If you're inclined to such things - and the magnitude of the multibillion-dollar adult-entertainment industry says chances are good you are - the most likely (and publishable) scenarios go something like this:

Rummage the Internet's buffet of sexual content for a saucy film clip. Or pick up the phone and order porn straight to your TV. If you can muster it, maybe head to the adult novelty emporium just off the highway and slink back with a couple of DVDs.

And so it goes, sneaking a naughty peek in this tech-driven era of instant gratification. Get exactly what you want when you want it: lightning-quick, anonymous delivery of adult entertainment.

Which is what makes the Art Cinema in Hartford sort of quaint, if such a word can be used to describe a XXX movie theater.

"We're one of the few left in the entire United States," says owner Ernie Grecula Jr. He leans over the concession stand selling $10 tickets to the trickle of customers this recent Friday afternoon. Today's feature: "Rich Girls Gone Bad."

But given such easy, at-home access to pornography today, just how good can business be at the Franklin Avenue cinema?

"Slow. Very slow," he concedes. Maybe half a dozen patrons sit cloaked in the theater's darkness. In the span of an hour, only three others will join them. Some are sheepish. But the regulars, they smile and wave a hello. They plunk down their cash and shuffle off, lost behind the distinctive moaning that spills from the single-screen auditorium.

His customers are overwhelmingly male, and they tend to be middle-aged and older. Some are buttoned-up professionals. Some are down on their luck. But Grecula doesn't ask them questions. And they don't offer explanations. But from what he sees, and those he's come to know, he's got some idea why they are customers. They don't have the technology at home. Or their wives don't approve. Some, he says, just like the experience of watching a sex flick in a public theater.

"You know how you like to go to the movies to get a crowd reaction? I don't know if it's the same here," he says.

Don't misunderstand. Grecula runs a clean business. There are house rules, and by and large his patrons follow them. Still, he admits, "As much as I like to think I run a tight ship, I know some things go on."

During two visits to the theater, only one couple coyly stops in. It used to be the 600-seat theater was packed with couples. And young people. They'd come from the local colleges with friends, their little brown student discount cards at the ready.

But that was in the heady heyday of the 1970s, when "Deep Throat" launched adult film into the mainstream, and the neighborhood XXX-theater was the only place to get a peek.

"When I was in high school," says Grecula, 57, "everybody knew the Art Cinema. Everybody knew who we were, where we were. The younger generation has no idea we're here."

It's a rainy Friday. Business should be better today.

But such is the reality of operating an adult theater in a new kind of heyday, an electronic one. For better or worse, Grecula's theater is a dying breed, by several counts one of the last of its kind in New England. Across the country, others have been shuttered or knocked down, squeezed out of business by some combination of the mammoth adult video market, the sprawl of the Internet and the clench of local zoning laws.

About 1,500 adult theaters operated in the late 1970s, a figure cited in "Inside Deep Throat," the 2005 documentary about the film's making and its cultural consequences. With the advent of VHS, that number fell to 250 by 1990. Industry and movie theater historians interviewed for this story put that figure somewhere at between 50 and 100 today.

"It's kind of a shame," says Mark Kernes, senior editor of the monthly trade magazine Adult Video News. "Theaters, let's face it, are kind of the choice of last resort because most people would like to watch sexual material with some sort of privacy. PeeWee Herman aside, obviously."

Last year, Americans spent $4.28 billion in sales and rentals of adult videos and DVDs, Kernes says. Internet video-on-demand accounted for $800 million of that.

"Frankly, it's always surprising to hear when they're still open. They are a rare breed in 2006," says Ross Melnick, co-founder of Cinema Treasures, a non-profit group dedicated to movie theater history and preservation. "Their day has definitely come and gone. And those that are still around are somehow making it work."

Somehow, Grecula agrees.

He owns the building, bought by his father, Ernie Sr., in the late 1960s. But he says Hartford's tax rate is killing him. The cost to heat and cool the place is skyrocketing. And the 87-year-old theater needs some serious patching up.

Then there's ticket sales. Consider this: What the cinema used to sell in one day in the 1970s, when tickets were $2, it now does in two weeks, at $10 a head.

"People are amazed at that. They say, `How can you stay open?" says Grecula. "Personally, I'm really surprised we've been able to keep our doors open. I don't know how sometimes."

