Adult Movie Theatres in Omaha

Nebraska · last checked 16 October 2026

Nothing in Omaha has a screening room or video booths. The nearest of either is across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at a Romantix with a booth arcade and a separate theatre. Omaha’s own adult shop, on 72nd Street, sells toys and lingerie and has no booths, which is partly a matter of law: the city licenses adult arcades separately and does not publish the register.

What is still open

Romantix, 189th Street

Theatre

50662 189th Street, Council Bluffs, IA 51503

Has: Booth arcade and a separate theatre
Hours: 10am to midnight, Friday and Saturday to 1am
Phone: (712) 366-1764
Where: Across the Missouri, in Iowa

Two separate things behind the shop floor, which is unusual now. The arcade is private booths showing a wide catalogue, and the theatre is a room with seating that people describe sitting in for hours at a stretch. Reviewers treat them as different decisions rather than one amenity, and the business answers them publicly as two different rooms.

The strongest evidence it is all still running is that exchange. Someone asked in a review whether the theatre seats were better than the arcade seats, and the business replied that the theatres have more room. A shop that answers a question about its theatre seating has a theatre.

Consistently described as relaxed about who walks in. Several reviewers across several years mention going in crossdressed and being treated normally by the staff, and a couple mention coming as a couple. That is worth saying plainly, because the alternative in most of this directory is a shop where nobody will tell you anything.

The hours above are what the listing shows, not what the business publishes, and directories disagree about them. One has it open around the clock. Phone before a late trip.

Last checked 16 October 2026 · Arcade described in a review dated August 2026

There is a second Romantix in Council Bluffs, at 3216 1st Avenue, (712) 328-2673. Nothing in its listing or its reviews mentions booths or a theatre, so it is retail only and is not counted here.

Omaha itself

Doctor John’s at 1322 South 72nd Street is the adult shop in the city, and every listing for it describes a lingerie and novelty boutique. No booths, no arcade, no screen. It is in this page for a different reason, below.

If a search result tells you Omaha has an adult theatre, check which state the address is in. The Council Bluffs venues sit inside the Omaha metropolitan area and get filed under Omaha by directories that never look at the line on the map.

1965: the ordinance that criminalised jeans

On 9 July 1965 Sally Rand was arrested at Mickey’s Night Club at 15th and Harney. She was sixty-one and still doing the fan dance that had made her famous at the 1933 Chicago world’s fair. A patrolman watched the six minutes and reported that about one of them involved nudity.

The charge came from a 1941 city ordinance that banned appearing in a state of nudity and, in the same sentence, wearing the clothes of a person of the other sex. Those two things had sat together in Omaha law for twenty-four years, and the second half is what the ordinance was mostly used for: burlesque dancers, drag performers, and queer people in general.

Municipal Judge Eugene Leahy held it unconstitutional. His reasoning was not about Sally Rand at all. As written, he pointed out, the ordinance made a criminal of a girl wearing boy’s jeans.

Within a week the city prosecutor was charging dancers under a fresh ordinance, this one covering indecent, lewd or filthy acts, lewd words, lewd songs and obscene gestures. The city lost the law and kept the policy, which is the pattern the next section repeats.

2000: nine months for a videotape

John Haltom owned the Doctor John’s chain. In July 2000 a jury in Omaha convicted him on an obscenity charge over explicit videos sold at his store at 72nd and Pacific. He said the tapes were not obscene. Prosecutors said they went past community standards under Nebraska obscenity law, and the jury agreed.

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the sentence in the autumn of 2002, and on a Thursday in June 2003 Douglas County Judge Joseph Caniglia ordered him to serve it: nine months in jail and a thousand dollar fine. He was taken out in handcuffs.

This is three years after the internet had made the tapes themselves irrelevant, and it is the reason Omaha has an adult shop with no booths rather than an adult shop with booths. The cost of running the second kind here was demonstrated in public, at length, to everyone in the business.

Sources

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