A miniature version of the infamous ‘Peep World’  porn shop, shown with a one-dollar-bill—how appropriate—to show scale.
 
Brooklyn native, artist Alan Wolfson was riding the subway into his beloved city by the time he was only ten-years-old and has strong recollections of what the city that never sleeps looked like back in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Wolfson says he never started out wanting to be an artist, in 1979 he moved to Los Angeles with the hope of cutting his teeth designing miniature effects for films. There, thanks to a bit of luck and good timing, a friend of Wolfson’s introduced him to an art dealer. A year later, Wolfson would showcase ten of his remarkably detailed 1/2-scale replicas that would launch his nearly 40-year career.
 

Take a peek inside ‘Peep World’ and their “Private Fantasy Booths.”
 
So painstakingly detailed are Wolfson’s tiny structures that it almost appears that they had once been inhabited by small sleazeballs or strippers. Many of Wolfson’s works are creative fictional mashups that he dreamed up—however some are modeled after real, seedy New York landmarks. Such as “Peep World,” the long-running porn theater and shop (near Madison Square Garden) that finally closed its doors in 2012. Thanks to Wolfson, we can still take a peek inside “Peep World” where the racks are still lined with filthy magazines, or leer inside one of the joint’s “Private Fantasy Booths.” You can practically smell the Pine Sol.

Many more of Wolfson’s tiny, sometimes fictional homages to a lost New York, follow.
 

A look at Peep World’s dirty magazine and DVD racks.
 

A back room at ‘Peep World.’
 

A tiny replica of the “Tube Bar” in Jersey City. You may recall that the owner of the Tube, Louis “Red” Deutsch, was the subject of relentless prank calls back in the 1970s by the duo of John Elmo and Jim Davidson also known as ‘The BBB’).
 

 

A fictional “Times Square-esque” corner.
 

The Rialto Cinema with its marquee advertising ‘Clockwork Orange’ (1992).
 

“Non-Stop Action” a fictional peep show/strip club in modeled after a long-gone spot in Times Square.
 

Times Square hotel room, (1982).
 

An occupied room at the Hotel St. George.
 

 

The interior of a New York city subway car.
 

Canal Street subway stop (pictured with a quarter to show scale).

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
I’m with the Band(s): Intimate photographs of punk legends at CBGBs