Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Times Square and nearly hidden from view from most tourists, you’ll find the Blue Store & DVD, a sex shop located in the shadow of the 52-story New York Times building.

Inside, there’s a narrow maze of shelves that are stocked with hundreds of pornographic DVDs and sex toys. Other media—crossword puzzles, old comic books, and mainstream Hollywood movies—are scattered randomly among titles like Bang Bros and Big Jugs, there to appease the city’s 60-40 rule stipulating that adult entertainment establishments must have at least 60 percent of the space dedicated to “non-adult” merchandise.

In the back, a staircase leads to a dimly lit basement housing an extensive video arcade offering dollar peep shows and “buddy booths.” Dozens of men loiter in the common area, waiting anxiously to meet someone to disappear with under the cover of darkness.

Outside, David, a 32-year-old who lives in Chelsea (he preferred not to give his last name), smokes a cigarette near the entrance as he watches men shuffle in and out of the store. “I wait for a particular look or nod, something that tells me they’re interested,” he explains. “When we make eye contact, that’s when I know it’s on.”

Despite living in the age of hook-up apps like Grindr, many of the men who frequent the Blue Store still prefer to meet like-minded men the old-fashioned way for quick, anonymous trysts. Other men prefer to procure the services of sex workers in an effort to fulfill their desires discreetly. Experienced workers like David can make upwards of a few hundred dollars a day. “I’ve been hustling this neighborhood since I was 16 years old,” David says as he paces outside the store.

David, who refers to himself as a hustler, is one of a small number of people who make their living out of the few remaining peep shows near Times Square and Penn Station. Rising rents and a dwindling customer base have made it difficult for these businesses to survive—a problem that has plagued non-adult businesses, too. (The neighboring Drama Book Shop, for instance, was forced to relocate because of a substantial rent hike.) The Blue Store is one of just nine adult video stores that’s now left in the area—at one point, there were close to 150 around Times Square—and is a relic of the neighborhood’s grittier, more colorful past.

In 2018 alone, three adult videos stores along Eighth Avenue shuttered. One of those was the infamous Show World Center, once described as “The McDonalds of Sex.” When it opened in 1977, Show World was by far the largest store of its kind in the city, and owner Richard Basciano became known as the neighborhood’s “king of porn.” But after he died in 2017, his estate decided to exit the adult business; the property is now being transformed into an $80 million office building called the Hive. Presently, the rusted gates of Show World are shuttered, and scaffolding surrounds the former entrance, signifying the symbolic end of the peep show era.

“Frankly, I’m surprised that any of the porn shops have been able to survive as long as they have,” says Alexander Reichl, professor of sociology at Queens College and author of the book Reconstructing Times Square. “It seems that the rising real estate pressures are squeezing out whatever’s left of Times Square’s rough edges.”

With its central location and easy access to nearly all of New York’s subway lines, Times Square became one of the city’s most popular spots by the turn of the 20th century. But seedier elements—burlesque shows, grinder theaters, and the like—were always lurking just below the surface, and by the 1960s, those businesses had come to define the neighborhood. In 1960, the New York Times called 42nd Street the “worst” block in the city, and eventually, nearly every block became jam-packed with porn theaters, go-go bars, adult bookstores, and peep shows.

On 42nd Street, one of the city’s busiest pedestrian corridors, thousands of people would crowd the sidewalks, pushing and shoving as they passed under the marquees of the dozen or so adult theaters lining the street. Sex workers scouted for potential tricks in the crowd as street preachers shouted from their corner soapboxes proselytizing about Armageddon like deranged carnival barkers. Gone was the area’s association with American prosperity; now, Times Square was associated with the social and moral decay of urban America.

The area further slipped into decline when, in 1975, the city was no longer able to issue bonds to pay off its ballooning $600 million deficit. Facing the prospect of bankruptcy, the state created the Emergency Financial Control Board (EFCB), which was charged with restructuring New York’s fiscal affairs in order to avoid default. The EFCB imposed a harsh austerity program that sent shockwaves across the five boroughs. Vital social needs such as fire, police, and sanitation services were dramatically cut, and thousands of municipal employees were laid off.

It was not until 1985 that New York City was able to govern its own fiscal affairs. Determined to remake the city’s image, Mayor Ed Koch launched a campaign to rebrand it in a way that promoted a business-friendly attitude—and from the beginning, Times Square was viewed as central to that campaign. “Cleaning up Times Square was a crucial component of rebranding the city’s image as it recovered from the financial crisis,” says Reichl. “The city and state were willing to do anything they legally could to make sure the west side was no longer seen as an eyesore to business elite.”

As early as 1980, the Department of City Planning (DCP) began to study the feasibility of rezoning Times Square, and in 1982, the city created the Special Midtown Zoning District, intended to lure developers with a slew of tax breaks and subsidies. When it became evident that even with offers of generous subsidies, developers still had cold feet about investing in Times Square without direct intervention, city planners went back to the drawing board.

