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An old industry is in deep recession

TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a private flat with other "mature ladies". She does two or three jobs a day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: "If I hadn't, I wouldn't still be open." She says that she can now make more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can turning tricks.

George McCoy, who runs a website reviewing over 5,000 massage parlours and individuals, says that many are struggling. Sex workers tell him they have been forced to hold down prices. Like other businesses, massage parlours and private flats are suffering from rising rents and energy costs. Even Mr McCoy's website is under the cosh: visitor numbers are down by a third.

In part, this reflects the sluggish economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4% lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer, says paying for sex is a luxury: "Food is more important; the mortgage is more important; petrol is more important." She is offering discounts out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30) than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are to have sex.

The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities. "It's stupidly competitive right now," she laments. More people are entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them offering more for less.

Parts of the sex trade are comparatively hale. At the top end of the market, Marie, another escort in Scotland, says custom has not dried up. Girls increasingly report requests for discounts, she says. But those who lower their prices sometimes swiftly raise them again, deterred by the kind of customer who is attracted to bargains. The market for dominatrices is holding up well, too, according to Mr McCoy. Some of the cheapest massage parlours, such as Club 25 in Sheffield (the price is in the name), attractive to the skint, are busy. Some newcomers are offering cut-price services such as webcams and phone sex.

On the streets, where prices are lowest and life is harshest, things are more desperate. Georgina Perry, the service manager for Open Doors, an NHS centre in east London that offers health services to sex workers, says that in the past few years some former prostitutes who had found low-paid work, for example as cleaners, have returned to the sex trade as other jobs have become harder to find. The women are back on the streets, charging £20 at most.

Many of these changes reflect broader trends in Britain's unstable, part-time economy. But the danger in sex work is greater than in other industries. Newcomers advertising on websites include photos of their faces, their e-mail addresses and offers of risky services in their profiles, says Sophie, the Edinburgh escort, aghast. Moving around in search of clients, prostitutes must deal with unfamiliar and potentially dangerous men. Since July 310 have contacted Ugly Mugs, a scheme that encourages sex workers to report violence, although only around a quarter went to the police. Sex workers are taking greater risks for smaller returns.

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Zurich's new drive-in brothels opened earlier this week and they already raised a few eyebrows.

Across Europe there does seem to be a growing trend for sex drive-ins, however, with a widespread belief that it gets prostitution off the streets and into a safer environment, with similar schemes in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.

One of the most unusual aspects of the Zurich brothel — which are being referred to as "sex boxes" in Swiss media— are the signs being used at the facility, which cater both to Switzerland's multilingual society (four official languages) and perhaps an odd sense of humor.

Those looking to find the sex boxes will have to look for a discreet "red umbrella," and follow those signs to a former industrial zone where the nine boxes appear. According to Meritall Mir of GlobalPost, the customers will then"drive up one at a time along a lane reminiscent of fast-food drive-thrus" between the hours of 7pm and 5am.

Other signs pointing the way to the sex boxes show a car with a woman standing next to it. It is not clear if male prostitutes will also be allowed at the site:

"Along the way, they’ll negotiate fees and services with one of up to 40 sex workers," Mir continues. "Once an agreement is reached, they’ll join the prostitutes in a car-wash style box to complete the transaction."

The prostitutes themselves use a ticketing machine to pay a "stand fee" for the brothel's facilities. They pay this at a ticketing machine:

The customer and the prostitute then drive to a covered area where they complete the transaction. The poster on the wall behind is not an instructional sign but a reminder to use condoms:

There are a variety of rules to keep the situation at the "sex boxes" safe and sanitary. These are explained in the sign below.

We've done our best to translate (going right to left then working down):

• No one under the age of eighteen.
• Only cars can use the facility — no motorbikes, people on foot, or bicycles.
• Just one client at a time.
• Use the facilities provided, not the outdoor space.
• Again, do not use the outdoor space.
• Do not go off facility grounds
• Throw away your trash.
• No photography, filming, or recording (or singing, perhaps).

