Colombia Reports

Of the ten sex cinemas Colombian capital Bogotá had a decade ago, only two are still open today. One of them, Novedades on calle 12, is expected to close its doors soon too. Internet porn has killed one of the city’s subcultures, El Tiempo reports.

The last remaining porn cinema is the Esmeralda Pussycat on carrera 7 with calle 24. Other cinemas have been forced to change business. The Mogador and the Coliseo turned into nightclubs, the Eldorado turned into a university auditorium, the Vecino Plaza became an outlet store and both the Metro Riviera and the Trevi, ironically, were turned into houses of prayer.

“The possibility of watching movies at home has hurt all movie theaters,” Carlos Sánchez, manager of the Esmeralda Pussycat says, confirming the decline of not just the industry, but his own theater as well.

Even the last standing of porn theaters is in decline. The metal entrance is spray painted black to conceal the rust. The letters of the name on the front look dirty and blackened and in the theater itself no more than ten people are enjoying a dirty movie.

The girl in the ticketbox, Mallory, looks bored and reads ‘A hundred years of solitude’ by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Marquez while waiting for customers. She’s worked for the theater a little less than a year and sells tickets seven days a week, including holidays, for 600.000 pesos per month. She never went inside to watch a dirty movie herself, she says.

According to Mallory no more than 20 people per day come in for their dose of porn. Thirty years ago a porn flick would draw 3000 people on the day of the premiere, the manager says.

Nelly Sánchez, the mother of the Esmerald manager Carlos, has been managing Novedades for about ten years. “Before there were many people, but now we only receive five or six people per day, mostly old men,” the 60-year old lady says. “Most of them come to watch bestiality flicks,” she adds.

Mother Sánches blames the rise of pirate porn dvds for the decline of her theater. She will have to close down the place soon, despite having tried to turn the tide renting out sex videos on both dvd and vhs and offering private booths for those with more private needs. The customers simply refuse to come.