By age 15, our hormones were in full gear. We knew of places downtown where you could see naked women — either on film or in the flesh. We wondered what it was like inside, but we didn’t really want to go in.

Going inside was for weird old men. We were young. We had our whole lives in front of us. We had reputations to uphold. Besides, they wouldn’t let us in anyway. Or would they? There’s only one way to find out.

Some things, however, are best kept a mystery. All we really wanted was a picture at the door, a gag photo to show our friends, who just might believe we saw the finest in adult entertainment. If they did, though, we’d tell them the truth right away.

Whatever was going on inside — women being exploited, men doing things in public they should only do in private — we didn’t want to be associated with it. But we certainly thought it must be funny.

“How’d you like to have to clean the floors in there?” was the obvious joke. “I think I saw your dad go in there last night with a can of Crisco under his arm. It was right after he left the Last Place on Earth.”

Twenty years later, the Strand is long gone. A luxury residential development is on the way. A new class of perverts will move in and watch their porno on high-definition TVs. Another old theater, two blocks east, already has strippers waiting for them.