Read his story: When the metal door bangs shut, the daylight is gone. Distorted guitars climb a mountainous drumbeat and a voice snarls Spanish. Thin strands of neon shine dim pink on women in worn lace and on the mirror, where the sign says, "Shut Up and Drink."
Outside, a cursive inscription promises 200 girls onstage at the Sweet Cherry, a corner bar the size of a railroad car on 42nd Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. All down the gravelly paved road, the husks of wasted dragsters and bashed police trucks await salvage or dissection.
In this corner of Brooklyn, where the corporate forces of business and tourism have banished the purveyors of seediness and smut, the last of the low-rent strip parlors have achieved something like indestructibility — even if they are routinely the scenes for crimes; even if their neighbors want them gone. Their tiny survival stories evoke the sometime futilities of a huge municipal force battling a small, notorious menace.
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