It may all seem a little strange but the logic is understandable — keeping prostitution out of Zurich city center and creating a safer environment for prostitutes, who will also have access to things like showers, a small kitchen, and an area to rest.

There are some doubts, however, that the prostitutes and their customers will use the facility — which is said to have cost 2.1 million Swiss francs ($2.2 million) to build and 700,000 Swiss francs ($750,000) a year to operate.

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Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof went on Bloomberg TV's Market Makers today to decry Craiglist and sum up the state of American prostitution.

Hof was a mainstay on "Cathouse," an HBO documentary series on his Moonlight BunnyRanch brothel.

Prostitution isn't recession-proof, but Hof — who owns seven legally-operated brothels — said he's actually seen an uptick in business over the past few years.

In fact, business is so good Hof now wants an IPO. "I'm buying every brothel I can and want to turn it into a public company," Hof said. "It's going to be a great, successful public company."

In the colorful interview, Hof also said that Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer would have had better luck keeping their infidelities secret if they chose his establishment.

Watch the interview at Bloomberg.com.

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The University of Vermont police department is investigating whether a group of UVM students solicited prostitution from an "attractive older woman" via a a Craigslist ad, according to the Burlington Free Press.

Titled "UVM seniors seek a 'House MILF,'" the ad read, "We are a group of 10 men who all are seniors at UVM and are looking for an attractive older woman to come and cook for us every few days. In exchange she gets her pick of the men of the house to have."

The ad went on to list the "requirements" for the position: "be a woman older than 25 who can cook and would like to enjoy some hot sex with a number of fit 20 somethings. Hopefully you can come by every week for a meal and some play time."

UVM police told the Free Press that it is unclear whether the ad was legitimate or a prank, but a detective has been assigned to investigate any criminal activity, including solicitation.

The ad was originally posted on Friday and has since been removed from Craigslist. A screenshot is posted below, courtesy of BroBible:

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An Oregon-based fund-of-funds manager was one of nine men arrested in a prostitution sting last week.  

The Oregonian's Fenit Nirappil reports that police in the city of Tigard posted advertisements online for paid sex and undercover officers responded to calls from those ads.  The police officers then arranged for a meet up at an area hotel where they arrested the men last Thursday, the report said.  

James Allan Bisenius, 62, who runs Portland-based ~$4 billion fund of funds Common Sense Investment Management, was one of those named in The Oregonian's report, which cites police.   

According to the Portland Business Journal's Matthew Kish, both Bisenius and Common Sense Investment Management keep a low profile. 

Its website is a single page. It’s located in a nondescript office park off Interstate 5 in Southwest Portland, not a glass tower in Greenwich, Conn. Founder James Bisenius lives in Sherwood and doesn’t grace society pages or preside over art gallery openings. A newspaper archives search turns up only a handful of press mentions about the firm and not a single feature article. Some local financial professionals don’t even know it exists.

The internet reveals a little bit more about Bisenius

In 2004, Bisenius, who is from Sherwood, OR, donated $22,000 in support of Measure 36, an initiative defining marriage in the Oregon Constitution as as a union of one man and one woman, according to FollowTheMoney.org. 

Records show that Bisenius owns two farms — Antone Ranch in Mitchell, OR and Bizzy B Seven in Sherwood, OR. Below is a photo of Antone Ranch. 

Oregon Wild, which aims to protect and restore the state's wildlands/wildlife, recognized Bisenius and his wife Janet for donating at the "public lands level" during the fiscal year 2010. 

Bisenius' firm sent us this statement:

Common Sense Investment Management’s President Dean Derrah

For more than two decades, Common Sense Investment Management (CSIM) has brought superior risk adjusted returns to our investors and clients. CSIM’s success is about a team of committed and driven investment professionals; not one individual. Jim Bisenius’ recent personal transgression bears no reflection on this outstanding team of professionals or the quality of portfolio management at CSIM. 

