After a long and tiring day at work, Mark headed to an East Hollywood movie theater that he called “always a fun, chill†time — and bought an eight-hour ticket.
At this cinema house, there were no movie posters touting “Barbie,†no IMAX screens, no buckets of buttery popcorn. This month’s curated selections include “Tiny & Tight Size Queens 2†and “Stepmom Seductions.â€
Mark had come to the Tiki Theater: the last porn theater in Los Angeles.
It is a place that has outlasted more vaunted film houses such as the ArcLight Hollywood and its historic Cinerama Dome, which shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I just want to feel free here, watching something very primal,†said Mark, 34, during a recent screening at the Tiki.
“I think sex is beautiful, and I like sharing it with others — whether the energy is weird or not,†said Mark, who described himself as “gay with a side of bi†and declined to share his last name because, well, he had come to watch porn.
The Tiki, a red-tiled storefront theater next to a snack bar selling “natural juices,†is a Santa Monica Boulevard institution — an X-rated bulwark against online porn, videos that can be watched privately at home, and other factors that have all but rendered adult film theaters obsolete.
Three miles west on Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood’s Studs Theater — a straight and LGBTQ+ porn house in a 1940 building that once housed one of the legendary Pussycat theaters — shut down last year.
Now, Tiki is the last adult film theater in a city that once had scores of them, according to L.A. Department of Building and Safety permit records reviewed by The Times.
Open 24 hours a day, the Tiki beckons customers with signs in both English and Spanish: CINE XXX PARA ADULTOS and XXX ADULT THEATER.
Curious passersby sometimes peek inside. On a typical day, most shuffle away, a few linger, and only a handful stand at the ticket counter — right there on a bustling sidewalk — and pay for a ticket: $20 for four hours, $25 for eight hours and $30 for 12 hours.
No refunds.
Inside, patrons are welcomed by a darkness penetrated only by the light of the theater’s sole silver screen.
At the Tiki, the ringmaster of porn is Juan Martinez, the theater’s longtime manager.
Most days, the 59-year-old immigrant from El Salvador works 12-hour shifts in a tiny box office with a mini fridge and stacks of neatly organized porn DVDs. He has been working there for more than 15 years.
“Honestly, I don’t even need to work that much anymore,†Martinez said in Spanish. “I just need enough for my food. But I appreciate this place because it was one of the places where I started out when I came to the United States.â€
The hardcore sex and nudity on screen do not faze him, he said. Martinez described himself as a romantic — even though he recently had to break up with a girlfriend because her mom did not like his job.
Martinez is Tiki’s projectionist, maintenance worker — and bouncer, if need be. He also programs Tiki’s 24/7 screenings, which, as advertised by the black signs taped on the outside hallway, feature “3 new movies, very recent†every day.
“I have a lot of appreciation for this place,†Martinez said. “I go about maintaining it, fixing everything, whether it’s the plumbing, electricity. I adjust the cameras, I take care of everything. I do it like it’s something personal. I do it with lots of care.â€
Martinez’s early life hardly would have suggested a future at the Tiki. In his homeland, Martinez studied health and medicine.
The Salvadoran military drafted him at 17, enlisting him as a battlefield nurse during the country’s grueling civil war.
They spun around the dance floor, as lighthearted and energetic as teenagers.
Martinez said he retrieved drowned bodies from rivers and corpses booby-trapped with bombs. He said guerrillas hid explosives within tree branches, waiting for the moment soldiers would touch them.
“Boom! Boom! Boom! And people would die,†Martinez recalled. “Sometimes, I saw people without eyes, without hands.â€
At 19, Martinez left the military. He immigrated to the United States with his two sisters and younger brother.
Before he found work at the Tiki, he was a busboy at a Thai barbecue restaurant, a maintenance worker at the Hollywood Cabaret, another now-defunct porn theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Now, he uses his Tiki earnings to help build a home for a granddaughter in Santa Clarita.
As he told his life story from the box office, the groans and awkward dialogue of a porno could be heard coming from the theater. Martinez paused his story as a man approached the ticket stand.
Martinez talks to customers through an opaque window. Theatergoers can’t see him, nor can he really see them.
The man slid a crisp $25 into the window’s deal tray.
“Hello,†the customer said. “How are you?â€
“Good, how many hours?†Martinez replied.
“Eight.â€
The customer grabbed the ticket from Martinez’s tan hands.
From his side of the window, Martinez removed the rod that serves as the outdoor turnstile, allowing the man to step inside, into the darkness.
The Tiki’s single viewing room, about the size of four parking spaces put together, has black-painted walls and six rows of cushioned leather seats. It can seat about 30 people.
