Ann Arbor is a small, Midwestern metropolis, home to many families, faculty and students stretching from near and far. It is a city comprised of almost all loyal Wolverines dedicated to the act of rambunctious tailgating for football games, avidly shopping for fresh sourdough bread and vibrant produce at the Kerrytown farmer’s market while inhaling a #48 Binny’s Brooklyn Reuben from Zingerman’s. Its citizens often participate in local political events or protests and can stroll down the endless streets of the summer Art Fair alongside thousands of inquisitive tourists.
When the school year creeps around each fall, tens of thousands of students like myself storm through the muddy yards of fraternity houses on Packard and Hill streets — engulfed by the remorseful smell of Kirkland vodka and greasy sweat, typically complemented by the sound of “Mr. Brightside” booming from speakers at 7 a.m. before football games.
In the rugged winter months, I can be found nestled up in a booth at M-36 with friends, enjoying an overpriced latte and lukewarm chocolate scone — where 80% of our supposed “study sessions” are overshadowed by playful, light-hearted gossip. Maybe splurging on some No Thai tonight for a study snack at the UgLi will help me get my 2,000 word Pol Sci paper done that I haven’t started yet, right?
Spring semester commences with similar brisk days but is fortunately met by budding flowers, chirping birds and a longed-for sun as students have picnics filled with laughter and card games on makeshift blankets in the Law Quad.
Evening rolls around in the summer, and the sun has begun its slow cascade into the depths of the faint blue sky. It’s 64 degrees, a calming feeling fills the fresh air as my friends and I embark on a late night stroll, passing by young couples on a Washtenaw Dairy date, numerous fluffy dogs and students passing around a soccer ball on Elbel Field.
Seemingly so, Ann Arbor is a relatively quaint and pleasant place to attend college or raise a family, as many do. Ann Arbor still has its systematic issues and occasional scandals; it would be ignorant not to acknowledge such. But it is consistently ranked as one of the best, most friendly college towns in the world. Cordial and genuine small talk — a once foreign concept to my New Jersey upbringing — is the norm. Many white, Christian, cisgender, nuclear-like families are concentrated in the majority of Ann Arbor’s suburban neighborhoods. Students are smart, friendly and successful, for the most part. The crime rate is quite low, and the Ann Arbor public schools soar in the statewide and national rankings.
There is a sense of quaintness and innocence that inconspicuously fills the air. If a student were to ponder it — socially and culturally speaking — the most dirty, sultry, sensual or sinful experience anyone can indulge in Ann Arbor is a moderately minor, regrettable drunk mistake on the Skeeps’ dance floor at 1 a.m. on a Thursday.
But Ann Arbor wasn’t always like this.
During one of those serene Ann Arbor summer evenings, I found myself reading Richard Retyi’s “The Book of Ann Arbor – An Extremely Serious History Book,” which I had picked up from Literati earlier that day. As I read sitting on the porch of my former house on 4th Avenue, I came to learn that my seemingly innocent and untroubled street, nestled between the district library and South Main, was once home to Ann Arbor’s very own Red Light District.
In an interview with Retyi, the communications and marketing manager for the Ann Arbor District Public Library, I learned how he had rummaged through thousands of pictures of local newspaper clippings in the online archives of the library in hopes of finding inspiration for chapter ideas. It is in those archives where he stumbled upon articles detailing Ann Arbor’s former Red Light District. More than anything, Retyi was surprised to learn of the peculiar location for the district.
“I saw this weird storefront, or I saw that they busted some like, topless massage ring, and it’s like ‘What? Oh, this happened, not that long ago,’ ” Retyi said. “It just seemed like a very wacky — and unless you lived here during the time — a weird thing to think that the area between downtown and Kerrytown was dangerous on some level to go down there. And when I think of Ann Arbor, I don’t really think about it being particularly dangerous.”
In May of 1970, within short walking distance from city hall and police headquarters, Harry Mohney and Terry Whitman Shoultes opened up two adult bookstores — Ann Arbor Adult News and Fourth Avenue Adult News — right next to each other. Above these stores containing pornagraphic magazines stood American Massage Parlor, a topless massage parlor with rumored erotic services like a $20 handjob or a $45 blowjob. You could also check out other brothel-like places and massage parlors around the corners of West Huron and Liberty streets.
Despite consistent backlash from townspeople, protests, police raids and undercover operations, Ann Arbor’s Red Light District continued to thrive throughout the ’70s and ’80s. A decade later, the Danish News — another adult bookstore containing coin-operated peep show booths — opened up its doors to the public.
Ann Arbor’s Red Light District remained operational until the early 1990s. According to Retyi, the area — filled with alleged crime and society’s most stigmatized industry — endured for a long time, in spite of the town’s countless efforts to abolish it. Growing resistance to rid of the district was ironically met with the flourishing of massage parlors and pornographic stores.
Terry Whitman-Shoultes and picketers protest the closing of Danish News Adult Bookstore, October 1982. Photo courtesy of the AADL. 
“Obscenity Suits Filed Over Books,” Ann Arbor News, June 1970. Photo courtesy of the AADL. 
“Developer saves plan for 4th Avenue,” Ann Arbor News, August 1989. Photo courtesy of the AADL.
“I think the people in the establishment of Ann Arbor did not want that (the district) to be part of the city,” Retyi said, later referencing an old news clipping of the local newspaper’s bias towards the demolition of the district, which was framed as an opportunity for new beginnings. “As soon as this (the district) started happening, off my memory, those adult bookstores established themselves and, within weeks, they were pulled into court.”
In 1990, the district collapsed after a series of charges related to zoning for Shoultes’ parlors and book stores. The landlords and city consistently found legal loopholes and various ways to target the district’s businesses; missed rent checks, zoning and other miscellany related to lease agreements were often the path of choice for opponents of the bookstores and parlors.
