring in Indian families in the area—which would have to mean the rest was shut down, those 2 things do not survive together. Or would the Fair not tell you this part even on the new phone call?
‘one must learn to like one’s friends’ should have read ‘one must learn to like anyone one is thrown into the presence of as if they were exactly like one’s own friends’
It’s not bad if you don’t care about the Fair, and only are worried about whether its owners turn a profit, mp775.
Have you even read this thread? For those who like to go there, why should we be interested in changing it? Anyway, they do have a lot of customers as it is, just not for the big screen. On the weekends, it IS packed. Anyway, if you want to know about it, read the thread and the article saps posts above.
Now that that’s out of the way, the only thing I know that’s wrong with Bollywood is that I hate it, but that’s neither here nor there. I suppose I really ought to forget about the Fair as it was and decide to adopt a somewhat more Sri Lankan mindset, one must learn to like one’s friends these days and adjust, what with outsourcing to places like Elmhurst, so I shall now change my focus from the customers to the South Asian staff. I’m sure they can’t wait to visit me at home and invite me to theirs…
Exactly, if they are not already planning to drive the wholesome audiences in hook, line and sinker. How ordinary. Right after such a good article about the Last Grindhouse. Nothing is sacred any more.
This sounds bad, alto. Like it may be the same thing happening to the Fair as happened to the Earle and the Fresh Meadows place to me. If the Post article came out today, how long was it since the author visited? There was no mention of the Bollywood posters. But it could be that, since the main auditorium has very few viewers that they indeed are going to use Indian films there, possibly for the staff and also neighborhood people, but I don’t know. I’m sure they wouldn’t be putting them up for decoration, and now I remember that, even though not many sat down in the theater, some watched it standing up or even from the lobby. I don’t like the sound of it, and hope this doesn’t signal the end.
Damn! The restaurant really did close, and it was so first-rate. But thanks for printing and linking to this, I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. I love it that they mentioned Cinema Treasures, and it’s really a good article anyway—better than I usually associate with the Post.
Scott—that’s super and I’d like to see the book. I just looked it up at NYPL and they don’t have it, will search later. In the meantime, let us know something about it. I’m very envious you own the marquee signs—that’s fantastic! I’ve felt that way about signs before, and been glad when they’ve been preserved, like the old PanAm signs which are, I think, now in Florida, but preserved (I’ve always hated looking up Park and seeing MetLife, which seems to indicate death, whereas the old PanAm logo was part of the zingy period of New York when things were lighter and there was a real chic, not this low hum of computers and fax machines that the city feels like now. I used to go to both the Eros and the Venus on rare occasions, but think that is wonderful of you to have preserved the signs. Almost all this heritage that we took for granted in the 70s has been destroyed—not just the fun ways of life that went with some of them, but even the relics. You’re a real inspiration, I have to say.
Very true, and thanks, actually. However, mention of the film about the theater was appropriate, not commentary that was tangential about life-styles. It is necessary that you recognize that there are some people on these threads of gay porno houses do take the opportunity to make unnecessary remarks while pretending to be sincere.
I realize that saying this may get me banned from this forum, but I don’t care, because this thread and the one for the Fair is full of such stuff, and you should direct your moderating at the first offender, not those who try to get them to stop.
Warren—you are a homophobe and a nuisance. You are not trying to get people to practice safe sex, which everybody is aware that they should be doing anyway, whether or not they are. You come here to make self-righteous pronouncements about people’s lifestyles, to be a boring missionary that nobody wants to hear from.
Most of the New York original cases of AIDS came from the bathhouses and heavy bars like the Mineshaft, not from movie theaters, where sexual activity was more restricted. You want to police gays, and tell them they should hear your message when it is very transparent that you are trying to make a moral point about certain kinds of sex acts, which are not nearly all in themselves dangerous anyway, and the others are dangerous only if unprotected.
Most of the video versions have long had warnings at the beginnings of the films warning people NOT to engage in what they see on the screen. You are not really worth talking to, since you are obviously not very bright, but since you won’t shut your redneck mouth, I do agree with fairytale that you ought to be shut out of here.
Or why don’t you go stand out in front of the baths or the Fair and preach like some vulgar street evangelist? That’s what you are anyway, isn’t it? Or probably just some homely troll who wants to bother guys that like to get laid.
‘Oklahoma Cowboy’—The Back Row was probably not filmed there, because I frequented the place during most of its history (without EVER getting one of the above personnel’s Famous STD’s), and I think I would have known. You can write this one guy BJ at his blog, BJ’s Pornology, and ask him, he’ll know. I’ve exchanged some videos and info with him, and he’s an encyclopedia of 70s gay movies. Friendly, and will answer your email right away. Just put BJ’s Pornology into Google and you’ll find him straightaway.
‘A Night at the Adonis’ is well before AIDS, but that doesn’t stop professional bores from giving insufferable and uninformative and hateful sermons. What an idiotic thing to say, Nameless Bore. I warned them at the Fair about you, and they’ve made sure to cut out all smoking, after you reported them. You are obviously on a homophobic crusade under the guise of old movie house expertise (you may have some, but who would care now…) Why don’t you start your own preachy blog or just go teach Sunday School in a red state?