Men tend to sit toward the back, watching the main screen while a smaller television propped in the room’s upper right corner consecutively plays a second porn film.
Among the patrons on a recent weekday was Mario Lopez, visiting for the first time after a friend recommended it. Lopez, 37, was unimpressed. He bought a four-hour ticket but said he probably wouldn’t return.
“It wasn’t what I thought it would be,†Lopez said in Spanish with a laugh. He expected “más ambiente†— more ambiance. Nevertheless, he stayed for over an hour because he struck up a conversation with Luis Arjeta, another customer.
Arjeta, 51, has been frequenting the Tiki for five years. He used to come up to five times a week, but this was his first visit in about three months.
“I like the type of movies they show here,†said Arjeta, who bought a 12-hour ticket. He likes the longer tickets — eight and 12 hours — because they allow reentry and he can enter and leave at his own discretion during the allotted time period.
Arjeta, who is, like Martinez, a Salvadoran immigrant, described Tiki as “a refuge.â€
“What happens when police shut down places like these?†Arjeta said in Spanish. “These are places that grant us the opportunity to be more comfortable.â€
Back in the 1970s and ’80s, there were a lot more places like the Tiki in Los Angeles.
With names like Copenhagen Adult Cinema, The Cave, Sin-O-Rama (which, in a 1977 advertisement in The Times, said customers could “Get your sex education hereâ€), and more, these adult theaters were a common sight in Hollywood and East Hollywood.
“There used to be a lot more of them,†said Kim Cooper of Esotouric, a tour company that advocates for historic preservation and public policy. “And clearly with the spread of porn onto people’s phones, it really changed the way that people perceive that sort of material.â€
Before video cassette recorders became common in American households in the latter half of the 20th century, making pornography viewable in the privacy of one’s home, those who wanted to see sexual content had to go into public spaces to view it.
“That has now become part of American history and going there is an act of nostalgia,†Cooper said, “but it’s also showing that there’s always been a need for this type of content.â€
Construction of the Metro Red Line and large-scale redevelopment in the 1990s helped transform seedy Hollywood streets that had become known for their drugs, prostitution and porn purveyors into round-the-clock tourist destinations.
Richard Schave, who co-runs Esotouric with Cooper, his wife, said the sex shops near Hollywood and Western “are all really important spaces that are all gone.â€
All but Tiki.
“Tiki is the real deal,†Cooper said. “You walk in there, you’re part of something that’s very old. I think it’s kind of magical.â€
Though Tiki is the last porn theater standing, that doesn’t mean it’s a stranger to change.
Originally known as the Mini Theater in the early 1970s, it welcomed nude performers to its stage. Now, that stage is occupied by cleaning supplies.
Tiki once had an iconic sign: a bright-red marquee with a palm tree, a totem pole, and the words: “Tiki Theater Xymposium / ADULT XXX LIVE NAKED GIRLS.â€
It’s unclear, Cooper said, when it was torn down.
“One day, we go by, and we were like, ‘What just happened?’†Cooper said. “This beautiful thing, this jewel of the city.â€
Tiki fortuitously landed itself in the limelight when the late comedic actor Fred Willard — known for his roles in movies such as “This Is Spinal Tap†and “Anchorman†and the television series “Modern Family†— was arrested at the theater in 2012 on suspicion of lewd conduct after allegedly being caught with his pants down.
Willard, who avoided a trial after completing a diversion program, joked about the arrest on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.â€
“It had such a Polynesian exotic look to it,†Willard said. “I say, ‘Maybe there’s hula dancers in here. Maybe there’s mai tais.’ I went in and I realized I was the only one awake and sober and conscious.â€
He also tweeted: “lousy film, but theater would make a terrific racquetball court.â€
Nowadays, a sign outside the theater warns: “Movie theater viewed by LAPD.â€
The Los Angeles Police Department “doesn’t have any cameras in that area and did not post that sign,†said Capt. Kelly Muniz, an LAPD spokeswoman. “That sign was likely posted by management or the property owner.â€
Karen and Barry Mason swear they never planned to sell porn for long.
And in somewhat fractured Spanish, the theater also used to have handwritten signs saying smoking and drinking were prohibited and warned patrons: “No habran el pantalon or el zipper.†Don’t open your pants or the zipper.
Willard said at the time that he thought porn theaters no longer existed.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Mark, the recent customer, more than a decade later.
“I always wonder how these places survive,†he said.
As he pondered the Tiki’s future, Mark’s eyes kept drifting to the screen, to a tight shot of actors’ private parts.
“I’m too distracted by what’s happening on the screen,†he said, “to share any last words.â€
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