Going forward, the firm’s partners have decided that Jim will remain in his role as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer and he will deal with this recent event as the personal matter that it is. Our investment process and decision making will continue to be made by our investment committee, which is comprised of our President, four Portfolio Managers, Director of Operational Due Diligence, Director of Risk Management and myself.  All management decisions continue to be made by the management team.  We look forward to building on CSIM’s successful 22-year track record and creating value for our investors.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and prominent Republican donor, has lost a $60 million libel lawsuit in which he claimed a Democratic group spread a false accusation that he had condoned prostitution in his casinos in Macau.

At issue was an article published on July 3, 2012 by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) on its website that sought to dissuade then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans from accepting Adelson's allegedly "dirty" and "tainted" money. It cited reports about an accusation that the Las Vegas Sands Corp chief executive "personally approved of prostitution" in his Macau properties.

U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken in Manhattan on Monday said the article constituted protected speech and was not libelous. The accusation, which Adelson has denied, had surfaced in a wrongful termination lawsuit against him by fired Las Vegas Sands executive Steven Jacobs. It was discussed in an Associated Press article about that lawsuit, to which the NJDC provided a hyperlink in its article online.

L. Lin Wood, a lawyer for Adelson, in an emailed statement said the decision denies his client "the basic right of trial by jury," and that an appeal is likely. He also said Las Vegas Sands has a "no tolerance" policy for prostitution. "The statement by the National Jewish Democratic Council at issue in this case remains a boldfaced lie," said Wood, a partner at Wood, Hernacki & Evans in Atlanta.

Adelson, 80, is worth $28.5 billion and the 11th-richest American, Forbes magazine said this month, and had donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates and organizations in the 2012 election cycle. He claimed that the NJDC article was intended to advance the group's political interests by "assassinating" his character. But in a 57-page decision, Oetken said Adelson failed to show that the defendants, which also included NJDC Chairman Marc Stanley and former NJDC President David Harris, acted with actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth.

The judge said the expressions "dirty money" and "tainted money" were imprecise and could not be proven true or false, and in context constituted protected expressions of opinion. He also said the use of the hyperlink was proper, and that the defendant's reliance upon an article from a "reputable" news organization precluded a finding of liability.

"Protecting defendants who hyperlink to their sources is good public policy, as it fosters the facile dissemination of knowledge on the Internet," Oetken wrote. "It is to be expected, and celebrated, that the increasing access to information should decrease the need for defamation suits."

Adelson had sought $10 million of compensatory damages and $50 million of punitive damages. Oetken also ordered him to pay the defendants' legal fees. In a phone interview, Stanley said he was pleased with the decision. "You just can't bully people with your money, and Adelson was trying to bully us with a lawsuit to suppress our speech during the election," he said. "David beat Goliath." The case is Adelson v. Harris et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-06052.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Virtually all investors have fled Portland, Oregon-based Common Sense Investment Management following the arrest of founder Jim Bisenius for soliciting a prostitute, sources close to the matter said.

Clients have requested to redeem more than 90 percent of the $3.2 billion the fund of hedge funds managed around the time of the arrest in late August, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The redemptions would leave the 22-year-old firm less than $150 million by year-end, assuming no investors change their mind, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Common Sense did not respond to requests for comment.

Among those who have redeemed recently include the Fresno County Employees Retirement Association, the Cincinnati Retirement System and the Oklahoma Municipal Employees Retirement Fund.

Pension consultant Arnerich Massena also recommended its clients leave. The firm declined to comment on who those clients were.

Not all the redemptions—Fresno County, for example—were directly because of the arrest.

"It's a tough issue. From our vantage it's a personal issue first and foremost and does affect the business," said Phillip Kapler, administrator of the $3.5 billion Fresno pension fund. "But if it affects the morale or key people at the organization and it becomes detrimental to our interest, it would be a problem."

Common Sense responded to the news a month ago by backing founder Bisenius, a 62-year-old active in Christian-related philanthropy.

"Jim Bisenius' recent personal transgression bears no reflection on this outstanding team of professionals or the quality of portfolio management at CSIM," firm president Dean Derrah said in statement on Sept. 4, the day the news broke nationally. The firm said Bisenius would remain chief executive officer and chief investment officer.

