BUENA PARK : X-Rated Theaters Still Drawing Customers

While patrons keep paying to see skin flicks from noon to midnight at the city’s two X-rated theaters, local officials have made no secret of their desire to see the adult movie houses close up and leave town.

“They could disappear right now and I would never miss them,” said Mayor Arthur C. Brown. “But as long as there’s a market, people are going to go to them, and they’re not going leave as long as they’ve got customers.”

The Studio Theatre, located in the heart of Buena Park’s tourist area on Beach Boulevard, and the Pussycat Theatre, a couple miles north on the boulevard in old downtown, are Orange County’s remaining X-rated movie theaters.

“We’re kind of stuck with them,” said City Manager Kevin O’Rourke. “The legal precedents on this issue have established that communities have some control over the location, (but) the law does require that they provide some reasonable location in town to protect First Amendment rights.”

City Councilman Donald L. Bone said he recognizes that these theaters have a constitutional right to remain in town. But he added, “I look forward to the day when they do not exist in the city of Buena Park.

“We are a family-oriented community, and there is no place for these theaters in our community.”

In 1987, the City Council approved a development plan for the Beach Boulevard entertainment area, which does not permit adult businesses. But since Studio Theatre predated the change, it can remain indefinitely as an adult business. Both the Studio Theatre and the Pussycat Theatre, formerly the Grand Theatre, are also within redevelopment project areas.

Eric Pirtle, general manager of Pacific Amusement Co., which manages the Studio Theatre, said the movie house, dubbed “Adultland,” fits in with the entertainment uses in the city’s tourist area.

“We are here to be a positive influence in the the area--not a negative influence,” he said. “We are here to be an asset to the entertainment corridor, creating a balance that only we can provide and competing for the entertainment dollar for anyone who is over the age of 18.”

Inside the Studio Theatre, patrons enter the “Fantasy Room”--where X-rated films are shown on the big screen.

“We run a nice place,” Pirtle said, adding that the theater is a place where the “brass, glass and marble shine.”

Pirtle said that because the theater competes for the public’s entertainment dollar, it strives to provide a clean atmosphere and to offer entertainment “in a tasteful way.”

For 17 years, the 500-seat Studio Theatre--formerly a general audience theater--has shown X-rated films and continues to draw patrons at $7 a ticket.

“We show something that is a novelty,” Pirtle said, adding that, “You’re giving (patrons) an escape. . . . We have sound that’s bigger than life and pictures that are bigger than life.”