Adult Movie Theatres in Kansas City

Missouri · last checked 16 October 2026

Kansas City still has an actual adult cinema, which almost nowhere in this directory does. The Strand on Troost Avenue has two screens and a few booths, it has been open since 1916, and it has been showing adult films since September 1962 without stopping. The shop out on Truman Road had a back room until this year and no longer does.

What is still open

The Strand Theatre

Theatre

3544 Troost Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109

Has: Two adult screens and private booths
Hours: 10am to 9pm daily, as listed
Phone: (816) 931-5341
Open since: 1 July 1916

Films run continuously from open to close on both screens rather than to a timetable, which is how these houses always worked and almost the last place in the country you can still see it done.

Be aware of what the evidence actually is. The directory listings carry current hours, and Cinema Treasures still has it as open and showing movies. But the most recent first-hand account anyone has published about the inside of the building is several years old, and the theatre’s own website has not been touched since 2018. That is thinner than we would like for a place worth travelling to. Phone first.

Last checked 16 October 2026 · Listing hours current as of October 2026

Erotic City at 8401 East Truman Road, (816) 252-3370, is a shop and no longer more than that. A customer in April 2026 wrote that he wished they still had the back room where he and his wife could watch a film together, which is the clearest possible statement that it has gone. Counted as a shop.

After Dark Video on East Truman Road is listed by some guides with dollar-fed booths and two preview booths. The listings disagree about whether it is in Kansas City or Independence, the detail traces back to a guide entry with comments from 2008, and one of those comments says the booths were closed. Named here and not counted.

How the Strand actually survived

Not by being protected and not by being lucky. By being divided. The auditorium opened holding somewhere between 650 and 750 people depending on which record you believe, and almost none of that room is used for watching films now.

The auditoriumCut down to roughly ninety seats. Films run continuously, open to close.
The balconyWalled off as a second screening room in 1981.
A corner of the stallsFour peep booths, put in during the 1990s. No doors on them.
UpstairsFour apartments.
The lobby frontageTwo retail units.

One 1916 cinema, cut into five things that pay. This is how a building like this stays open, and it is why the seat counts never agree.

1 September 1962

Most cinemas in this directory drifted into adult films and nobody recorded when. The Strand has a date on both sides of it.

It opened on 1 July 1916 with Bobbie of the Ballet, and ran as an ordinary neighbourhood house for forty-six years. The last normal programme was on 26 August 1962, a Jerry Lewis double feature. Six days later, on 1 September 1962, it started showing adult films, and it has not shown anything else since.

That is sixty-four years of one policy in one building, which makes it the longest continuous run of this on the site. It also makes it the oldest continuously operating cinema of any kind in Kansas City. The thing that kept the doors open is the thing the city would rather it did not do.

The man who bought it

Dick Snow bought the Strand in 1980, by which point it had already been an adult house for nearly twenty years. He also owns Bazooka’s Showgirls, and the theatre’s own contact address is still a Bazooka’s email, which tells you how the two have been run.

In 1981 he opened the walled-off balcony as a second screen showing gay films, which gave the building two audiences that did not have to meet. The booths went into the stalls in the 1990s.

Asked about the future in 2013, Snow said plainly that the internet had taken the business, that he did not know what the new model was, that the building was expensive to keep and in poor shape with no parking, and that he would sell it to anyone who turned up wanting it. That was thirteen years ago. It is still open.

Why it is on Troost

Troost Avenue is the line Kansas City was segregated along. Deed covenants written by the developer J.C. Nichols kept Black and Jewish buyers out of the neighbourhoods west of it, redlining and 1920s zoning hardened it, and the split is still visible in census data. In 2018 the mayor called Troost the demarcation line in a war zone. In 2022 there was a serious proposal to rename the street.

Between 26th and 32nd the avenue had been Millionaire Row. The Strand sits a few blocks south of that, and it is on this street rather than a better one for the same reason every venue in this directory is where it is. Land on the wrong side of a line is cheap, and cheap land is the only kind this trade has ever been able to hold.

Sources

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