Last porno palace in Paris: French capital’s favorite erotic cinema set to close its doors
Internet porn has apparently claimed yet another victim as the last erotic cinema in Paris is set to close its doors at the end of the year.
The Beverly, located on the French capital’s Rue de la Ville-Neuve, was the last survivor of the city’s once thriving pornographic cinema scene. However after more than 30 years operating, and later owning the venue, Maurice Laroche has decided to retire, Le Parisien reports.
Laroche says that erotic cinemas have been wiped out by the internet “on which 10-year-old kids can see any porn movie.”
“Today, when we sell 600 tickets a week, we are happy. Twenty years ago, we sold 1,500-1,600,” he explained. The newspaper reports that the cinema’s annual turnover now hardly exceeds €300,000.
“In the early 1980s, the atmosphere was happy. There were 20 porn cinemas between Republic and Opera. The National Film Center had up to 44 screens devoted to X-rated films in the capital in 1976, and there were 110 across France.”
The 74-year-old entrepreneur said that most of the customers are regulars who have been visiting the cinema for decades, however he added that the clientele “goes from 18 years to 101 years and we have all levels of society.”
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On Saturday and Thursday, The Beverly hosts “couples nights” and Laroche says the endeavor even turned the cinema into a “place of reproduction.”
“Fifteen years ago, a couple came to introduce me to his baby, conceived, according to them, at Beverley!”
A former customer Francois said the cinema was classier than the competition it outlasted in Paris. “It was clean,” he said “while many X rooms were dirty, sometimes with a sinister prostitute in the toilet. At Beverley, and it was the only movie like that, the boss respected you and wanted the room to be well kept.”
