This past June, probably without you noticing (I certainly didn’t notice) the New York Court of Appeals reinstated a handful of regulations that bar any NYC city establishment from “live performances characterized by an emphasis on certain specified anatomical areas or specified sexual activities.” This also touches on keeping the selling of explicit sexual videos to specific city zones. X-rated shops (which sometimes include peep shows) are scrambling, hoping freedom-of-speech and long-held tolerances will prevail. As I reported here when Show World’s Richard Basciano died, the crack down on pornography in the Disney take-over of Times Square changed the landscape forever (for good or bad?….well certainly tourism increased). But we have seen slippery slopes before. Legislation in this country often takes on Lingchi-like maneuvering, a bit-by-bit slicing away of our freedoms so before we know it, once again, we have lost a whole lot more than we ever dreamed we could.
Let’s just say I worry for men and women trying to sell adult toys in this city, maybe a naughty DVD or my friends over at Vivid Cabaret trying to provide upscale entertainment…hell, I worry for us all.
But if it might be stopped above ground, maybe there is hope some sexiness can still happen below….
The city just went ahead with a long-planned Second Avenue subway line, and the plans are in the works to extend the subway north to 125th Street and south to Hanover Square. Our governor also introduced a plan to woo corporate sponsorship for much needed cash for these and other subway improvements with his Subway Partnership Program; 72 stations would be involved. Jumping on this ‘offer’ RedTube’s VP Alex Taylor offered Andrew Cuomo at least $600,000 to “adopt” a subway station. The plan, as Taylor outfitted in his letter to the governor would be to decorate a station with RedTube ads and ‘red-themed’ artwork, as well as trains. As Taylor said “a number of trains in red/RedTube branding so people could actually ride a red tube.”
This is not the first sponsorship the infamous adult site has backed and Cuomo’s Subway Partnership Program is just an idea at this point. But maybe porn, sexual imagery, salacious ads and suggestiveness will be completely taken from the streets up above and “go underground,†where many critics feel this stuff belongs anyway.
Though nobody would have ever imagined RedTube down in our subways beyond maybe flashing across some riders’ phones.
