Combat Zone, Boston

For a variety of reasons, such as rising property values and the introduction of home video technology, most of the adult businesses in the area have since closed, and the "Combat Zone" moniker has become obsolete.

The name "Combat Zone" was popularized through a series of exposé articles on the area Jean Cole wrote for the Boston Daily Record in the 1960s.

[1] The moniker described an area that resembled a war zone both because of its well-known crime and violence, and because many soldiers and sailors on shore leave from the Charlestown (Boston) Navy Yard frequented the many strip clubs and brothels while in uniform.

[2] The Combat Zone began to form in the early 1960s, when city officials razed the West End and former red light district at Scollay Square, near Faneuil Hall, to build the Government Center urban renewal project.

Displaced Scollay Square denizens relocated to the lower Washington Street area because it was only half a mile away, the rents were low,[3] and the residents of nearby Chinatown lacked the political power to keep them out.

[5] Lower Washington Street was already part of Boston's entertainment district with a number of movie theaters, bars, delicatessens, and restaurants that catered to night life.

[12][13] As the area changed, that nickname fell out of circulation, but the Combat Zone's relatively open atmosphere still attracted many LGBT people.

[14][15] The Combat Zone's detractors often grouped homosexuals, transvestites, prostitutes, strippers, purveyors of adult books and films, and drug dealers together under an umbrella of perceived immorality.

Jeremiah Murphy wrote in a 1973 Boston Globe article about the Combat Zone, "Now it is almost 3 a.m. and the gay bars have closed and the fags and hookers and pimps and pushers roam the streets.

"[16] In a 1974 Boston Herald article, representatives of the Sack Theater Chain called the Combat Zone "Satan's playground" and "a malignancy comprised of pimps, prostitutes, erotica, and merchants of immorality" whose growth had to be removed.

At the same time he wanted to prevent the Zone's adult businesses from spreading into the affluent Beacon Hill and Back Bay neighborhoods where they might disturb his constituents.

[33] Street crime in the Combat Zone was commonly attributed to the blighting influence of adult businesses, despite the fact that the area had been a skid row before their arrival.

Although those rumors were largely unsubstantiated,[32] at least one establishment did have such a connection: Jay's Lounge on Tremont Street, owned by mob boss Gennaro Angiulo.

[35] The murder of Andrew Puopolo in the Combat Zone, in November 1976, led to Commonwealth v. Soares, the seminal Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case barring racial discrimination in jury selection.

[40] In 1974, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the state's obscenity laws unconstitutional, city officials feared that Boston was about to become a "mecca of pornography".

[56] The historic Hayden Building on Washington Street, once home to an adult movie theater and a gay bathhouse, was renovated in 2013 and now houses luxury apartments and retail space.

[61] Jazz musicians Sabby Lewis, Dick Wetmore, and Bull Moose Jackson played regularly at the Gilded Cage on Boylston Street in the 1960s.

The Gilded Cage was destroyed in 1966 when a leaking gas main exploded in the nearby Paramount Hotel, causing a five-alarm fire that killed 11 people.

Many notable jazz musicians played there in the 1940s and early 1950s, including Quincy Jones, Ruby Braff, Sam Rivers, Herb Pomeroy, and others.

[68] George Pérez's 1987 run on DC Comics' Wonder Woman (which established Boston as the heroine's primary base of operations) would occasionally feature the Combat Zone as a setting.

In the video game, which is set in a post-apocalyptic fictional Boston, the "Combat Zone" takes on a literal meaning as an area for human barbed wire steel cage matches.

[76] In David Foster Wallace's encyclopedic novel Infinite Jest (1996), the characters Pemulis and Struck are alleged patrons of the Combat Zone after the district's relocation to "east of the Common".

An episode of Boston-based television series, Cheers ("Showdown, Part 1" (1983)), includes a moment when Ernie Pantusso invites Sam Malone to the Combat Zone, to see "a girlie show".