sarettah
01-24-2005, 10:44 PM
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml...&storyID=659865 (http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=reutersEdgeNews&storyID=659865)
Fallen porn king rebuilds with bagels
Mon Jan 24, 2005 04:14 PM GMT
By John Zawadzinski
NEW YORK (Reuters) - He spent a lifetime peddling smut and once had an $11 million (5.9 billion pound) fortune, but after losing everything and becoming just another homeless New Yorker, Al Goldstein is now happy pushing bagels instead of porn.
Goldstein, a founding father of America's porn industry, now hustles bagels and white fish at a New York-based deli and catering establishment.
"I've always loved food more than sex, so this is really my first love," said Goldstein, 69, now a cold-calling salesman for New York City Bagels. "I've gone from broads to bagels."
Goldstein has good reason to feel good about his new career, however mundane, after becoming homeless last year when the porn empire he began building in 1968 collapsed.
The former owner of Milky Way Productions, home of Screw magazine and the now defunct X-rated cult show "Midnight Blue," went bankrupt over a year ago after amassing an $11 million fortune. Screw once sold over 140,000 copies weekly and was a cash cow thanks to ads for call girls and prostitutes before it fell victim to Internet porn and sagging circulation.
"The Internet made pornography available for free and I couldn't compete," said Goldstein, who now lives on Staten Island, with his fifth wife, Christine, 28.
Those he befriended in the porn business, a billion-dollar industry he helped pioneer, turned their backs to him. Even his own son, Jordan, a Harvard graduate who works for a New York-based law firm, refuses to speak to him.
"My life has turned to crap," Goldstein said. "To go from a being a millionaire and then living in a homeless shelter and being rejecting by 98 percent of your friends is horrendous, but I'm a survivor."
...............................................
"I'm in a business that to me, is more dynamic than pornography," he said. "I could do many things, but people who typecast me as just a pornographer, they're just stupid
Fallen porn king rebuilds with bagels
Mon Jan 24, 2005 04:14 PM GMT
By John Zawadzinski
NEW YORK (Reuters) - He spent a lifetime peddling smut and once had an $11 million (5.9 billion pound) fortune, but after losing everything and becoming just another homeless New Yorker, Al Goldstein is now happy pushing bagels instead of porn.
Goldstein, a founding father of America's porn industry, now hustles bagels and white fish at a New York-based deli and catering establishment.
"I've always loved food more than sex, so this is really my first love," said Goldstein, 69, now a cold-calling salesman for New York City Bagels. "I've gone from broads to bagels."
Goldstein has good reason to feel good about his new career, however mundane, after becoming homeless last year when the porn empire he began building in 1968 collapsed.
The former owner of Milky Way Productions, home of Screw magazine and the now defunct X-rated cult show "Midnight Blue," went bankrupt over a year ago after amassing an $11 million fortune. Screw once sold over 140,000 copies weekly and was a cash cow thanks to ads for call girls and prostitutes before it fell victim to Internet porn and sagging circulation.
"The Internet made pornography available for free and I couldn't compete," said Goldstein, who now lives on Staten Island, with his fifth wife, Christine, 28.
Those he befriended in the porn business, a billion-dollar industry he helped pioneer, turned their backs to him. Even his own son, Jordan, a Harvard graduate who works for a New York-based law firm, refuses to speak to him.
"My life has turned to crap," Goldstein said. "To go from a being a millionaire and then living in a homeless shelter and being rejecting by 98 percent of your friends is horrendous, but I'm a survivor."
...............................................
"I'm in a business that to me, is more dynamic than pornography," he said. "I could do many things, but people who typecast me as just a pornographer, they're just stupid