They're sex shops, like the ones you could once find in Times Square. Sunset Video, Video City, Candy Hookah Love, Golden DVD-the names are different, but they're all the same inside.
Along on a stretch between 39th and 24th Streets, there are eight of these shops, a rate of nearly one per block. Underneath the Gowanus Expressway, in an area generously included in Sunset Park but really not much more than a detritus-strewn, completely forgotten, and rarely traversed stretch of 3rd Avenue, sit a curious collection of shops, glass windows and brick walls routinely rattled as 18-wheelers hurtle by just 10 feet above.