Most observers were not surprised at the investor reaction.

"The biggest reason people pulled wasn't to penalize them for the personal transgression. It was more that everyone else might get out," said a person familiar with the firm and its investors. "'Let's not be the last one to leave' was the mentality."

Others wondered if the business would survive.

"If the redemptions come as projected, this will call into question the ongoing viability of Common Sense," said another person who has tracked the situation closely, referring to the difficulty of running an asset management firm with such a small amount of client capital and fee revenue. "Even if you still believed in the investment strategy and had no problem with the extracurricular activities of the founder, you still need people there. I don't see how they come out of this."

Common Sense already had performance and personnel problems before the arrest.

The Common Sense Long Biased Offshore fund was up 8.3 percent this year through July 31, according to a report from The University of Toledo Foundation (which started redeeming in February). But the net annualized return for the fund since May 2008, when the foundation first invested, was just 1.8 percent, according to the report.

Long-biased funds focus on investments that will improve in value, rather than short-positions that gain on losses.

Two key employees—partners and portfolio managers Jonathan McGowan and Scott Kelly—also left in January this year to run 801 West Capital Management.

Common Sense assets had already declined from $3.9 billion in 2012 and $4.2 billion in 2011. The firm managed $3.2 billion in February.

"I'm not surprised their assets have dropped--there was already poor performance, lots of change in leadership," said one of the observers. "With this it was like 'OK, quit hitting your head against the wall.'"

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Everyone has their little indulgences. For some, it's their morning Starbucks fix or a $2000 handbag. For others, it's hookers and blackjack. 

And it's the latter that are most representative of consumer spending in the US economy, according to Andrew Zatlin of South Bay Research. Zatlin's one-man research consultancy based out of California, whose highly accurate, data-driven methods of forecasting jobs numbers have earned the title of 'The Moneyball of Economics' by the Wall Street Journal. 

One of South Bay's products is the Vice Index, which according to Zatlin has an almost 90% statistical correlation with personal consumer spending and leads it by 4 months. The index measures spending on gambling and escorts, which, according to Zatlin, is a highly sensitive barometer for the 'wealth effect', or how rich we're feeling at any given time. 

Zatlin's data for the index goes back 15 years and South Bay has been calculating the index for the last 2 years. 

And this year, the index has shown a steady downward trend. 

"We were seeing it even before the government shutdown, and it's continued to trend downward recently," said Zatlin to Business Insider, "In Q1 of this year, we saw prices of escorts rose 15% at the high end but not at the middle or low end, which proved that the top 1% was doing fine, but not everyone else. This was contrary to the media's narrative of a "booming" economy."  

Zatlin would not disclose his sources and methodology for computing escort services pricing.

"During events like the furlough and Sandy you had escorts saying that their phones had stopped ringing. Now I'm not saying that government workers are clients for prostitutes, but when you have 800,000 people out of a job, that affects spending."

According to Zatlin, spending on these vices is part of the "underground economy", which makes up anywhere between 10-15% of the economy in the United States and is, understandably, unaccounted for in official statistics. But this data, if you can find it, is extraordinarily representative of consumer spending.

"This part of the economy is based purely on market forces," he noted. "It's all cash-driven and there are almost no barriers to entry. Most importantly, it's purely conspicuous consumption. People spend on vices when they feel like there's a hole burning in their pockets. If you're going to Atlantic City, you're going to hope to win, but you're probably prepared to lose. It's literally throwing money away."

Because of this, vices are the first thing people stop spending on when times are bad, which makes it a good way to measure the "wealth effect", or how secure people are feeling about their wealth.  

Spending on luxury goods is a similar 'canary in the coal-mine' indicator, and also a good measure of conspicuous consumption. However, Zatlin believes vice spending is more demographically and socio-economically representative. Only the 1% can buy a yacht, but spending on escorts can range from the very high end to "low-end", and can provide a geographically and socio-economically diverse set of data points. 

More importantly, Zatlin believes the Vice Index has more relevance than many others that were formulated decades ago. 

