9. Adult Cinemas Were Less Profitable Than Peep Booths
If you wanted to see an explicit movie in the early 1960s, you didnt waste your time going to rundown theatres that projected 16mm soft-core films, you went to the peep booths located in the back of adult bookstores. Inserting a quarter per minute of film, you watched a 12-minute loop that unlike the eras so-called nudie cuties had neither plot nor humour, just non-stop hard-core action. Originally developed to show childrens cartoons at shopping malls, the small and cramped booths consisted of two 8mm projectors, a screen and a locking door. The privacy assured in such a place also meant they became a popular meeting place for gay men. Because a large enough store, in a single week, could earn $10,000 from its booths alone, the owners, who typically had several dozen adult bookstores, sent employees out to empty the booths on a daily basis. They needed dollies to cart away the quarters, which were packed into thousand-dollar bags.