Right about now's a good time to throw out any preconceived notions of Grecula and his cinema. It's a theater that shows movies of people having sex. There's no getting around it. But aside from the video projected on-screen, there's nothing blatantly sexual happening inside the musky theater, at least on these recent visits. Sure, the coy couple seem suspiciously startled when a visitor enters, guided by a flashlight.

But, says one longtime patron who asks that his name not be used, "The Art is unique. First of all, it's clean. And I will tell you, I've been in other places that, quite honestly, the health department should close."

Here, says the man, 50, "If someone tries to be forward, the clientele is so regular that either they'll say something to the person themselves or they'll tell management that someone's being inappropriate. If anyone's out of line, Ernie asks them to leave and informs them they're not welcome in the future."

With his silvering hair, collared shirt, gentle demeanor and easy laugh, Grecula looks every bit the family man and father of four that he is. He's set this night to attend his 40th Canton High School reunion, which he helped plan. He beams over photos of his kids, the youngest his 9-month-old son, the oldest his 19-year-old daughter. He's just another local businessman along this busy stretch of shops. Only his is the business of showing adult movies.

That wasn't the plan. Ernie Grecula Sr. was a film enthusiast, who worked in theaters since his youth. He bought the cinema, the former Rialto, in the late 1960s, an art house that made its mark showing European films. But when the crush of suburban multiplexes coincided with the sexual revolution, when the elder Grecula saw sales jump with racier fare, the direction became clear. In a region dotted with independent, single-screen theaters, his was the first to go X-rated.

"We were sort of forced into this little segment of, if you can still call it, the movie industry," Grecula Jr. says. His father was never fond of the adult fare, and it seems his son isn't either. The elder Grecula died in 2002 at 87. His son took over the business.

Both Greculas fantasized about a return to the mainstream. But it couldn't work. They can't stand up to the blockbuster theaters. The smaller independent houses have a grip on the art niche. Second-run theaters have proven failures both in Hartford and across the country. And attempts at playing ethnic films, like Grecula did recently with a local Indian community group, never got off the ground.

On a recent night after closing, Grecula stands on the balcony and scans the dim theater. The ceiling is peeling. Some of the older seat cushions are mended with duct tape.

"I would love to have a revival-type theater here. Show the classics on the big screen the way they were meant to be shown," he says. "I just don't think Hartford would support it."

Combine the two genres? He shakes his head. "The theater has a stigma, and I think those that attend one wouldn't attend the other," he says. "Either you clean the theater up and get rid of the stigma of the adult theater, or you just go with the adult theater."

Like his father, Grecula has made peace with the latter. He could try what many adult theaters have done and expand as a novelty and video store. But Hartford is already well-served with places like the Penthouse Boutique off of I-91. Besides, it'd be like launching a new business.

"This is what we do," Grecula says.

Aside from a crackdown in the 1960s, when police charged his father with indecent and immoral exhibition of a film (a charge he fought and won), the Art has had a relatively low-key existence.

"We really don't hear much about anything going on over there," says Sean Arena, chairman of the South Green Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, which encompasses Grecula's block. "We've never had a problem. People go in, see their flick and they're out."

And who are those people? They're more diverse than you'd expect. Sketchier characters come in, sure. But so do men in suits who pull up in fancy cars.

"If you were to walk in when the theater opens at 1 o'clock, you'd swear you were at the retirement center," says the 50-year-old anonymous patron, a married man in middle-management at a high-tech company.

Civic leaders. Doctors. Lawyers. They all come in.

"I don't want to mislead you. There are some low-lifes, too."

Forgive them all if they'd rather not explain to a reporter the draw of viewing these films in public. But our anonymous patron obliges.

"I like history. And one of the things that's key with Americana is old theaters." As he's traveled and lived across the country, he's seen it all. He likes the Art for its cleanliness (someone comes in to clean after hours) and for its quality of offerings. "Ernie goes out of his way not to show raunchy movies. He goes after [French adult director] Mark Dorsel. The type where the people in it are beautiful, the type that would be a couples movie."

Sure, but couldn't he just watch it at home?

"There's a human element that's missing," says the man, who sometimes watches adult films with his wife at home. "Put aside the type of movie for a minute. It's the difference between watching a DVD in your house and going to a movie theater."

But he keeps returning to this: The main thing drawing him in is the affable Grecula. They've become friendly. He likes to stop in for a chat over a coffee or slice of pizza.

It may be the cinematic equivalent of professing to read Playboy for its articles. But there you have it.

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