The general outline of the myth was clear: Years ago, health inspectors had swarmed a Miami Subs on West 49th Street in Hialeah after discovering that a porn video had been filmed in the food prep area, forcing the place to close for good. I had a laugh and didn't think twice about it until later that week, when I saw that Miami filmmaker Billy Corben had reshared the same chisme on his Twitter account. The post had garnered more than 100 retweets and dozens of amused comments, which suggested to me that maybe this story was worth investigating after all. Being the serious journalist that I am, I went to look up some porn.
Unsure of what to type into Google, I went with the title in the screenshot Corben had posted: "Fast Food S**t F***ed Behind the Counter." It didn't take long to find the video. The screen grab was from PornHub, though the video was watermarked with the website URL of Industry Invaders. More Googling revealed that the company's claim to fame was filming actors having sex in public places and well-known private establishments. There wasn't much else available about the site except for a 2013 interview with the adult entertainment news outlet AVN. In it, the founder of Industry Invaders, who went simply by Steve O., said his company had scenes "up and down the streets of Miami Beach, restaurants, rooftops, and even at the immigration office."Miami Subs in Hialeah shut down after @IndustryInvader shoots porn movie inside #BecauseMiami h/t @hialeahlove1925 pic.twitter.com/ihZMZ9x0Kt
— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) December 18, 2019
My interest was piqued, and I resolved to figure out what actually happened that fateful day at Miami Subs. But first I had to watch the thing.
In the Miami Subs video, a porn star by the name of Jayla Foxx plays the role of an overeager employee assisting a hungry customer. The video is shot from the point of view of a man who pulls into the restaurant's drive-thru early one morning while looking for eggs and bacon. Foxx's voice sounds grainy through the drive-thru speaker. She apologizes — Miami Subs doesn't serve breakfast. The restaurant is technically not open yet, but Foxx says he should come inside anyway. He does, and it doesn't take long for the fireworks to start.
Foxx promises to make a bacon sandwich for the man, who leaves to use the restroom. The camera cuts off for a moment, and when it returns, we find ourselves looking at Foxx bent over while she's searching beneath a metal counter for some bacon (Why doesn't she just look in the fridge?) She's still wearing the same orange polo and baseball cap, except — gasp — her pants have somehow gone missing. In their place is a pair of thin blue panties. She begins to gently twerk for the camera as she continues to "look for bacon," but she doesn't find any. That's OK, the man assures her.
"I sure can pick breakfast spots," he says. This screenwriting blows, I jot down in my reporter's notebook.
When the camera jumps again, Foxx is bottomless. It jumps once more, and now the customer, too, is naked. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
As for me, I began swiveling my head like a paranoid barn owl. A few coworkers knew I was looking into the story, but there was still a good chance someone not in-the-know might look over my shoulder and catch me fastidiously watching fast-food sex on company time. I had loaded the video onto my phone (private browsing, of course) because I thought it would be strange to do so on my work computer even if it was for an article. Is there really such a thing as professional porn browsing? There must have been, if health officials had truly busted the place for making a porno there. Surely, they must've watched it to confirm it was the right place. And what about that bust? If the restaurant was really shuttered because of the video, there must be some record of it.
A public information request to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation turned up one emergency suspension of license and closure for the infamous Hialeah sub shop. During a routine inspection in November 2012, a state health official found 30 live cockroaches scrambling inside a cooler by the food preparation area. The Miami Subs was shut down until a second inspection a few days later, which the restaurant somehow passed without issue. The owner was ordered to pay a fine of $400, and that was that. The report contained no mention of Industry Invaders, Jayla Foxx, or any kind of porn being shot on the premises.
My next move was to check Florida's database of corporations and limited liability companies. From the health inspector's report, I knew this particular Miami Subs was being run by an entity called Happy Holidays Food and Beverage Inc. The company was created in 2006 and registered at 1600 W. 49th St. in Hialeah — the same address as the Miami Subs from the health report. Happy Holidays Food and Beverage was managed by two men with Hollywood addresses — Antony Kallas and Erwin Collado — but went inactive in late 2014. Still nothing about porn.