"Everyone smirks when they hear about this, but the regular indices are all using data points that are old, and in many cases, not representative of today's economy." 

SEE ALSO: The 41 Most Unusual Economic Indicators

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Editor's note: The following excerpt is from the book "Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business," and reveals what life is like in the Galactic Zone — a state-run brothel in Mexico. We have reprinted the excerpt with the publisher's permission.

Readers may not be aware that prostitution is legal and regulated  in 13  of Mexico’s 31 states. A study by anthropologist  Patty Kelly sheds light on one such system: the Galactic Zone outside Tuxtla in the state of Chiapas. Given the small scale of the Zone and Tuxtla’s population of half a million, there remains plenty of illegal prostitution in the area.

Moreover, some of the Galactic Zone’s regulations are obtrusive, such as the mandatory health card that includes the worker’s name, photo, and health status and must be renewed every three months  (workers are routinely tested for syphilis and HIV).

Yet the Zone’s form of legal prostitution also has some benefits. First, the Zone appears to have broad popular support. In Tuxtla, “prostitution  is generally accepted (and sometimes valued) as long as it is confined and invisible,” which is precisely what the Galactic Zone accomplishes.

Second, Zone workers have a “great deal of freedom and exercise control over their work.”

They alone decide when to work and for how long, who they will serve, and their rates; they come and go as they please; and many take extended leaves to visit family in other parts of Mexico. Almost all of the 140 women working in the Zone are independent, free of pimps.

Third, while prostitution is hardly lucrative for Zone workers, on a good day the women can earn as much as ten times the daily minimum wage in Chiapas. It is not survival sex: the workers are able to buy consumer goods that they otherwise could not afford, such as nice clothing, cellphones, jewelry, and items for their children.

Fourth, working in this arena helps to bolster the women’s sense of control over their lives and their self-esteem. Many began working in the Zone to support their children after escaping an unhappy, abusive, or violent relationship with a husband. The Zone allowed them to break free of dependency on their husbands and, more generally, to “find in prostitution a life better than the one they might have had.” 

There are unpleasant aspects of this highly controlled type of prostitution, but the net effect of working in the Galactic Zone is positive for the women: control over working conditions, lack of coercion, economic advancement, and enhanced self-esteem.

One of the few comparative analyses of legal and illegal prostitution is anthropologist Yasmina Katsulis’s study of Tijuana, Mexico. Katsulis interviewed and observed workers in both spheres: those registered with the authorities, subjected to compulsory health  exams, and holding  a work card and those who had not registered. (Bars employing sex workers must be licensed and are subject to fines if their workers are not registered, but this does not apply to massage parlors, private brothels, dance halls, or escort services.)

Individuals and sexually oriented establishments in Tijuana are visited periodically by government inspectors. About a thousand prostitutes  are working legally at any given time, along with a larger number of illegals.

Although the registration and mandatory health checks may seem burdensome, Katsulis documents positive outcomes for those who work legally, and these benefits are quite significant. A major finding is that legal status, in itself, has diffuse effects on the workers: providing social capital, empowerment, and a sense of professionalism.

The legal workers have better working conditions and job satisfaction, less fear about the nature of their work, and a higher degree of sophistication  and confidence. . . . Registration and monthly checkups appear to encourage behaviors that are protective of health as well as provide a barrier against police harassment. Registration increases the sense of legitimacy and community and is correlated with much lower levels of depression and mental stress.

Moreover, the “social stigma attached to these [legal] work settings is also lessened.” And legal work is safer than illegal work, partly because of an improved relationship with the police, who are now more prepared to intervene in disputes between customers and workers: “for legal workers, the policing of customers offers protection against customer violence.”

Illegal workers, by contrast, experience police harassment, violence, fines, and incarceration; they have less stable social support networks; and they are about twice as likely as the legal workers to have been assaulted, robbed, or kidnapped.

Illegal prostitution thus remains problematic in Tijuana, and Katsulis’s study serves as a reminder that legalization may bypass many sex workers. The one unanswered question is why many Tijuana workers opt out of the legal system, but we know from research elsewhere that the reasons include fear of being formally labeled a prostitute and the increased risk of being discovered by friends and family members.

