Adult Movie Theatres in Wilkes-Barre

Pennsylvania · last checked 21 October 2026

Wilkes-Barre has the oldest adult cinema we have found anywhere. Cinema 309 opened on Casey Avenue on 10 February 1971 with an ordinary Hollywood picture, turned to adult films shortly afterwards, had a screening of Deep Throat stopped by the district attorney in September 1973, and is open this morning. Fifty-five years, one address, no gap in the record.

What is still open

Cinema 309

Theatre

560 Casey Avenue, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702

Opened: 10 February 1971
Screens: One, open floor, free to move around
Busiest: Friday night and Saturday after seven
Audience: Mostly bisexual and gay men, crossdressers and trans women
Couples: Do come, usually escorted
Hours: 8am to 11pm
Phone: (570) 851-0309

A real auditorium with a shop attached, not a corridor of booths. You pay, you go in, and you can walk anywhere. The clearest description is from December 2025: clean, action early in a stay of several hours, people comfortable enough to undress completely, and one complaint, that the programme was straight films only.

The house guidance from a regular in November 2022 is worth quoting flat: couples and single women do turn up, be respectful, no means no. Best times are Friday night and Saturday after seven. A man who escorted two women in January 2024 said they were treated well. A wife whose husband took her in March 2025 for a night with several men described it as polite, respectful and safe, and recommended it.

The honest warnings. A visitor in July 2021 found the lavatory had intermittent water and no soap and said so bluntly, and counted never more than seven or eight men present. Somebody in April 2023 reported the car park is enforced: thirty minutes and you are told to move or be towed. And somebody in January 2026 wrote the funniest review in this entire directory, about going in expecting a Marvel film.

Last checked 21 October 2026 · Visited and described on 5 May 2026; room described in detail on 26 December 2025

Adult Playtime Boutique

Booth arcade

585 Scott Street, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702

Has: Large video booths, with a trap door between them
House rule: You must stay in a booth
Hours: 10am to 10pm
Phone: (570) 829-0857

A mile from the cinema, and the booths are built differently. Large, with a hatch between neighbours rather than a hole, which the customer who described it in August 2026 calls a trap door. He likes to undress fully back there, and he states the one rule plainly: you have to stay in a booth.

That rule is the same rule as everywhere else on this site, and the Colorado Springs code says why it exists: an attendant has to be able to see every part of the premises a customer can reach. Nobody is watching the inside of a booth. They are watching the corridor.

The shop at the front is well regarded. A wife who came in with her husband in January 2022 was helped to pick an anniversary outfit by the owner.

Last checked 21 October 2026 · Back room described on 6 August 2026

Sixty miles south, in the Lehigh Valley, there are two more places with booths. They have their own page.

Fifty-five years

Read the rest of this directory and then read this list.

10 February 1971Opens, launched by Hallmark Releasing and Cinecom Theatres, with Doctors' Wives starring Dyan Cannon. A mainstream picture.
Soon afterTurns to adult films.
23 September 1973The district attorney halts a screening of Deep Throat.
2022The cinema record notes it is still showing adult films.
21 October 2026Open 8am to 11pm. Reviewed again in May 2026.

Fifty-five years at one address. Every other adult cinema in this directory has a closing date.

Two details are worth pulling out. The first is that it opened with Doctors’ Wives, a Columbia picture with Dyan Cannon and Gene Hackman. This was not built as a porn house. It was built as a cinema by a releasing company and a theatre chain in February 1971, and the programme changed under it, which is the same move as the art houses in Allentown and Lexington, except that here the building never changed hands into something respectable afterwards.

The second is 23 September 1973. The district attorney stopped a screening of Deep Throat. That is the same film, in roughly the same two-year window, that was seized by sheriff’s deputies at the Dishman in Spokane, opened the new adult screen at the Savoy in Grand Rapids on 30 March 1973, and cost a Syracuse cinema owner a fine of $26,878 rather than accept a deal to stop showing it.

One film, four cities, 1973. And of the four buildings, this is the only one still doing the same thing.

A contributor to the cinema record asked in May 2022 why it is called 309 and another answered that a map would tell him. Route 309 runs through this valley. We have not found the owner confirming it.

And the theatres on Public Square

The usual pattern for this site is that downtown had the adult cinemas and they all went. Here it is the other way round. The grand houses on Public Square stayed mainstream and the adult cinema was always out on Casey Avenue, and it is the one that survived.

The Comerford opened on 18 August 1938, became the Paramount in 1949 and is now the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts. The earlier Capitol, opened by the Comerford chain on 11 October 1920, was triplexed in 1972, closed in 1977 and demolished soon after. Neither shows up in anything we read as having gone to adult films.

The Kiss Theatre turns up in searches for this subject and does not belong in them. It opened in the Wyoming Valley Mall on 21 June 1972 under General Cinema and is a children’s performance venue now.

Sources

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