“…if you find us guilty we’re going to keep giving you the finger.”

pdf (221 pages / 6MB), with thanks to the original sharer

This was the world Al immersed himself in, a shadowy realm dealt with in the most mysterious and ominous fashion in movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, Hardcore and countless others. These films did much to shape the popular perception that these clubs and twenty-four-hour theaters were dens of degenerate filth, and that the people who ran them were murderous psychotics. It was an urban mythology that middle America bought into with great enthusiasm. Bullshit, one can almost hear Al say in his slightly lispy Brooklyn accent. Of course there were plenty of bad guys involved, that’s because the consumer had no power in this game and there was no regulation of the trade and no pride in delivering goods and services. These were things he was trying to change. This idea that the sex trade was by nature inherently morally evil was the biggest con in his book, a misconception nurtured by politicians and special interest groups on the right who sought to keep a hold over their constituents through the power of fear.