From "Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business" by Ronald Weitzer. Excerpted with permission from the New York University Press. Copyright 2012 by New York University.

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The world's oldest profession has been legal in parts of Nevada since 1971, but is unambiguously illegal everywhere else. I wanted to see how this little oasis of legal vice works. So Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada's Nye County (NSFW), sent a black Town Car to pick me up from my hotel in Las Vegas, so I could see how their business operates.

Getting there

Anyone wanting to legally exchange money for sex has to get out of Las Vegas to do so. Sheri's Ranch is in Pahrump, Nev., a rural desert community an hour outside Vegas where prostitution is legal, alive, and well. (Incidentally it's also where forgotten Apple co-founder Ron Wayne currently calls home.)

The drive from downtown Vegas to Pahrump is an exploration of big empty space, armadillos, and dead cell zones. My driver, Fabio, is a full-time employee of Sheri's Ranch. He makes the two-hour drive from Vegas to Pahrump back to Vegas a few times a day, discreetly getting customers from their downtown hotel suites to Sheri's front door and back. A placard on the seat in front of me reads "The ride is completely complimentary but a gratuity is greatly appreciated."

Were we in his other car, Fabio tells me, he has a DVD player for customers to watch short ads for each girl at the Ranch, something akin to movie trailers before the main attraction. If people start asking him questions about specific girls, he puts it on for them to watch. He's happy to answer customers' general questions, but he's not supposed to comment on specific women in case he were to recommend some over others.

Getting acquainted with Sheri's Ranch

With the exception of one sign on the front reading "Girls Girls Girls," Sheri's Ranch may as well be a sports bar. In fact it is a sports bar. There are literally two separate entrances to the building — door No.1 for beer and wings, door No.2 for more sensual pleasures. I started with door No.1.

The sports bar side has a low-light atmosphere for drinking, eating, socializing, and — my New York City eyes couldn't believe it – smoking indoors! It is homey, low-key, and immediately comfortable. I grab a booth and a gin and tonic to sit and talk with Dena, the madam of Sheri's Ranch.

Dena lives in Pahrump and likes to knit when she's not at work. As madam of the Ranch, she fills something of a motherly role for the girls who work here, seeing to their needs and making sure that the day-to-day operations of the Ranch are running smoothly. She facilitates the relationship between employer and employee.

Dena showed me around the grounds. There's the main building that houses the restaurant and the girls, but behind it is plenty more. A pool and some palm trees. Themed bungalows for some extra privacy from the main house. A "fantasy playland" for acting out more elaborate sexual encounters — a locker room, a reception area, and so on. You get the gist.

The same way that there are plenty of people who come to the sports bar just to have a meal, there are people who come just to stay in the Ranch's hotel. A full-fledged hotel sits on the property a fair distance behind the main house, and it's there for anyone needing a place to stay, whether you're just visiting Pahrump or making an extended go of things at Sheri's.

Behind the bungalows is the rest of the Ranch's 310 acres — dry, undeveloped desert that butts right up against the Nevada-California state line. On this side of the line, Sheri's Ranch operates without issue. Move just a couple miles west and it'd be a different story.

How to get a job as a prostitute

There seem to be as many stories of breaking into the prostitution business as there are women working here. Dena told me that very rarely is this business a woman's plan.

Women seeking work at Sheri's need to be licensed independent contractors for the state of Nevada and complete an application process with the Ranch. You can see the application page here (NSFW). They request nothing more than a few photos of your face and body, but it's difficult to stand out on that alone.

That's why there's a comments section of the application as well. Prospective employees are advised to demonstrate some personality. Once you get the go-ahead to come work a tour, they'll even pick you up from the airport in a limousine.

Aaron, the brothel's marketing director, told me that "there's never been a problem filling slots at Sheri's. It's only ever been a matter of who to say yes to."

I met three of the prostitutes who got a yes.

The women of Sheri's Ranch

"The No. 1 misconception about places like this is that the girls are here against their will. But that's just not true," Dena tells me.

