The seedy marquees of Boston's notorious adult entertainment district, the Combat Zone, along with its strip clubs, triple-X peep shows and adult bookstores have passed into history.  Strippers, pimps and prostitutes return to the street corners and bond with a boy surrounded by a man's world in this true account of coming of age.  In 1969, an eighteen-year-old college freshman is offered a free ride into Boston's red-light district to manage a flophouse renting rooms by the week to the purveyors of the neighborhood sex trade.  Within a very short time he discovers the ride is anything but free.

One evening in May, 1969, Boston's vice squad is planning a raid on a local apartment house.  Two strippers, angered by the brazenness of the building's hookers, set out to work secretly with the police.  Their complicity surfaces and emotions amongst the tenants, a collection of exotic dancers, go-go girls, musicians, bar tenders, pimps, and drug dealers, burn through the building like a fire in the stairwell.  An impromptu community meeting is staged inside the building superintendent's apartment to strategize a response to the impending raid.  The meeting ends with the expectation the police will arrive at any moment.  The story turns back to the end of summer, 1968, where Jonny, a hopeful and sexually naive teenager, is boarding the bus to Boston to begin his freshman year of college.  As the semester begins he befriends two classmates; Robert Van Helden, a handsome, hip kid from Amsterdam, and Andreas Theodokis, the younger brother of an unscrupulous real estate developer. The developer is looking for someone to manage his dilapidated 6-story apartment house inside Boston's nefarious Combat Zone.  When the job of building superintendent is offered to Jonny and Robert they jump at it blind with no idea what they bargained for.

Lovers, Muggers & Thieves - a Boston Memoir brings you through a convergence of extraordinary events inside one of America's most infamous neighborhoods in this entertaining journey of friendship flirting with the dark side. 

A Short Excerpt:  Architecture Boston magazine July, 2007 article "After Dark"

Combat Zone, Boston, circa 1969 BY JONATHAN TUDAN AIA

photograph by Jerry Berndt

Dusk drops a veil over the scene, making the lights of the marquees burn that much brighter. I feel a charge of excitement as I step onto Washington Street and blend into the flow. The sidewalks are brimming with men of all shapes and colors eager to tap into the sexual fantasia that pours from the strip clubs as easily as the liquor and the beer inside. Many travel in packs of threes and fours; a few are in uniform; the majority are your average, loud-mouth, boozing, adolescent rednecks, office creeps, and college boys. They all share one common fascination: female subjugation. Local scammers, pimps, and drug dealers troll the gutters, feeding on innocence, pleasure, and greed. Black musicians - romantics and entrepreneurs - walk the street with an air of confidence and superiority, affecting an attitude that is suave, urbane, and debonair. Affecting no attitude at all, except maybe boredom, are the bartenders, bouncers, and capitalists living off the local entertainment.

And then there are the girls...
You can clearly discern the various patterns of female life in the Combat Zone. Three classes distinguish the ladies. The first group - the Entertainers - make up the majority. They include strippers, dancers, and cocktail waitresses. The second is the Girlfriends. They consist of women who are along for the ride with the men in their life; the men are definitely behind the wheel. And finally there are the Hookers. They are further distinguished by two subclasses: the Winners and the Losers. The Winners are semi-successful, work out of their apartments, and service a steady customer base. At the bottom of this sexual swamp are the Losers, the ones who hang out in the street, often alone. But don't under-estimate their power. They can be the most dangerous, mostly because they've got nothing left to lose. One in thirty people out tonight is a woman, and one-hundred percent of the women fall into one of these three categories.

At the entrance to the Normandy Lounge, a middle-aged man in a white shirt and tie and neatly combed hair is standing on the edge of the sidewalk reading from a Bible. The guy reminds me of my high-school vice-principal. He's preaching repentance and salvation to a world that has ignored his existence.
"Jesus loves you!" the vice-principal shouts into the face of a wino shuffling by clutching a paper bag. The top of a green bottle pops out from the bag like the head of a turtle.

"Whiskey loves you!" the wino shoots back, raising his turtle in the air.