Not In My Back Yard

Horatio writes: Mitchell Andrews read our thought piece about the art of navigating the newsstand and contributed this classic vignette which could only occur on the Upper East Side of New York:

I grew up on the hallowed turf of 79th and Madison, which for those of you who are unfamiliar, is one of the most affluent zip codes in the city, rife with more well-moisturized ladies who lunch, small dogs, and busy, busy plastic surgeons per acre than anywhere else in the nation. You would think that I would have had more than enough pocket money to procure a collection of porn that could rival quantity-wise, the collection of art at the nearby Met. I was eleven and horny as hell. But the honest truth was, a silver spoon only gets you so far. The barrier between me and mountains of nudie mags was that even the newsstand proprietors need to keep up appearances on the Upper East Side and so noone would dream of selling porn to minors with so many eyes on the street. I came up empty in my quest for Penthouse until I came to the newsstand on 86th and Lexington where the guy behind the counter announced loudly with relish that he could not possibly fulfill my request as it was against the law to sell pornography to minors. He then leaned forward, winked and whispered into my ear the magic words "Go to the newsstand on 79th and 2nd and tell them Abdul sent you." As I soon discovered, the foot traffic at that corner was virtually non-existent and Abdul had a well-rehearsed revenue share with the owner there who became my weekly dealer. Thank you Abdul, for giving me a moral education, at a critical age in my development that the means justify the ends, where there is a will there is a way, and whatever that phrase is about the worth of walking a mile in someones shoes.

Conde Nasty

Horatio writes: thanks to Steven Blankstein of Westchester, New York for this functional reminiscence.


I am going to introduce a a revolutionary concept to this web site. Buying your own porn at the source of the Nile, the newsstand. Did any of you have the balls to do it? Reading your entries, it appears not. If any of you have the good fortune to be time-machined back to 1985, follow these five steps and your life will be one lived knee-deep in porn. I guarantee it.

1. location, location, location
Find a store that is off the beaten path and instantly eliminate the fear of a parental walk-in. The ultimate nightmare situation. Distance from home is everything. Find the oasis that is far away enough to ensure that if you do happen to encounter your clergy man, he will be more embarrased to be there than you but close enough to respect the fact that once the goods have been acquired, you will want nothing more than to be test-driving it back in the bedroom lickety-split.

2. Foot traffic
Don't fall for the rookie mistake and scout for a totally deserted store in which the 6-12 months you could be sent to the big house for shop lifting are the only thing for clerk to focus on. Foot traffic can be your friend. It gives you cover. It diverts the clerks attention. Embrace it.

3. Shelf Placement
First. Accessibility. Can you reach the shelf and access the porn or is the top shelf a promised land you can see but never enter? Second -- shelf placement is all about sight lines. The physics of the relationship between cashier and porn. The more you can hide away the better. If the porn is in a nook away from the rest of the store, the architect has given you the greatest gift.

4. Clerks
After all this. The final hurdle is the clerk. No matter how perfect the rest of the conditions have been to this point, if it is a 26 year old girl behind the counter, or someone who mildly reminds you of your father, it is pretty nigh impossible to hold your nerve and finish the job. If life were like the movies, all newsstand clerks would be blind old guys with a tin cup. Until I become president and this becomes the law, the rules of thumb are pretty simple. All stores with female clerks are no-no's unless the clerk is of an age where she could play the Jessica Tandy role in an amateur dramatic version of Driving Miss Daisy without the aid of make-up. Males are more complicated. Clerks for whom English is not a first, second, or third language are one of the most magnificent products of America's glorious tradition of immigration. English speakers are a test for your nerves, unless they are on methadone, in which case, go for it. You are not their first concern.

5. Shangri-La does exist
Just as there are golf clubs and there is Augusta, there are newsstands that satisfy the previous four conditions to such an extent, that you will not be the first to discover them. These are the holy grail and are worth locating. The pay-off will be that on the low rows, behind the seemingly innocent copies of magazines such as Model Railway Enthusiast and Cat Fanciers Monthly, will lie porn mags left there like litter on the peak of Everest by all those who have been there before you. Find one of these and you are a lucky man my friend. This is not a newsstand, it is a club house.

My work is done. I have given you the adolescent equivalent of the secret of life. Use it only for the force of good. And learn to enjoy that special thrill of encountering the forbidden material of your choice -- be it Barely Legal, Nylons, or Old Ladies Extreme in full public view. It is a unique feeling -- getting sucked into the pictorials and losing yourself within their fleshy promise and then snapping out of it and realizing you are leaning against a rack of Slim Jim meat snacks.