Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a rough-and-ready frontier ethos in Portland battled against Victorian cultural values-and often won. Though less notorious on a national scale, Portland’s adult entertainment offerings gained a local reputation for being immune from attempts by police or government officials to clean them up or close them down. Red-light districts have been a presence in major cities in the United States since at least the 1860s, and districts such as Storyville in New Orleans became famous.
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Thriving red-light districts sprouted up along the waterfront and on central downtown’s skid row around Burnside Street, as well in the city’s Chinatown, where Chinese-owned businesses and Chinese prostitutes became easy targets for police chiefs or mayors looking to prove their moral stringency without alienating Portland’s white citizens.
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Drinking, gambling, and illicit sex often could be obtained in a single location, allowing men to indulge a variety of vices in one building. Brothels, saloons, gambling halls, and burlesque and vaudeville theaters became essential parts of a growing city largely populated by unattached males and seasonal workers. Henry, a landmark Oregon Supreme Court decision in 1987 that protected all-nude stripping under the First Amendment.įrom its beginnings as a wide-open port town, Portland developed a strong culture of vice that proved resilient to attempts to eradicate it.
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The boom in strip clubs can be traced to State vs. With one strip club for every 11,826 residents, Portland far outranks Miami, New Orleans, and Las Vegas-larger cities with long-held reputations as meccas for adult entertainment. Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any other city in the United States.