Would you buy a used and abused adult cinema? Well step right up: the venerable Apex Theatre, “Baltimore’s last adult movie theater”, closed at the end of 2013 and was put up for auction by its owners. The “lucky” winners re-purposed the theater as the Broadway Super Market… please don’t squeeze the melons.
Built in 1942 to entertain The Greatest Generation, the Apex eventually succumbed to degeneration as movie-watcher’s tastes and downtown neighborhoods changed from bad to worse. These images snapped by City Paper’s Patrick Pilkey display the faded glory of the Apex so those of you who’ve never patronized an adult theater (and you know who you are) can see what it looks like – no duplicating the scent, fortunately.
Get Him To The Greek
This isn’t the Greek Theater you were looking for… and even if you were, the couple enjoying some ouzo just outside the front lobby would advise you the LAIKON theater in Thessaloniki, Greece was no longer showing films of a risque nature. Now THAT’S a Greek tragedy worse than Russell Brand’s recent film career.
After the Fox
The Fox Cinema (“since 1983”) in Vancouver, Canada occupied an increasingly rare niche as a storefront adult theater showing 35mm films. No doubt the phasing out of this media format combined with creeping gentrification in the theater’s gritty inner-city location sounded the death knell for the Fox. Members of the “Save The Fox” movement were slightly mollified when in 2014 the legendary porn-atorium was reborn as the Fox Cabaret. Kudos to Flickr users Emmanuel Buenviaje and Greg Hefford who captured the Fox in its final years – 2006 and 2009, respectively.
Brussels Sprouts
The notorious ABC Cinema in Brussels, Belgium closed in July of 2013, with the owners apparently leaving everything (and we do mean everything) behind. Guess they saw the writing on the bathroom wall and decided to get out before the final credits rolled.