I tracked down old contact information for Kallas and Collado, crossed my fingers, and sent them an email. At this point, I began to wonder if I even had the right restaurant; this wouldn't be the first salacious internet rumor that got major details wrong, after all. A week passed and I still hadn't heard back. Unwilling to admit I might have wasted several hours on a porn story that didn't pan out, I decided it was time to visit this shuttered Miami Subs shop in person.
Hialeah traffic is hell, and the unreasonably hot February sun beat against my hands and face like a slap from a chancla. My phone, which was hooked up to my car's auxiliary cable, was playing bossa nova, and I promised myself a cafecito as a reward for this ill-conceived trip after almost getting rear-ended for the second time. Google Maps said I had arrived at my destination, so I quickly pulled up my private browser to find the video.
The wait to turn left on 16th Avenue from West 49th Street took an eternity. On the other side of the intersection, a man wearing a straw hat went from car to car to sell fruit. I watched him for a while. Finally, the cars in front of me began to move, but the video somehow still hadn't loaded as I cut across the street. The Miami Subs stood on the corner looking beaten and brittle, like it might crumble if you stared at it too long. I pulled directly in front of the restaurant and sat in my idling car.
I turned up the A/C and impatiently tapped my foot on the brake while grumbling to myself about traffic, the damn heat, and Verizon's good-for-nothing cell service. My gripes were cut short by a sudden flash of movement to my right. A parking lot security guard in a shiny new golf cart was waving at me. She motioned for me to lower my window. I felt the heat slip into my car as I obeyed.
"Excuse me. What you are doing? This place is closed," she said, wearing a puzzled look above a navy blue uniform. Do I go with the truth? I thought. Do I lie? Oh, what the hell.
"I'm a reporter," I said. "I'm writing a story on an old porno shoot here."
I told her everything. And in the middle of my awkward explanation, my phone, which was still hooked up to the aux cord, picked then of all moments to play the porno. I fumbled to pause it and almost dropped my phone, which earned me a strange look from the guard. Her expression went from incredulous to shocked and then bemused as I finished filling her in. She responded that she had never heard of the urban legend, but she did have it on good word that a Chick-fil-A would be opening there in the near future. I asked her how she knew, but she wouldn't say.
"That's enough scoops for you, Mr. Reporter," she said. "You're going to have to park your car in the parking lot if you're going to stay." And then she was gone, driving off to continue her rounds of the parking lot.
Now that was something I could sink my teeth into. The thought of the Lord's chicken being cooked in the Devil's kitchen was enough to make a nun faint and a health inspector break out in hives. At the very least, it was ironic enough to get some clicks on my story. So I pressed on.
I moved my car to the parking lot on the side of the building as the guard had instructed and got out to walk around. Just like the man in the porn video, I began at the drive-thru menu, or at least where it used to be. All that remains now is a naked metal pole. For a moment, I stood there looking at the building, the sprawling intersection behind me, and the barely buffered video on my phone, which I had to cuff with my hand to see because the sun was so bright. There was no doubt about it — this was the place. I snapped a few photos before following the drive-thru loop to the first window.
Walking while keeping my eyes glued to the brick exterior, I almost tripped over a stack of cardboard boxes. They were filled with fruit — guava, limes, and oranges, from the looks of it. It appeared to be the fruit seller's stash. As I made my way up the drive-thru, a man walking on the sidewalk struck up a conversation. It was the fruit seller, carrying his goods in light-green sacks. Under a straw hat, his brown eyes twinkled, and under those, a web of deep-set wrinkles suggested today wasn't his first day standing under the hot sun.
"You thinking of buying the place?" the vendedor asked in Spanish. "It's about time. This place is ugly. It needs a change."
