[caption id="attachment_224510" align="aligncenter" width="575"]![]( "buildings")
From left: 200 West 57th Street, 211 East 43rd Street, 11 West 36th Street, 202 West 40th Street and 23 West 56th Street[/caption]
Massage parlor — the phrase conjures up images of the seediest days of Times Square in the late 1970s, when dozens of locations offered sexual services. Even today, with that concentration thinned out, the words elicit knowing smirks from brokers, aware that such businesses continue to operate throughout the city in the nooks and crannies of commercial and residential properties. These massage parlors thrive in part because the law adopted by the city’s Board of Estimate in 1978 banning sexual massage businesses and providing a strict review process for legal ones has become one of the biggest paradoxes in code enforcement. Instead of cracking down on the massage parlors, thought to be hotbeds of prostitution, the statute today is used mainly to regulate gyms and health clubs, which are not. [more]![]()
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From left: 200 West 57th Street, 211 East 43rd Street, 11 West 36th Street, 202 West 40th Street and 23 West 56th Street[/caption]
Massage parlor — the phrase conjures up images of the seediest days of Times Square in the late 1970s, when dozens of locations offered sexual services. Even today, with that concentration thinned out, the words elicit knowing smirks from brokers, aware that such businesses continue to operate throughout the city in the nooks and crannies of commercial and residential properties. These massage parlors thrive in part because the law adopted by the city’s Board of Estimate in 1978 banning sexual massage businesses and providing a strict review process for legal ones has become one of the biggest paradoxes in code enforcement. Instead of cracking down on the massage parlors, thought to be hotbeds of prostitution, the statute today is used mainly to regulate gyms and health clubs, which are not. [more]