Back in the 1970s and early ’80s, 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue stewed with illicit activity. Underage prostitutes wearing hot pants and high-tops propositioned middle-aged men. Hustlers peddled loose joints, switchblades and freshly heisted gold chains. A tourist got chased, naked, onto the Times Square subway station’s third rail.
In the middle of this urban mayhem was a glitzy, hardcore-porn palace called Show World Center. A 24/7 carnival of the damned, it featured naked girls, couples simulating copulation onstage and triple-X fare to sate every desire. It was, an anti-porn city official said, the “flagship of the sex industry of New York.”
The notorious, 22,000-square-foot den originally opened in 1975, built at a cost of $400,000, and went through an upgrade in 1977. Each day, nearly 100 women worked a rotating peep show on the second floor.
“The idea was to create the first porn establishment in Times Square that was upscale,” Josh Alan Friedman, the author of 1986’s “Tales of Time Square,” tells The Post.
A barker outside promised sexually explicit performances that featured Swedish beauties with impressive attributes. The reality was different.
“Most likely, you’d see a couple of naked junkies onstage trying to have sex,” says Tim Connelly, who performed in the live shows during the late 1970s. “And if you were dumb enough to believe the barker, you had a lot of nerve asking for your money back.”
Today, what remains of Show World as a porn retailer — and a relic from a grittier, more lascivious Big Apple — trundles along as a shadow of its former self. The live nude girls are gone, chased out by a Westin Hotel across the street and a Duane Reade on the corner. Neighborhood property values have soared and cleanup efforts have worked.
But the final blow to Show World was likely delivered earlier this month — when its owner, Richard Basciano, died at age 91.
A boxing enthusiast and real estate millionaire known as the Sultan of Smut, Basciano was well-tanned, with a shark’s tooth around his neck. At the time of his death, he had a full-size boxing ring in his apartment upstairs from Show World.
Basciano’s partner, Robert “DiBe” DiBernardo, was murdered by Sammy “The Bull” Gravano in 1986. Supposedly, he somehow slighted mob boss John Gotti. Basciano — who pleaded no contest to a 1968 coupon scam and was found liable for a deadly 2013 Philadelphia building collapse — made no such mistakes.