from www.theage.com.au – BLAME the internet. Increasing rent played a part too but, according to Peter Raynard, Victorian manager of ClubX Stores, the main factor behind last Sunday’s closure of Australia’s longest continuously running adult cinema is the availability of free pornography on any home computer with a window to the web.

Tougher economic times had also affected patronage, with fewer pensioners – once reliable regulars – venturing through the doors of Swanston Street’s Shaft cinema.

But since the cinema opened in the former Shaft leather shop in 1977, the biggest slice of the audience had always been those aged 35 to 55, Mr Raynard said.

The owners decided to keep the name, especially as the film Shaft was still fresh in the movie-going public’s mind. The double entendre was a bonus.

But the public wanted more than double entendres and implied sex. At screenings of The Dean’s Wife, in which actors kept their knickers on during simulated sex scenes, patrons were abusive and demanded their money back.

The owners – who would later go on to found the ClubX chain of adult stores – decided to introduce live striptease to keep patrons onside. It worked. On a good night, queues would stretch past Lonsdale Street.

Before each new live show was launched, the police vice squad would attend a private viewing to ensure boundaries weren’t pushed too far.

Film companies soon realised there was a lucrative market for more risque films, and they too began pushing classification boundaries.

Throughout the late 1970s and into the ’80s, with movies such as The Devil In Miss Jones, and Behind The Green Door exposing a new cinematic world to local audiences, a handful of other cinemas tried their hand at the adult market, including The Barrel Cinema, The Dendy, The Penthouse, The Albany and Cinema 69’r.

Mr Raynard, who helps run Elizabeth Street’s Crazyhorse adult venue, believes that with the Shaft’s closure, something of the gritty CBD character will be forever lost.

”Even people who have no interest in attending a place like the Shaft appreciate venues like this and recognise we live in a pluralistic society, and you must cater for a wide range of interests. In fact, if you didn’t have this variety, what does the CBD offer that a suburban shopping centre can’t offer, and with free car parking?”

Three adult cinemas remain open in Melbourne, but according to Melbourne City councillor Peter Clarke, ”the closing of the Shaft Cinema brings about a preferred outcome of council”.

He says the council is working towards a more ”family-friendly” Swanston Street.