“Baby, Bang My Box”

by Elizabeth Keenan

My first night in Manhattan nearly ten years ago, my college roommate – who happened to be making a living stripping between classes - turned on our tiny TV to Channel 35 and proudly introduced me to the “Robin Byrd Show”. After staring in disbelief at the greased-up muscle guy in an orange banana hammock gyrating to “Karma Chameleon,” I realized that life as I knew it would be forever altered.

Robin Byrd graced the screen, fixed in front of a neon sign, a harem of scantily-clad, coked-up (looking) guests surrounding her, and in her husky, New York voice, she sang her anthem “Baby, Bang my Box” while fondling a woman with the largest breasts I’ve ever seen. It was seedy, absurd, and from my point of view, completely hysterical. After five minutes I had to change the channel as the hysterical was quickly becoming hopeless and depressing.

This was public access, Manhattan style.

Aside from the initial shock that naked people were allowed to dance on a basic cable channel, I had many questions. How could the Asian escort commercials be legal? Who was watching this show for anything but shock value? How did any of these people stripping on Public access think that this would be a good move for their careers?

And nearly a decade later, The Robin Byrd show is still going on, albeit in repeats. I went to the website, made some calls, and e-mailed; things were looking promising and then? Nothing. I wasn’t looking to write a critical expose. I only wanted to answer some longstanding curiosities.

Does Byrd only own one crocheted bikini that she wears every show or does she have seven identical ones? What’s with the white nail polish and the neon – were the eighties her favorite decade? And mostly, I wanted to know what the audition process for her show entails.

Parodied on Saturday Night Live, photographed by Richard Avedon for the New Yorker, and immortalized in the seminal skin flick “Debbie Does Dallas”, Robin Byrd has become a sex symbol for New York. Or, perhaps, the anti-sex symbol, depending on your point of view. Either way, she’s the salacious side of New York City that no longer exists around Time Square or at the entrances to the outerborough tunnels. Byrd is crass, gritty, perverted, and aggressive and only appears to have purchased one outfit in the past thirty years (as long as her show has been on). And she loves naked people who are looking for a future in the porn industry. Specifically, naked people who appear to be straight off the bus at the Port Authority.

So in lieu of a tell-all interview with Ms. Byrd herself, I found out as much as possible about her that I could from the Internet, which is not a lot, unfortunately. Shockingly (insert sarcasm here), her biography has yet to be written. Some of the info was surprising, like the fact that Byrd is adopted and never found out who her real parents were, that her real name is actually Robin Cohen and then some was completely unsurprising, like the fact that she got her start working with Al Goldstein on his cable access show, “Midnight Blue.” Digging deeper, I was happy to learn that Byrd is not just about the T&A.

According to her Wikipedia page:

“Byrd and Al Goldstein were in a long standing legal battle with Time Warner Cable (and its predecessor, Manhattan Cable), which wanted to scramble all adult-oriented content so that subscribers had to send in written requests to view it. In 1978, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck as unconstitutional the FCC mandatory access regulations under which Byrd and Goldstein had challenged the cable provider's actions, but the U.S. Supreme Court disposed of the case on other grounds. In 1995, the issue was again before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which upheld the regulations and ruled that Time Warner's requirement for written requests was a violation. As of 2006, The Robin Byrd Show continues to be aired unscrambled and uncut.”

Uncut is a nice way of putting it.

In addition to pioneering nude entertainment on public access, Byrd has become a regular fixture as a celebrity guest for gay pride, adult entertainment events and AIDS awareness. A civic minded porn star, Byrd may not represent the imaginings of  a “Sex and the City” character, but she’s much closer to the real deal Manhattan sex symbol. So, my crocheted bikini guestion will just have to remain one of the many mysteries of love and sex, I suppose.

(Image from lucasblogflickr's stream.)