The word "whorehouse" often inspires seedy images of broken women, scored with a Tom Waits song. At Sheri's, that's all just movie nonsense. The women here seem to do quite well for themselves, operating as independent contractors who set their own prices. They got a little evasive when I asked specific questions about money, but I left with the impression that you can expect to spend anywhere from a few hundred dollars on the basic side of things to thousands of dollars and more at the other end of the spectrum. Obviously this depends on your tastes and the girl's prices.



Amber Lynn trades time between Florida and Pahrump – two weeks on at Sheri's Ranch, two weeks at home with her boyfriend.

Erin is new here, a former marine who started escorting independently in Louisiana before coming to Sheri's so that she could continue the work without worry of legal repercussions.

Destini is a family woman, married with a child. She disclosed that she'd had some run-ins with the law while working as an escort elsewhere, but as an employee of Sheri's Ranch there's no worry of that happening. Even though she's wearing a distracting robe and lingerie, there's a maternal glow in her face when she talks about her child, and it totally steals the scene.

I find myself especially intrigued with her story. She's a happily married mom and working prostitute. Does she ever worry about having a healthy relationship with sex?

"All it takes to have a healthy relationship with sex is to enjoy it. And I enjoy it! A lot of the guys that come through here are shy, or disabled, or just haven't had good experiences with women. I get to make them feel loved," Destini says. Her smile is so big as she speaks that I know she means it. The other girls nod in agreement.

The longer I talk to them, the more it feels like I'm talking to employees of a conventional business, a resort or hotel, maybe. I guess you could say they're in the ultimate customer service industry.

Dena asks Destini the question I would ask were I less afraid of offending her: "What's it like in the bedroom when you get home from the job?"

Destini laughs at the ceiling. "I rape my husband when I get home! I say 'Come here, baby! I missed you!'"



The unsexy logistics of it all

Girls at the Ranch work one "tour" at a time, a contractual stay at the Ranch that can last five days on the short end and up to two weeks or longer. When they're on the clock, the girls work 12-hour shifts, either 5 AM to 5 PM or vice versa. While on her tour, a woman isn't allowed to approach the Ranch's hotel area or talk to its guests — to do so would be solicitation.



The womens' rooms are situated down a long hallway. The layout is reminiscent of a college dorm, and the women live and work in their rooms full-time. Considering they each pay $46 a day in rent and sleep in the rooms nightly, they decorate to suit their tastes and personalities. Apart from the room rent, the only other financial arrangement between the brothel and the women working there is that the brothel takes 50% of what they make.

Condom use: mandatory. Placards placed throughout every room serve as a perpetual reminder to be safe and sanitary. A physician comes by once a week to give all the girls a health screening, and before any sexual activity takes place behind closed doors, males go through a quick visual screening, called a "DC," or "dick check." 

Everyone I asked maintains that there's yet to be an instance of sexually transmitted disease tied to legalized prostitution since the industry kicked off in Nevada 42 years ago.

How to legally solicit a hooker

Make an appointment ahead of time or just drop by at your convenience — Sheri's is open 24/7/365, so you're never going to catch them unprepared to receive you.

When you walk through the "Girls Girls Girls" door, you are treated to the "lineup," in which the girls who are on the clock come to meet you, tell you their names, vamp a little bit, and wait for you to pick one of them. (You can conduct an impromptu lineup of your own over the Internet by seeing who's currently at the Ranch [NSFW]). The two of you will go to her room, chat it up, and make arrangements on what you'd like to do and how much you'd like to spend. After reaching an agreement, you pay, you partake, and you're on your way.

 Maybe get a burger on the way out.

How to start a legal brothel

That all-important business cliché applies to prostitution as well: Location, location, location. If you're opening up in the U.S., you can only be located in certain counties in Nevada. Your operation, just like prostitution in any form, is illegal everywhere else in the country.



