Today, you don’t even have to leave your bedroom to consume porn. Back in the 1970s, you had to leave your house or apartment and travel to the crummiest part of town, usually a decaying downtown full of winos and hookers, and enter a theater to watch porn with a bunch of strangers. The theaters had huge marquees that displayed words like “All Anal” or “Pussy Lovers” or “Cumfest” in giant letters. You hoped no one you knew saw you when you bought you ticket and ducked inside.

And once you were inside it got worse. Almost without exception, these theaters were old, crumbling wrecks with torn carpeting, peeling wallpaper and greasy employees. You began to notice the musky smell and the slippery floors as you made your way to your ancient, broken seat. You tried not to make eye contact with the seventeen weird old men who had spaced themselves carefully around the aisles. You sat down and the movie rolled. Chances are, it wasn’t a tastefully made “Porn Chic” extravaganza, it was probably a nasty fuckfest featuring ugly guys with afros and skin conditions and pasty girls with saggy boobs who stared off into the distance while they were being humped. Hopefully the sound was blaring loud enough so you wouldn’t hear the sounds of masturbation taking place all around you.

Popcorn? Are you kidding? Would you eat or drink something that was served in a place like that? And trust me, you didn’t want to go into the bathroom, not ever.

My experiences with porn theaters took place during my days in the Navy, mostly in downtown San Diego, back when it was ten square blocks of sleaze and dirt. The theater I just described could have been either The Broadway or The Tower where you could see two pictures for $4.00, but I could have been describing most of the other ten porn theaters in the San Diego area or the hundreds around the country.

The main reason I wound up seeing as many porn movies as I did in San Diego was poverty; it was what we usually wound up settling for when we only had a few bucks in our pockets. If the Cabrillo had a good horror or exploitation triple feature we might head over there, but all too often we would up wasting an afternoon in a dark and smelly whack palace. After a while, it got fairly depressing.

In California at least, the Pussycat Theater Chain offered a somewhat better experience. Most of them were completely renovated theaters that featured brighter lighting, plush red carpeting and wallpaper, brass railings and relatively clean floors. During my sailor days, the Pussycat on 4th Avenue, just off Broadway ran a double bill of “Deep Throat” and “The Devil in Miss Jones” continuously for years. Taking a swab on his 18th birthday to the Pussycat was a regular ritual for us, as I’m sure it was for many San Diego civilians. Famed transvestite Ru Paul claims he had his porn cherry broken at the San Diego 4th Avenue Pussycat on his 18th birthday, although I’m sure his favorite parts of the movie differed from mine.

If you were going to take a date to a porn movie (and plenty of couples did go) hopefully you picked a place like the Pussycat. In the rest of the country, however, you might only have one option. In the town where I went to high school, religious fanatics tried to have R rated movies banned, so we had to travel all the way to Oshkosh for sin. That would have been the Grand Theater, which is now an opera house, believe it or not. I was too young to dare sneaking in, but my parents went and saw Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and I remember them coming back very confused. If you’ve ever seen that masterpiece, I think you’ll understand why.

My personal favorite experience in a porn theater was seeing a 3D XXX movie starring John Holmes. It was the most dynamic 3D movie I’ve ever seen, for sure. However, the best moment was turning around and seeing all those creepy old men sitting there with the 3D glasses on. A bizarre image worthy of David Lynch.

All over America, the 1980s was the decade of downtown revitalization. A combination of the emergence of video and public-spirited (and heavy-handed) urban clean up led to the death of the porn theater experience. Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, porn movies began to clean up too, replacing real looking actors with blonde amazons with fake tits and muscle-bound, mustache-less cockmasters.

You still get revival film groups around the country that run XXX features in theaters, which is commendable. However, without the creepy old men and cum-splattered floors, it’s just not the same. It’s not dirty enough.

Maybe they can find a way to duplicate that pungent stink. That would help a little. That and the flapping sound of meat being flogged.