Indeed, two stores include Sinhalese in their names. The clerks, too, when I went, were almost exclusively of Sri Lankan descent. The largest Sri Lankan population in the city is in Staten Island, which makes for a quick commute back and forth over the Verrazano. The owners are elusive: I figured this wasn't like walking into a Starbucks with the expectation of seeing Howard Schultz. These are small, independent businesses, and you'd think at one point in seven days, making regular visits, you'd have one encounter with the head honcho.īut in trips to all of them, talking to dozens of counter workers, not a single one professed to know the owner. The answers ranged from the plausible, "This is my first day," to the laughable. "This is my first day," said the same employee the next day when I popped in. "He'll be here at 10 tonight," a clerk at Jayoda Video told me on a Monday morning. When I arrived that night, another said he always came in at "10 a.m." The next morning, the clerk from the previous day said he was there last night. One shop was closed at the appointed hour I was set to meet the owner, despite a sign attesting to its 24-hour nature. On my third trip, the clerk at Golden DVD ("best prices in 3rd Avenue"), said the owner had "just" told him the shop was going out of business "tomorrow," after two days of my hectoring him. It's still open, though I wouldn't be shocked if it did close tomorrow. With the redevelopment of this area of Sunset Park, these businesses may all soon be gone. In 2000, when streaming video and online purchasing didn't exist, people couldn't get their porn any other way. The technological innovations of the past 15 years have obviously not been kind to the adult video store industry. At almost every shop, the people I spoke to said they averaged fewer than five paying customers a day. Whether changing hands to avoid paying taxes or rent, or rebranding to be more appealing, the businesses constantly turn over. What was Blue Door Video in 2005 is now Video City. Nilwala Video in 2011 became Candy Hookah Love, with the exact same signage and colors, just a different name.Ĭustomers are few and far between. In the eight shops I visited over seven days, I saw scarcely more than 30 patrons total. I never saw more than one person in a store at a time. Only once did I see a patron make a purchase-a lone DVD at Video City. The customers aren't in the mood to talk: "I don't know anything about that," said one man, when I asked him why he had just been in a private booth, as he waved me off. "I don't know anything about them." Not a strange reaction, really. Speaking of those booths: They are always "out of order," though nothing seems to be broken. When I asked about the booths in the back, how many people used them, or how they worked, I almost always got the same answer. While each store has a sign out front explicitly advertising booths, the clerks all denied the booths were there. #XVIDEO GAY TEEN PUBLIC SWALLOW WINDOWS#.