ALBANY — If you walk into the AutoZone on Central Avenue looking for something risque, you'll have to settle for a key chain featuring Betty Boop. That's as sexy as the store gets.

Things were a bit different in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the site, if not precisely the same building, was home to the the movie theater known as Petit Cine 1 and 2. Many of you aren't old enough to remember it. A few of you remember it quite well, I suspect, although you might not admit it to your spouses.

Petit Cine, you see, was an adult theater showing X-rated films — straight porn in one cinema, typically, and gay porn in the other.

The theater first opened in 1973, when pornography was just emerging into the mainstream, and quickly found an appreciative audience in Albany. The Times Union reported that one of its early movies, "The Devil in Miss Jones," played to packed houses — although patrons complained about the cost of the $4 tickets.

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"It only costs $1.50 to go to the Saratoga Film Festival," said one man, who, for some odd reason, declined to offer up his name. Nor did the newspaper name the "$35,000-a-year executive" spotted in the crowd.

Petit Cine may have been an immediate hit, but city officials were not pleased. The police department soon raided the movie theater at 810 Central Ave., shutting it down and charging its owners with violating an obscenity ordinance prohibiting "lewd and immoral" material.

Those were the days, of course, when the old Democratic machine controlled the city, fronted by Mayor Erastus Corning. The machine was corrupt and nefarious, but its rule came with a moralistic streak. Films like "Naughty Meter Maids" could find a home in Times Square, but they weren't going to play in Albany.

Except that a federal judge ordered that the city reinstate the theater's license, leading to a drawn-out legal battle and, with time, a sort of detente. The smut played on. Petit Cine even offset those costly tickets with a senior-citizens discount.

"Some of the seniors come by early in the afternoon and stay for all four movies," a theater spokesman told the Times Union in 1975.

In 1983, though, the city renewed its assault on Petit Cine, repeatedly raiding the theater and bringing its owner and employees up on obscenity charges. Why the crackdown after a 10-year hiatus? I pored through old newspaper clips, but never found the answer.

Corning had died earlier in office earlier that year, so maybe it was newly installed mayor Tom Whalen who found Petit Cine intolerable. Or maybe the films had grown more obscene.

Or maybe it really was, as the city claimed, that residents were complaining about the theater and lewd behavior outside.

Whatever the reason, the raid followed a warrant issued by Albany County Judge John Clyne, who decided the cinema's movies were obscene after sampling at least five of its offerings. Known as "Maximum John" for his harsh sentences, Clyne complained that the movies lacked a plot — no surprise there — and displayed "all forms of deviate sexual encounters," which, of course, is the very reason people handed over hard-earned cash to see them.

The judge, the father of future county District Attorney Paul Clyne, was also unimpressed with the behavior of theater patrons, especially the guy sitting behind him during a showing of "The Portrait of Dorian Gay."

"He was enjoying the movie immensely," Clyne said. "There was a tremendous vibration of my seat."

Hope I didn't just ruin your breakfast.

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In any event, the city's effort this time met with more success. Due largely to its legal troubles, Petit Cine was evicted for unpaid rent, and the building eventually became a Jiffy Lube.

(If fans of the cinema thought "Jiffy Lube" was merely its latest film, they must have been bitterly disappointed.)

It is easy, from our modern perspective, to look back and see the fight against the theater as dumb behavior conducted by tyrannical and sanctimonious officials. Who were they to decide what other people could see in this supposedly free country?

The story's more complicated than that, though.

The city won a minor victory against obscenity, but porn won big in the end. The internet would make porn more ubiquitous and influential than anyone in 1983 could have imagined.

Consider that just one website, PornHub, is said to get 92 million visits daily. Any kid with a smartphone can easily be awash in porn far more graphic and violent than anything Petit Cine would have shown. There are consequences to that, obviously.

What effect is porn having on our teens and the health of their present and future relationships? Or decency in general? What is the pervasiveness of pornography doing to our physical and spiritual health overall? Is it, as some evidence suggests, far more addictive than most people realize?

I wouldn't want to return to a world where police and politicians decide what I can see. But neither would I call this porn-soaked world of ours progress.

cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill