Gay street movie theater
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Adjustments to prior purchases are not permitted. “I guess it doesn’t get much use,” Wranger says, to which his friend replies: “Guess again.”)
By the time Ewalt came along, these Times Square theaters were already pretty run down — mold on the walls, water in the basement — but they retained a certain voyeuristic appeal, and men came to trawl for sex, watch drag queens like Chi Chi LaRue, or, like Ewalt himself, revel in the subversive thrill of it all.
One day in the early 1990s, Ewalt watched construction workers dismantling the conspicuous neon sign of the Adonis “like they were cutting a loaf of bread.” He realized history was being lost, and it spurred him to start collecting signs and memorabilia in a preservation effort that now commandeers most of his apartment.
Fandango may withdraw or modify this Offer at any time, in its sole discretion and without notice. This includes major renovations to accommodate a wider variety of entertainment; opening the venue for the first time to standing room musical performances while still maintaining the seated experience for cinema, comedy and more.
The re-opening will showcase the revitalization of the ceiling’s stunning original artwork along with the sgraffito murals and a long hidden historic proscenium, all masterfully restored by Evergreene Architectural Arts.
Theater and the Arts
Little Washington Theatre
291 Gay Street
Washington, Virginia 22747
540.675.1253 | info@littlewashingtontheatre.com
https://www.rappahannock.com/businesses/b/little-washington-theatre
The Theatre presents a wide variety of professional musical and dramatic performances, usually on weekends, and often for one or two performances only.
Please click on website https://www.rappahannock.com/businesses/b/little-washington-theatre to see the current season for a complete list of upcoming events.
Rappahannock Association for the Arts and the Community
310 Gay Street
P.O. Box 24
Washington, VA 22747
540.675.3193 | theatre@raac.org
www.RAAC.org
Sponsored by the Rappahannock Association for the Arts and the Community (RAAC), the RAAC Community Theatre presents plays, readings, poetry coffee houses and workshops.
They silently invited me in by flashing their cocks. There was a framed poster on the wall: Eyes Wide Shut, the Stanley Kubrick film in which an overcurious New Yorker stumbles into an orgy of anonymous, Bacchanalian sex.
As I descended to the lobby, the smell of cleaning fluid wafted up.
To qualify, you must enroll in a paid Fandango FanClub membership (3-month minimum at $29.97 + tax, then $9.99/month thereafter).
It took me three passes before I could bring myself to open the unmarked black door on East 4th Street, the one an older man had entered after trying to cruise me near a rack of Citi Bikes.
RAAC sponsors workshops, dances, programs, concerts, school events, cinema and other activities that enhance the community’s artistic well-being.
Rates: by performance
Hours: by performance
Featured Shows
RETURNING 2026!
The Castro Theatre is a world renowned iconic venue and cherished landmark.
The toilet was painted more of that dark orange, but the stall graffiti was disappointingly beige (“KILL OBAMA”). Partly, he told me, the signs were really beautiful; “but I kind of like that they all played a part in the timeline of the sexual revolution.”
Back at the Bijou, I clocked the age and builds of the other men: older, mostly 50s, some with bellies, others wearing clothes and baseball caps that made them seem closeted, possibly married.
to 4 a.m. I passed across a $20 bill and he returned my change ($8) with an origami fold and a wink so brazen it nearly deserved a tip. He was briefly an owner of the renowned Bleecker Street Cinema and also of another Bijou Cinema, on Third Avenue.
If you enroll through Fandango.com/fanclub, your two free ticket promo codes will be emailed to you after your 7-day free trial ends and your paid membership begins. The screen, where one would expect to see hardcore flicks of rough trade and borderline-illegal sex acts, was instead showing Last Holiday, the 2006 feel-good comedy in which Queen Latifah is misdiagnosed with a terminal illness.
I did a circuit, sticking my head in a small locker room and nodding to the older man from the Citi Bikes.
Community events are also held at the Theatre from time to time. (Today it’s the site of an apartment building where one-bedrooms go for around $4,000 a month.)
There’s no mention of the current-day Bijou on its sister theaters’ Websites, and it doesn’t have a site of its own. In the 1950s and 60s, when drag was still considered dangerously subversive (and illegal), queens performed a famous revue here in the mafia-run Club 82, “New York’s After-Dark Rendezvous.” Elizabeth Taylor was known to drop by, along with other forward-thinking celebrities, and it’s said that Errol Flynn once played the piano with his penis.
By the 1970s, the subterranean rooms were absorbing glam rock and avant garde punk, including sounds by The Stilettos, featuring an up-and-coming Debbie Harry.
Inside was a steep staircase, painted deep orange, leading down into a basement lobby. Ewalt had lived near Times Square in the wild, pre-Giuliani days of the late 1980s. As I moved through the darkness, men circled me like lions around a jittery gazelle, and I lept from space to space, eluding eye contact, which works as a kind of consent here: “Yes, take me now.”
According to photographer Stephen Barker, who documented New York sex clubs during the early ’90s, the Bijou opened around that time.
I first became intrigued by New York’s gay porn theaters after visiting the museum-like Bowery loft of artist and DJ Scott Ewalt.