Fun City Confidential.

• Author: S.D., Trav
• Position: Sex in the big apple

Why New York's sex industry still flourishes

In his book Low Life (1991), Luc Sante describes New York in the years from 1840 through 1919 as a city alternating between morally liberal and reformist mayors. In Sante's scenario, "vice," like a cockroach, will boldly venture out into daylight, only to scurry back into the shadows when the law's crude broomstick looms.

But vice, whether in daylight or shadow, never stops doing business, as the police well know. Certainly, the hidden agenda of anti-vice law is as much political as it is moral. Authorities make a show of Cleaning Things Up, while (not coincidentally) raising property values in target neighborhoods. What the applauding public and press fail to consider is that human society has an ecological quality: Dam a river and unexpected pressures cause chronic flooding in unlikely places.

Enter Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He had barely finished repeating the oath of office in 1994 when he famously started squelching a panoply of "quality of life" crimes: turnstile jumping, panhandling, street vending, drinking alcohol on the street from open containers, marijuana possession, unlicensed dancing in clubs, and the like. Giuliani's list was a long one, and for the most part, residents signed on to the effort. The public drew the line, however, when he took on jaywalking and subway coffee-drinking, a ubiquitous pair of crimes in caffeinated New York.

The stress of New York life may also account for another common "crime" that Gotham's Comstockian mayor was proud to confront: the city's unparalleled sex industry. Long headquartered in Times Square, New York's red-light district (made famous by such movies as Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy) is effectively no more. In 1995, the mayor pushed a law through the City Council stipulating that no sex-related business be located within 500 feet of a school, a church, a park, or another X-rated business. The law also mandates that no more than 40 percent of any inventory of books, videotapes, or other such products be X-rated. After a series of court challenges, the law went into effect in August 1998.

Infrequent visitors to Fun City are routinely shocked. Thanks to Giuliani's legislation and the creation of the Times Square Redevelopment Project (a "public-private partnership"), 42nd Street between 6th and 8th Avenues now has the character of a suburban shopping mail. Movie theaters, chain restaurants, video arcades, and Broadway theaters (which nowadays...