The Condition of Houston Peep Show Booths

From the report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (1986):

As part of the public hearings conducted in Houston, Texas, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography toured three of the fifty “adults only” pornographic outlets operating in that city. The Commissioners were accompanied on this tour by several detectives from the Houston City Police Department. The three locations visited were Mr. Peepers, 4330 Richmond Highway; Hillcroft News, 6445 Hillcroft Street and Talk of the Town, 8228 Gulf Freeway.

During this tour, the Commissioners observed the materials available in the outlets, the peep show booths-complete with patrons engaging in explicit sexual activity-and the generally unhealthy environment posed by the sexual activity and debris in the store.

Each of the outlets viewed by the Commission, which were described as representative of those in Houston generally, were divided into two areas. An entering patron initially encountered a room well stocked with sexually explicit publications with covers depicting a variety of homosexual as well as heterosexual activities. A number of materials portraying sodomy and sadomasochistic acts were also conspicuous. Several of the stores had glass cases displaying an assortment of sexual devices and paraphernalia. The rear portion of each store contained peep show booths in which patrons could observe segments of sexually explicit movies for twenty-five cents per minute or two of film footage. Some outlets charged admission to the peep booth area, typically one dollar.

The peep show booth area of each of the outlets toured had minimal illumination, stark decor and a pervasive darkness. The peep show booths were equipped with holes in the wall to enable genital contact with patrons in other booths. Uniformly the walls and floors of booths were stained with substances identified by the accompanying vice detectives as semen, urine, saliva and feces.