I told him I wasn't exactly interested in buying but asked if he knew why the restaurant had closed.
"Quebró," he said matter-of-factly. It had gone bankrupt. He said he's been selling fruit on that corner for seven years and proudly flashed a vendor's license hanging from a lanyard around his neck. We walked on in silence for a moment.
"What do you know about a porn video shot here?" I asked him in Spanish.
The man snapped his head toward me, his lips puckered as if he had just taken a bite out of one of the limes in his sack. "It's not true," he said. "That never happened here." But had he heard of the rumors? He nodded and then assured me once again those rumors were false. He said he used to know one of the owners of the Miami Subs, but he wouldn't say which one. "It went bankrupt. That's all there is to it."
I considered showing him the now-loaded porn video but decided against it. He had a sweet, grandfatherly air, and I just didn't have it in me to break his heart.
Back at the office, I tried to fill in the gaps in the timeline. I knew the restaurant was open at least until December 2012 and that the company running it had shut down in late 2014. But when and why did the restaurant close? And more important, when was the porn video shot? Jayla Foxx's viral performance happened in a restaurant outfitted with grills, cabinets, and supplies — the fast-food bells and whistles one would assume would be stripped and resold shortly after the place was shuttered.
I shot off more email requests to Miami Subs' corporate office and Chick-fil-A. If the past owners of the restaurant wouldn't talk to me, maybe Foxx and Industry Invaders would.
I easily found Foxx on social media. A Facebook message to her fan page received no answer, and an email bounced back. I tried navigating the Industry Invaders site for a while before noticing it was structured to make getting in touch with the owners as difficult as possible. There was an option to contact a third party regarding billing issues and then, hidden at the bottom of a page on legally required record-keeping, an email address. Unfortunately, my email bounced back from that one too.
Flummoxed, I scoured Google and LinkedIn for anyone connected to the company. My searching led me back to the AVN interview with the enigmatic founder, Steve O. I'm not sure how I missed it the first time, but there was a Gmail address posted at the bottom of the article. I typed up one more email and launched the Hail Mary. This time, it worked.
Responding a few hours later was a person I can only presume was Steve O., asking who sent me and why I wanted the information. We traded another round of emails before he said he would be willing to answer some questions about the video — but only on the condition that New Times include links to his website. No can do, I told him, to which he responded with a strange statement saying Industry Invaders "can't verify where the scene was actually shot." Thanks for nothing, Steve.
Clarity finally came in a message from Miami Subs marketing director Jackie Maceda. It wasn't roaches that got the place closed, and it certainly wasn't porn. It was because the rent was too damn high.
"The actual reason the Hialeah location closed is the landlord would not extend the lease at a reasonable rate," Maceda said. "The dramatic increase made it cost-prohibitive for the franchisee to continue in operation."
According to Maceda, the Hialeah location closed in August 2013. The earliest posting of the Miami Subs video I could find on the Industry Invaders site was in May 2014. Maceda said corporate and the franchisee had no idea the porn shoot had happened, presumably until it went viral.
"[It's] not something we would ever allow or condone, and corrective measures were taken once it was discovered," Maceda said. She did not elaborate on what corrective measures were taken.
How exactly Industry Invaders gained access to the restaurant, we might never know. Foxx, a Miami native, talked about the video in an interview with the porn blog Die-Screaming. She said it had "set the bar" for her career but didn't offer more details about how it was made.
As for the prospect of Chick-fil-A replacing the sinful sub shop, it seems the security guard had good intel. A spokesperson for the chicken restaurant — which maintains a Christian philosophy inherited from its founder, who was a devout Baptist — said it's still early in the process but the company is "happy to share that we are actively pursuing new locations in the Hialeah area."
Unfortunately, the spokesperson didn't have anything to say about the porno shot on the property. That's a pity, because New Times was dying to know if Chick-fil-A might bring out a minister to bless the space before beginning construction. They would do well to splash extra holy water in the food prep area.