Two years later, city and state officials approved the creation of the ambitious 42nd Street Development Project. Unlike previous attempts to “clean up” Times Square, this plan called for new zoning ordinances and the use of eminent domain. But it took more than a decade before any part of the plan could be put into effect. Numerous court battles were waged against the city by a ragtag coalition of 107 local property owners—including owners of adult businesses—known as the Coalition for Free Expression, which was led by none other than Show World’s Basciano. Under his direction, the group was able to stall the project by filing numerous lawsuits that tied the city up in court for years.

But that changed in 1993, when then-mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani made cleaning up New York, particularly Times Square, a central tenet of his campaign. After winning the election, Giuliani was free to push hard for stricter zoning laws that prohibited adult businesses from operating within 500 feet of a school, day care center, or house of worship, in addition to imposing the 60-40 rule.

Seeing the new laws as a direct attack on their livelihood, members of the Coalition sued the city, calling the zoning unconstitutional. But they were ultimately unsuccessful: After several years of court battles, the city prevailed, and many adult establishments closed. Others adapted to the new 60/40 zoning requirements by stocking their stores with rows of family-friendly magazines and DVDs. Then, in 2001, the city dealt adult businesses another blow by barring them from operating “live performances characterized by an emphasis on certain specified anatomical areas or specified sexual activities as well as sexually explicit videos from all but carefully selected city zones.” In other words, the city would bar adult establishments from operating in any location that isn’t explicitly zoned for adult businesses.

Over the last decade, the city had largely held back from enforcing the law, since its legalities were still being ironed out in court. But that detente ended in 2017, when the New York State Court of Appeals reinstated the zoning ordinance. Erica Dubno, a constitutional attorney who represented Show World up until Basciano’s death, and currently represents a dozen adult businesses, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the city with the federal court of appeals in November.

“We are hoping that we can continue the stay of enforcement right now so that the existing business can continue to operate,” says Dubno. “It’s not only the small business that are at stake, but our freedom of expression.”

In a statement, the City’s Law Department said it believed that the approach the city is taking to enforcing zoning regulations was “reasonable and lawful to protect our quality of life” and is intended to stem “the widespread circumvention of zoning regulations.” But for now, the city is staying enforcement as it awaits the outcome of the court.

While legal challenges and city machinations have dealt adult businesses a blow, it may be real estate that leads to their ultimate demise.

“Many people claimed that adult video stores depressed real estate,” says Dubno. “But the truth is that real estate values have shot up in the area around Show World, and as a consequence the market factors are putting pressure on adult business.”

That’s largely thanks to Disney. During the waning days of Mayor David Dinkins’s administration, the city was able to negotiate a deal with the Mouse House that many credit with ushering in a new wave of development. In 1993, the company agreed to renovate and lease the New Amsterdam Theater, which had once been one of Times Square’s grandest theaters—it opened in 1903 and was the longtime home of the Ziegfeld Follies—but had gradually become a run-down dump. Disney’s investment was just $8 million, but it ended up paying off many times over—both for the company (the musical version of The Lion King, which occupied the theater from 1997 to 2006, has made more than $1 billion), and for the city.

“It opened the floodgates just as a confluence of other forces—the reviving economy, the return of retailers to inner cities and the rise of entertainment and communications giants—readily supplied the flood,” the New York Times wrote in a piece from 1998, five years after the deal was made. By that time, companies like Reuters and Condé Nast had agreed to move to Times Square.

Disney’s influence on the area’s sex shops was also more direct; as that Times piece noted, “Disney demanded that the state evict the remaining peep shows from 42nd Street” before it would agree to the deal.

The pace of development has only increased since then, and over the years, Times Square became an economic juggernaut for New York, accounting for 15 percent of the city’s total economic output, according to figures from the Times Square Alliance. On average, Times Square generates $58 billion in direct economic output and $47 billion in indirect economic output, while generating $2.5 billion in tax revenue for the city.

Times Square’s commercial rental market is booming, even as nearby corridors have faced a slump. Last year, the Commercial Observer reported that in the area around Broadway and Seventh Avenue between West 42nd and West 47th Streets, rent has increased from $1,977 per square foot to $1,993. In contrast, the asking rents for commercial spaces on Fifth Avenue from 49th to 60th streets is down by 18 percent.

And the area is within spitting distance of a number of other high-traffic tourist destinations, including the High Line and the recently opened Hudson Yards megaproject. These developments, Reichl notes, have the adult businesses “living on borrowed time.”

For a neighborhood once viewed by policy makers as an urban cesspool, the transformation has been gargantuan. The surviving peep shows that still stand on the outer margins of the area seem like faint echoes of a past Times Square that almost seems unrecognizable today—and with Show World gone, that past grows even fainter.

“Show World was unlike any other place, so it’s sad to see it go,” says Dubno. “New York has become such a Disneyfied place because it has lost some of its unique character. Adult business add to the character of the city.”

Amir Khafagy is a New York City-based journalist. He has contributed to such publications as CityLab, Dissent, Shelterforce, Jacobin, City Limits, and In These Times. Follow him on twitter at @AmirKhafagy91.