BOSTON--On a night in late November 1976, a few days after a disappointing loss in The Game, about 16 football players followed a team dinner at the Harvard Club with an outing to the Naked-I lounge, where they spent the wee hours of the morning watching female exotic dancers bare their bodies for cash.

The players were heading to their cars after the strip club's 2 a.m. closing when prostitutes approached them and stole one student's wallet.

The students pursued the prostitutes only to run into their pimps--three men armed with knives who stabbed Thomas Lincoln' 77 in the abdomen and, after a chase, stabbed Andrew Puopolo ' 77 in the heart and lungs.

Puopolo arrived in the New England Medical Center emergency room just two minutes after the altercation, but he never regained consciousness and he died in the hospital after a 31-day coma.

In the wake of Puopolo's tragic murder, the mayor's office and the Boston Redevelopment Association (BRA) initiated and effort to completely rid the city of its X-rated businesses.

The Naked-I has since been bulldozed to make room for a parking lot, and a combination of economic forces and initiatives by the BRA are working together to spell the end of Boston's centers of sin.

Feeling the Squeeze

Pornography peddlers are restricted by Boston law to sell their wares only along a stretch of Washington Street between the Downtown Crossing and Chinatown subway stops, a section of the city known as the "Combat Zone."

When the Combat Zone was first designated as the city's headquarters for immoral pursuits in 1974, it was "sort of a no man's land" separated from most of the city by stretches of barren lots, according to Kelly Quinn, spokesperson for the BRA.

Times are changing, though, and the expansion of shopping centers near DowntownCrossing coupled with Chinatown business "growingby leaps and bounds" has put the squeeze on theCombat Zone from both sides, driving up rents forthe strip clubs and erotic shops, Quinn says.

"There are market factors at play," she says."Those building owners are finding other tenantswho can afford the higher rent."

Family Values?

Although Quinn says that Boston under MayorThomas M. Menino is making no effort to "curbthese people's [First Amendment] rights" anddenies any concerted effort by the city to removethe X-rated element from the Combat Zone, the BRAhas a history of conflicts with the sin industryon Washington Street.

In 1993, then-Mayor Raymond L. Flynn announceda comprehensive plan for terminating the remainingadult-entertainment centers in the Combat Zone.

BRA Director Paul Barrett told The BostonGlobe at the time that the city would "put thelast nail in the coffin of the Combat Zone,"predicting an end to the Naked-I Lounge andPilgrim Theatre, whose buildings have since beentorn down to accommodate a parking lot.

Barrett also predicted the closing of The GlassSlipper lounge, which, five years later, is stillopen for business.