Ann Arbor is a small, Mid-
western 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 foot-
ball games, avidly shopping for 
fresh sourdough bread and vibrant 
produce at the Kerrytown farm-
er’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 in-
quisitive tourists. 
When the school year creeps 
around each fall, tens of thousands 
of students like myself storm 
through the muddy yards of fra-
ternity houses on Packard and 
Hill streets — engulfed by the re-
morseful smell of Kirkland vodka 
and greasy sweat, typically com-
plemented by the sound of “Mr. 

Brightside” booming from speak-
ers 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, enjoy-
ing an overpriced latte and luke-
warm chocolate scone — where 
80% of our supposed “study ses-
sions” are overshadowed by play-
ful, light-hearted gossip. Maybe 
splurging on some No Thai to-
night 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 for-
tunately met by budding flowers, 
chirping birds and a longed-for sun 
as students have picnics filled with 
laughter and card games on make-
shift 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 con-
sistently 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 neighbor-
hoods. Students are smart, friend-
ly 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 inconspicuous-
ly 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 mod-

erately 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 Re-
tyi’s “The Book of Ann Arbor – An 
Extremely Serious History Book,” 
which I had picked up from Lite-
rati earlier that day. As I read sit-
ting 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 market-
ing 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 detail-
ing Ann Arbor’s former Red Light 
District. More than anything, Re-
tyi 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 particu-
larly 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 top-
less massage parlor with rumored 
erotic services like a $20 handjob 
or a $45 blowjob. You could also 
check out other brothel-like plac-
es and massage parlors around the 
corners of West Huron and Lib-
erty streets.
Despite 
consistent 
back-
lash from townspeople, protests, 
police raids and undercover op-
erations, Ann Arbor’s Red Light 
District 
continued 
to 
thrive 
throughout the ’70s and ’80s. A 
decade later, the Danish News 
— another adult bookstore con-
taining coin-operated peep show 
booths — opened up its doors to 
the public. 
Ann Arbor’s Red Light Dis-
trict remained operational until 
the early 1990s. According to Re-
tyi, the area — filled with alleged 
crime and society’s most stigma-
tized industry — endured for a long 
time, in spite of the town’s count-
less efforts to abolish it. Growing 
resistance to rid of the district was 
ironically met with the flourishing 
of massage parlors and porno-
graphic stores. 
“I think the people in the es-
tablishment of Ann Arbor did not 
want that (the district) to be part 
of the city,” Retyi said, later refer-
encing 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 book-
stores established themselves and, 
within weeks, they were pulled 
into court.” 
In 1990, the district col-
lapsed 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 busi-
nesses; missed rent checks, zon-
ing and other miscellany related 
to lease agreements were often 
the path of choice for opponents 
of the bookstores and parlors. 

 MARTHA LEWAND
Statement Contributor

6 — The Statement // Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Design by Grace Filbin

The tale of two red light districts

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

