Four fantastic descriptions of the Lower Main.
Tales from the tenderloin:
the lower Main through the past darkly
1940: Paint magnate Phil Chamber started selling newspapers as a 12 year old in 1939 "The sailors would get off the boats at the wharf and walk up to St. Catherine where the hookers would charge $2 rather than $1 charged by the girls down the hill. There were some bad guys who’d rob their banks in the east end but they wouldn't cause trouble here because this was home territory. Every once in a while some asshole decided to clean up the Main, they’d move the hookers off the street for a couple of weeks but they’d be back because the cops wanted the graft. "A suck and fuck for a buck."
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1955 Legendary Night Squad cop Bob Menard. “I used to work undercover go down there, it wasn't fun and games, there were pickpockets and thieves. If you’d walk around and ask to be whacked, they’d whack you. Street cops spent their eight hours kicking ass down there because they had to. You had to protect the tourists, they had the right to get a hot dog.”
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1960. Norman Olson, former publicist and gossip columnist. “West of the Main you’d have all the factories and the moment twilight hit and all the clothing
workers went home, all the kids and perverts and tourists would come out. Near that block you had the Hi Ho and the Casa Loma and Vic’s Café, run by Cotroni. It was a higher class joint because they’d charge 10 cents to get in. The place had two-hour vaudeville acts with jugglers, singers, sword swallowers that would end at seven in the morning. I remember coming out of there with Eartha Kitt and seeing people going to work and storekeepers opening up their awnings. It was like a stage, as the lighting changed, the city changed, it underwent a daily metamorphosis, at twilight all the lights and flickering lights and hoors and transvestites came out and this other world began.”
1967 Author and local landmark expert Alan Hustak: “It was really, really seedy.
A big attraction of the block were three repertory theatres on the block, where the unsavory of the unsavory gathered. They’d charge 25 cents for three movies, it was dark and the balconies were isolated and people weren’t really going there to see the movies. Next door the Midway was the setting for Hosanna, the famous Michel Tremblay play about a biker and a transvestite. The strip was a gathering of longshoremen, drag queens, prostitutes, and high culture people from Place des Arts. It wasn’t threatening but there was always the sense that if you looked at somebody the wrong way they might punch you.
Tales from the tenderloin:
the lower Main through the past darkly
1940: Paint magnate Phil Chamber started selling newspapers as a 12 year old in 1939 "The sailors would get off the boats at the wharf and walk up to St. Catherine where the hookers would charge $2 rather than $1 charged by the girls down the hill. There were some bad guys who’d rob their banks in the east end but they wouldn't cause trouble here because this was home territory. Every once in a while some asshole decided to clean up the Main, they’d move the hookers off the street for a couple of weeks but they’d be back because the cops wanted the graft. "A suck and fuck for a buck."
1955 Legendary Night Squad cop Bob Menard. “I used to work undercover go down there, it wasn't fun and games, there were pickpockets and thieves. If you’d walk around and ask to be whacked, they’d whack you. Street cops spent their eight hours kicking ass down there because they had to. You had to protect the tourists, they had the right to get a hot dog.”
1960. Norman Olson, former publicist and gossip columnist. “West of the Main you’d have all the factories and the moment twilight hit and all the clothing workers went home, all the kids and perverts and tourists would come out. Near that block you had the Hi Ho and the Casa Loma and Vic’s Café, run by Cotroni. It was a higher class joint because they’d charge 10 cents to get in. The place had two-hour vaudeville acts with jugglers, singers, sword swallowers that would end at seven in the morning. I remember coming out of there with Eartha Kitt and seeing people going to work and storekeepers opening up their awnings. It was like a stage, as the lighting changed, the city changed, it underwent a daily metamorphosis, at twilight all the lights and flickering lights and hoors and transvestites came out and this other world began.”
1967 Author and local landmark expert Alan Hustak: “It was really, really seedy.
A big attraction of the block were three repertory theatres on the block, where the unsavory of the unsavory gathered. They’d charge 25 cents for three movies, it was dark and the balconies were isolated and people weren’t really going there to see the movies. Next door the Midway was the setting for Hosanna, the famous Michel Tremblay play about a biker and a transvestite. The strip was a gathering of longshoremen, drag queens, prostitutes, and high culture people from Place des Arts. It wasn’t threatening but there was always the sense that if you looked at somebody the wrong way they might punch you.