Readers who never had the privilege of visiting New York City before the Giuliani era (hey, we dodged a presidential bullet with him, didn’t we?!) may find this tough to believe, but Times Square was once a nexus of depravity, frightening for children, and (trust me on this) deeply embarrassing for an adolescent kid to walk through with his mother.

It’s this crossroads, not the current DisneyMcTodayShowland, that’s chronicled in Tales of Times Square, a compendium of tall tales and character studies by Josh Alan Friedman. Not for the faint of heart, this sometimes pornographic collection bustles with brilliantly colorful accounts of peep shows and porn kings, one or two of which might actually make you sorry they all got the boot.