I have read that Before it became a weird, garish tourist center with a massive store exclusively for idiots to buy trendy things, Times Square was not a place to take a visiting family. What is now the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. was even less appetizing than it is currently, because dudes were quietly jacking off in there. In fact, dudes were quietly jacking off a lot of places in Midtown back then.
As most famously seen in Taxi Driver, Times Square of the '70s was full of seedy porn theaters. When you paid to see a woman's dead eyes look into your own, it was at a peep show, not Madame Tussauds. On Broadway, instead of The Lion King, there was a pimp who also called himself the Lion King, but refused to sing.