Features

LOS ANGELES — In the vast, suburban expanse of the San Fernando Valley, one of the largest industries thrives quietly, hidden inside unmarked warehouses, walled estates and hidden studios. 

The region is home to most of America’s pornography industry — videos, Web-sites, phone sex businesses, adult toys and even the old-fashioned dirty magazine. 

While many parts of the nation’s economy are suffering, the past five years have been good for the adult industry, as new video and computer technology open the doors to hundreds of millions of potential customers here and around the world. 

It’s an industry estimated to be worth between $4 billion and $10 billion annually. 

“The adult industry doesn’t follow the same ups and downs that other businesses do,” said Paul Fishbein, publisher of Adult Video News, the trade paper of the adult industry. “It still grows every year in terms of sales and rental volume.” 

The valley is home to some of the biggest names in the movie business — Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios. 

But the 354 square miles of tract homes, strip centers and freeways on the north side of the Hollywood Hills also hosts some less famous names in the industry — Vivid Entertainment, VCA, Wicked Pictures and dozens of other studios churning out X-rated DVDs and videos. 

Pornography is just a small part of Southern California’s entertainment industry, but its long history, growing revenues and the steady employment prospects it provides have colored the valley’s reputation. 

A longshot proposal on Los Angeles’ November ballot would make the San Fernando Valley its own city. While most polls give it little chance of passing, the initiative has given rise to debate over what a new city would be called. The “San Pornando Valley” is one popular, tongue-in cheek suggestion. 

On a set in Chatsworth recently, porn actresses named Dee and Jordan Haze, a married mother from Long Beach, killed time tossing around possible names of a separate valley city. 

“What about Pornopolis?” Haze said. “Or Babylon?” 

Dee (there are no real names in the porn industry) shook her long, black hair. 

“It has to be Pornoville,” she said. “That’s what everybody calls it already.” 

One-liners aside, the industry has come into its own in recent years and is thriving despite the economic malaise across the rest of the country. 

“Twenty years ago, you had people sneaking into those little theaters. That’s all changed with technology,” said Bill Asher, president of Vivid Entertainment. “We’ve gone from a market of hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions.” 

The film, television and Web-based products produced by Vivid alone grossed $1 billion in retail sales last year, he said. A 1998 study by Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., estimated that the industry generates $10 billion a year. 

But in a business where few companies are public and new providers blossom like wildflowers, real numbers are hard to come by. 

“It’s hard to put a dollar figure to it because we don’t see many hard revenue numbers,” said Michael Goodman, an entertainment industry analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. “But it is a very profitable business and pretty recession proof.” 

Sales and rentals of adult videos produced by American companies was a $4 billion business last year, Fishbein said, based on a survey of thousands of video stores and overall sales figures from the Video Software Dealers Association. 

That growth has produced dozens of large and small valley studios producing hundreds of new titles each year and created a star-making machinery much like the old Hollywood studios.