“It was sort-of like putting Al Capone in prison for tax evasion,” Retyi said.
Despite its collapse, and Shoultes’ death in 1998, Ann Arbor’s Red Light District may have influenced other nearby, and unexpected, establishments downtown. The Blind Pig — a small, highly-coveted concert venue for both students and locals — once aspired to have an entire floor dedicated to topless go-go dancers in 1990. Even Bongz and Thongz, which opened its doors in 2011, fought diligently to utilize their basement as a sex toy shop, but this plan was shut down due to zoning ordinances limiting the sale of sex paraphernalia (Thongz being in the name). Similar to the termination of the district, Bongz & Thongz hopes to incorporate sexual pleasure into their business were blocked due to zoning ordinances. The plans were also scolded upon by other local businesses, city officials and townspeople.
From one A-town to another
Currently, I reside in a new home, studying abroad halfway across the world in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The place that happens to be home to the world’s original, most prominent Red Light District.
The district was born in the 14th and 15th centuries, where lonely shipmen coming off the city’s seaport would look for a “street daisy” to pay in exchange for sexual relations. In the 1960s, the first modern-window brothels engulfed with stark red lights hit the streets of the focal De Wallen neighborhood, followed by the Netherlands’s legalization of sex work as a profession in 1988.
If you were to take an evening stroll through the district today, you’d encounter a strange — almost uneasy — collision between romantic canals, bridges and architecture with drunk pedestrians, piles of trash bags, pictures and neon signs of naked women and some funny smells here and there. In my first nighttime visit to the district, I found myself walking slowly, gawking at the chaotic scene ahead. Shoulder to shoulder with other curious tourists, and even some local clients, I was bombarded with neon red and rosy pink signs for sex shows, bars, strip clubs, erotic services and even the Red Light District Museum — most of which cater to the cisgender, heterosexual male gaze.
Sex shows attract abundant crowds in the district. Typically, sex shows have crowds of 50-100 spectators and can cost around 60 euros (64.05 USD). The event includes 60 minutes of different sexual acts with various sex toys and themes, performed by women individually or with a male sex workers on a stage. Sometimes, the sex show workers will use random audience members who volunteer for their more comedic tricks and scenes (Bananas, a vagina and “I like to move it” from “Madagascar 2,” for reference).
Beyond the main strip, small side streets contain most of the infamous, red-lit window brothels. Women, who hail from not just Amsterdam, but all over the world, stand and pose in the life size windows — almost mirroring the Barbie dolls in clear and pink boxes I’d beg my mom for as a kid. The sex workers dress in lingerie, staring into the crowd for their next client. No one dares to snap any pictures; they’ll get in trouble with sex workers or the undercover security guards patrolling the area.
Satirical condom stores and colorful sex toy shops line many streets, even outside the district, on my walks to class. Amsterdam oozes, breathes and lives sex and pleasure of all kinds.
I have been to the district a few times now — including with a group of friends for a pre-going-out midnight stroll and for a class assignment during the day. Despite the time of day, my mixed feelings about the district clash like two waves barreling towards one another — liberation, alertness, empathy, curiosity and even trepidation all hit me like an unexplainable, dynamic psychological whiplash.
A Red Light Crossroads
I continue to grapple with finding myself at the crossroads of two unlikely origins — both completely different yet so similar — especially when it comes to all things sex.
Despite the unparalleled acceptance of sex work and pleasure in the city of Amsterdam, both cities experience their fair share of issues and stigmas with the sex-work industry. Both are labeled as progressive hubs in their own unique ways, but this superficial perception contradicts what lies beneath both these homes of mine.
Although Amsterdam is considered a progressive utopia by many, the city has a precarious relationship with the district and its sex workers. The rich, predominantly white Dutch residents of De Wallen have been successfully pushing for the gentrification of the district for years. As city projects like Project 1012 and the new Erotic Center proposal have closed hundreds of window brothels, competition among sex workers has increased and pushed these women into illegal, underground sex work — which has strong ties with human trafficking.
Across the ocean, Ann Arbor tends to frequent itself as a liberal, counterculture-safe haven. But Ann Arbor’s true, contradictory colors often show when it comes to its enduring history of finding ways to shut down most things sexual in the city. How can a city host an annual, legendary Hash Bash but concurrently staunchly refuse a marijuana store to sell some sex toys out of its basement?
As I try to envision Ann Arbor with just a sprinkle of the sultry scenes of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, my head spins at 100 miles per hour. My eyebrows scrunch as I attempt to imagine what it would be like if those cheerful game days and walks to class from 4th avenue coexisted with peep shows, erotic services businesses and adult bookstores.
What if there were special gameday deals and discounts at pornographic bookstores on those fall Saturdays? What if Ann Arbor families’ weekly strolls to the farmers market had to encounter peepshows? What if those picnics on the Law Quad were interrupted by the looming thoughts and chatter of the newest erotic services or sex show just a short walk away?
It feels impractical and mischevious to imagine such a scene.
Yet, I live in Amsterdam with erotic services for sale on three out of four corners all on my commute to class and the grocery store, and I find myself unfazed — why? Origins. Amsterdam emits sexual acceptance by having the Red Light District so prominent and storied in its history. Ann Arbor has failed its attempts at emulating this district, resulting in a sexual suppression culture which would make a brothel on West Huron so troubling.
The tale of these two Red Light Districts originate at separate times with an unexpected, uniform lust. And with a foot in each world, I finally understand how they both evolved, flourished and failed in the ways they have, allowing me to appreciate the paths at which they cross along with the weight and legacies origins carry.
Statement Contributor Martha Lewand can be reached at mlewand@umich.edu.