Adult Movie Theatres in Raleigh

What is still open

Why a man of sixty keeps going back

On 5 October 2025 a customer of the Capital Boulevard store wrote a few sentences that explain these rooms better than anything else written about them. He said the place is dirty, that it smells, that it is overpriced, and that nothing works. Then he said he keeps going back.

The reason he gave is that he is not judged there for being chubby and over sixty. He added that lunchtime is his favourite time to go.

He is not the only one. In May 2021 another man described himself as a chubby older guy, said he felt at home, got no attitude from anybody, and called it a no judgement zone. Two different people, four years apart, in a building where the films have no sound.

So the product is not the film. It cannot be. The sound is off, the picture is blurry and the televisions in the booths are broken. People are paying to be in a room where nobody looks at them twice.

The Pegasus door, 2015 to 2026

Pegasus is a door whose price can be followed over a decade, because its customers kept writing it down.

Two things in there. The first is the rise, which the September 2025 customer felt strongly enough to say to the attendant’s face. The second is what the fee covers. In 2015 the ten dollars bought the arcade. In 2026 the ticket buys the theatres and the booths together, with nothing fed into a machine, and it buys one visit.

Shall vary, then may vary

Raleigh’s Ordinance 647 TC 71, dated 1 November 1977, defined an “adult establishment” by reference to state law and kept one at least 1,200 feet from the next.

By 1981 an adult establishment needed a special use permit from the Board of Adjustment, which could grant one in shopping centre, neighbourhood business, business and industrial districts. It needed off-street parking, no advertising visible from the pavement, no other adult establishment within 1,200 feet, and it could not stand within 500 feet of a residential district.

Harts Book Stores, an adult bookstore company, applied for one. A zoning inspector, called by the company, testified that “This particular location meets all the criteria as set out in the Code.” The Board refused it on three grounds: the surrounding buildings were incompatible, a tavern on the block caused “problems and rowdiness”, and it “felt” the shop would be a detriment to the neighbourhood. On 15 September 1981 the Court of Appeals ordered the permit issued. Listing the use as one the Board could permit, the court held, was the same as a legislative finding that it fitted in a Raleigh business district.

By 1997 both distances were 2,000 feet, and places of worship, schools and day care had joined the list of what they are measured from.

In January 1999 the Fourth Circuit upheld a refusal to order a permit for Steakhouse, Inc., a Florida company that wanted to open a topless bar, noting “the eleven adult establishments currently operating in Raleigh”. The city’s definition then took in adult bookstores, adult motion picture theatres, adult mini motion picture theatres and any establishment featuring topless dancers, strippers or similar entertainers.

Since 1 September 2013 the rule has sat in the Unified Development Ordinance, now at Sec. 6.4.2.B. To open, an adult establishment needs a special use permit from the Board of Adjustment, in one of four districts: CX, DX, IX or IH. It must stand 2,000 feet from another, and 2,000 feet from places of worship, schools and day care already there, and from a list of residential, office and other districts, measured in a straight line from property line to property line or district boundary line.

The Board can relax both distances when it finds, among other things, that the use will not “enlarge or encourage the development of a ‘skid row’ area”. In 1981, and still in 1997, the code said the Board “shall vary” them on those findings. Today it says “may vary”.

Studio One and the Forest Drive-In

Studio 1, on Hillsborough Street across from N.C. State, opened as the Varsity in 1941, became Studio One in 1972 and closed on 13 September 1984, when it became a McDonald’s. People who went there remember late-night adult films in its last years, alongside Rocky Horror.

The Forest Drive-In in Brentwood opened on 1 August 1963. By one account, from 1982 to 1984 it showed R-rated and adult films, then went back to family films for its last season. It closed on 29 August 1985 and was torn down in 1987.