More than a generation ago, adult entertainment flourished along Ninth and 14th streets NW, which were crowded with bars and bookstores that peddled pornography, steam baths and hustlers.
They're being forced to close because the city is taking over their land." "They're not closing because no one is going there. "These are legitimate, legal businesses, and in one of the capital cities in the world, it would be outrageous if we couldn't find a place for them to open once they're forced to close in their current locations," said Peter Rosenstein of the Mayor's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Executive Advisory Committee. The owners of the half-dozen establishments, as well as gay activists, want the city to help them relocate. officials have notified property owners that the city will make offers for their parcels, possibly by next month, and that it intends to force out those who don't move by year's end. Established before the emergence of AIDS, the block of O Street SE is a kind of 24-hour mini-mall of prurience, where some members of the gay community buy X-rated magazines, videos and sexual paraphernalia, watch nude dancing, visit the city's longest-surviving bathhouse or meet other men, at times for sex.īut with the city planning to build a baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals on land that includes the O Street block, just off South Capitol Street, the strip is being pushed to extinction. Capitol and unknown to most of Washington. "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" the impersonator lip-synced to a booming soundtrack as the audience roared and men lingered at the darkened edges of the dance floor, waiting to hand him dollar bills.įor three decades, gay men seeking sexually oriented entertainment have traveled to a neighborhood of warehouses and industrial plants a mile south of the U.S. A few steps up the street, a half-dozen men danced nude for a barroom crowd, while next door a female impersonator known as Ella Fitzgerald sashayed down a staircase in a brunet wig and a glittering blue-and-red gown.
As midnight approached, a trail of men filtered into the movie theater to watch X-rated gay movies and eye each other in a warren of dimly lit lounges.