Hollywood—Jack Deveau has been dead a good while, and Hand in Hand Films and all the old porno studios are long gone, replaced with the things straight to video from Czech Republic, etc. You mean the vhs doesn’t have ‘Moonlight Serenade’ on it? Anyway, I think eBay’s naughtybids site has it pretty frequently. Impossible to find those old titles in regular porno stores any more—things like ‘Adam and Yves’ are long gone, and one early 70’s that was terrific, showed at the Mini-Cinema, once right in Rockefeller Cinema, was ‘Gay Guide to Hawaii’. It’s probably been completely lost, and was probably never even on vhs.
Hey! That’s a terrific description. I’ll remember to check out the posters up front, which I’ve never done somehow. The ‘food establishment’ has been closed the last few times I’ve been, but it has a good smaller cafe that connects from the theater itself, and the Stella d'Argento you also can walk into from the Fair as well as from the street. Food is excellent in either case, but I fear they are closed—maybe just some renovation, but I went several months back and then again last week, and it was closed both times. Their big screen is good, but I never have wanted to see anything they’ve had showing there, because you don’t know beforehand, and have probably already seen it, etc.,
Yes, that’s good about the littleParkwiththeTrees, except I think parks were not among the sacred sites of Navaho, Comanches, etc., more like Japanese, as with ‘Noshitsu andtheThousandCherryTrees’. Also, LittlePark, I’m devastated if you leave us, because we can’t see your wiener in here anyway, too many damn screens. You are now in your late 30s, though, and should realizing that ‘engaging in forums’ is not necessarily considered one and the same as noblesse oblige.
Don’t believe a word about the ‘wiener adventure.’ SNL had a skit with a phone sex girl who forfeited the money when the client said ‘wiener.’ Go put some mustard on your own and see if you can find a bun for it. All porno movies in Manhattan were $5 in the 70’s and I don’t think anything kin Queens was doing ‘old pervert’ porno yet.
‘“mm,” I doubt that the closing of the Fair Theatre would be a loss to anyone but the owners’
This is what is so tiresome, since several people have said they enjoy the place. Now someone comes and tells them that it won’t be a loss to them, because they should prefer something else, or whatever else this arbiter of taste thinks they should do. It’s insulting that he should say that to people who, for example, travel all the way from Brooklyn for the relaxing feel they get at this theater. I agree with mikemovies that the management should be alerted that an inspector may show up about the smoking.
I agree with mikemovies, that is truly one of the jerkiest things I’ve heard, interfering with somebody else’s club. The place is not my favourite thing, but I’ve had some good times there, and it’s ridiculous to interfere with someone else’s club. Have you really the energy to now go out and try to get all cigarette smoking policed in all private housing—because that is the only way you are going to make sure that a ‘cigarette addict’ does not get careless. I hope you get nowhere with your infantile 311 complaint.
the old Adonis had a restroom on the balcony level with one of those old 70’s silver disco light fixtures for awhile. Things were done quite out in the open as well as in comparative privacy. There was a phone booth on the second floor that was always ringing, people would call in for dirty talk.
I met Wrangler and Whiting at a wedding of mutual friends in 1990, but had thought they were already married. someone said here they didn’t marry till 1994. I talked to them a good bit, as both Margaret and I were performers in the wedding ceremony. They were very funny, real Beverly Hills characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Playpen is still there, but I’ve never been inside. I think it lasted as the ‘New Adonis’ for 5 years, till 1995, in any case a few years. It was full of campy Greek statues and became filthy after a year—broken chairs, toilets, everything. They had taken the old ‘Adonis Superstar’ photos (from the film ‘A Night at the Adonis’, which I saw at the old theater just after they filmed it there) on black velvet from the old theater and placed them back up at the new place. The same cashiers worked both theaters for years, and one of them, a woman named Bertha, was in the film ‘A Night at the Adonis.
(continuing) I had heard that the old theater, obviously the Tivoli, had been built by B. Rose for F. Brice, that was what everybody used to say. I remember seeing ‘A Night at the Adonis’ there right after it was filmed inside there, and I’ve got a review of the film on IMDB. by 1987 at least, the balcony had collapsed and the place went all the way downhill. It closed in 1989 and moved down to the west side of 8th at 44th. The old marquee bore the words ‘Move to 44th Street’. The theater there (correct as shown in a photo above) did become the Playpen, which still exists—I’d forgotten how ugly the colours are.
Wonderfully informative thread which I look forward to reading in detail later. To clear up anything I may have missed in skimming, I can definitely tell you about the 2 Adonises, having gone to both of them quite a lot. The old one was truly a pleasure, and was on 8th, between 50th and 51st, and has, as noted, been demolished for that high rise. When I first started going in 1976, it was clean and stayed that way for a few years, there were quaint old-fashioned signs about ‘The Male Flagship Theater of the Nation’ and outside the balcony theater was a spacious are with quaint wicker chairs, which sank into disrepair by the early 80s.
It was definitely the old Adonis between 50th and 51st. I used to go all the time.
I fully agree with flip-flops philosophy, even though I can’t say I care that much for the Fair. I hope it lasts, though, as all this slippage into Virtual Reality is very depressing. Glad he mentioned the restaurant, the Stella d'Argento, which has excellent old-fashioned Southern Italian fare in the dining room which can be entered either from the theater or the street, and the smaller adjacent room, where there is a simpler menu which opens directly from the theater. Very cozy and relaxing.
(should be ‘little different’)