Bob Gruen took this photo of Times Square in April 1972. Everything in it is now gone.
The campy “Follies Burlesk,” which had taken over the circa-1917 Orpheum Dance Palace a few years earlier, didn’t last long. It was replaced in 1976 by the Gaiety Male Burlesk, advertising “six boys five times a day.”
The Gaiety had staying power, shutting down in 2005, just as the Howard Johnson’s right below it did when the entire building was sold.
HoJo’s was an orange and blue mainstay offering cheapo drinks. food, and old signage since 1955.
Peace marchers, here protesting bombings in Vietnam, are also few and far in between. Times Square isn’t much of a place of protest anymore—especially now that it’s a blocks-long pedestrian mall.
