Times Square was already lost by the time Debbie did Dallas. Decline, which begun during the Great Depression, had slowly shifted the “crossroads of the world” from an epicenter of show business and publishing to a magnet for crime and prostitution. By the 1970s, the area was synonymous with sleaze and depravity—a pimp’s paradise where flesh and drugs were peddled openly as apathetic cops did their best not to get involved. New York was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and 42nd Street was the festering wound in the heart of a dying city.

This being America though, even the smut sellers found ways to innovate. Amidst the unregulated wash of exploitation on 42nd were the rumblings of a nascent porn industry, which by the mid 1970s had transformed from underground “blue movies” and thinly disguised science films to a widely popular genre of adult cinema. Though it manifests very differently today, the multibillion-dollar porn industry gained much of its traction on a single stretch of 42nd street known colloquially as “The Deuce.” The block between 7th and 8th avenues—which even as early as 1960 had been labeled by The New York Times as the “worst in town”—was lined with theater marquees advertising screenings of films like Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and The Nun’s Bad Habit.

42nd Street theaters in 1977. (Boris Spremo/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

To the rest of the country, Times Square represented the darkest edge of American nightmare. A place populated with lost cowboys and lunatic cab drivers. A reason to stay in the suburbs. But that image never took into account the culture occurring alongside the seediness. Eventually even the filth would come to be missed as New York sanitized itself into the 21st century.

Gentrification came creeping in the 1980s. The Marriott Marquee, which broke ground on top of five former theaters in 1982, provided shelter for thousands of tourists whose needs, over time, the area adapted to accommodate. Religious groups crusaded against pornography and pressured city officials to crack down on the area’s already dwindling sex trade. Today the forty deuce is family friendly, lined with gift shops and wholesome musical productions. It’s a cleaner, more expensive New York, where nostalgia for the bad old days is all part of the selling point.