The sleazy Combat Zone in Boston, MA is gone but its memory lives on as reported by Sam Allis for The Boston Globe:
Once upon a time, there was a slice of Boston called the Combat Zone. * * * It ran roughly from Tremont to Washington and from Boylston down to Kneeland, extending west onto Stuart Street. The area was infamous for its strip clubs, peep shows, dirty bookstores, booze, drugs, and violence. * * * The Zone was named for the brawls that unfolded between the biker gangs and sailors and soldiers, going way back, says [Bill] Dwyer [a 32-year veteran Boston detective, now retired]. "These were colossal fights. The M.P.s maintained a large force near there. Organized crime moved in, too." * * * You also had some gay sex in the Zone. On LaGrange was the Club Baths, up on the second floor of a building. Over on Carver Street was Lundin Turkish Baths, known by some patrons as "the blackfoot club" for the dirt on its floors. AIDS arrived in the ’80s, followed by crack and heroin toward the end of that decade. The city increased its efforts to clean up the Zone. Prostitutes headed elsewhere - Brockton, New Bedford, Providence. Real estate developers later swooped in to build huge projects like Millennium Place, which includes, among other things, condos and a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