Chuck Lee is the owner and operator (NSFW) of Sheri's Ranch. He's a Nevada native and former homicide detective who earned a nice windfall for himself when he sold his share of an especially successful Oldsmobile dealership. He used the money to get Sheri's Ranch off the ground, and it took quite a bit of doing.

Before he could so much as put that "Girls Girls Girls" sign on the door, Chuck had to pass a background check to satisfy area officials that he was an upstanding citizen. Then he wrote several fat checks to local government and turned the crank of bureaucracy to get all the required permits to serve food, beer, liquor, and well, sex.

Chuck estimates it cost $20 million over the years to get Sheri's Ranch to where it is today. By setting the bar this high, both financially and bureaucratically, Nevada makes it very difficult for unsavory characters to get into the business. Nevada's legal brothels have to meet all the usual regulations of a local business, and then they have to adhere to stricter prostitution laws on top of that.

Rounding it up

Sheri's Ranch is a compelling demonstration that legalized and well-regulated prostitution can be safe, functional, and profitable. There are 18 other legal brothels operating throughout Nevada today.

There's an ineffable welcoming quality to Sheri's Ranch. There is no shame, no fear, no judgment to be found anywhere near the place. There's no illusion to maintain — you've arrived, hat in hand, to pay for sex. Not only do the ladies know this, but they're glad you're here. Where America's sexual culture seems far more repressed than that of other countries, Sheri's turns this paradigm on its ear and welcomes you to indulge in (mostly) whatever it is you want. Their business depends on it.

While you'll have to leave Las Vegas to get here, the slogan still applies: What happens in Pahrump stays in Pahrump, but it's because cell service is too spotty to tell anyone anything.

Because some will likely wonder, the answer is no, I did not have sex with a prostitute for this story.

SEE ALSO: Korea's Plastic Surgery Obsession Is A Glimpse Into The Future

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Business Insider's Dylan Love recently had his expectations shattered when he reported on a Nevada brothel, but he was actually only getting a glimpse into one type of prostitution.

The sociologist Ronald Weitzer identifies the six most common types of prostitutes and where they work in a fascinating book called "Legalizing Prostitution."

Weitzer's book looks at legalized prostitution in other countries and illegal prostitution in America, finding that some sex work is better for women than others. Here are the six types of prostitution, which Weitzer adapted from the book "Immoral Landscape: Female Prostitution in Western Societies" by Richard Symanski.

Independent Call Girl/Escort

Independent escorts work for themselves in hotels and private buildings like houses, charge high prices, and stay away from the public eye. They likely advertise their services online, and they get to keep their profits since they're self-employed.

Escort Agency Employee

Like independent call girls, employees of escort agencies work in private locations or hotels and charge relatively high prices. (Ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer slept with an escort agency employee, Ashley Dupré, for $4,300 a night.) Weitzer says these employees face "moderate exploitation" since they have to give a cut of their earnings to their agencies.

Brothel Employee

Brothels are dedicated locations where people pay for sex and can include saunas and massage parlors, Weitzer writes. The prices they charge are "moderate," and brothel workers endure "moderate exploitation" since they have to give part of their earnings to the brothel owners, he said. Licensed brothels are legal in parts of Nevada.

Window Worker

Thistype of prostitution is prevalent in Amsterdam, enticing passersby to enter houses of prostitution by prominently displaying the women in windows. Here's Weitzer's excellent description of window work, which pays women a low-to-moderate wage.

Almost all of Amsterdam's window rooms are single occupancy, separating workers from each other. Some rooms are connected to a bathroom and kitchen shared by several workers, but the women spend most of their time by themselves in front of the windows. The situation contrasts sharply with brothels, where workers can enjoy a party atmosphere and regular social contact with other providers, staff, and customers.

Bar or Casino Worker

These sex workers make initial contact with men at a bar or casino and then have sex at a separate location. In bars in Thailand, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic, guys pay "bar fees" to leave a club with a worker and spend several days with her, Weitzer writes. The guys (often foreigners) pay the women's expenses during that time, in an arrangement that often confers status on the prostitute. The women earn low-to-moderate salaries.

Streetwalker

Streetwalkers earn relatively little money and are vulnerable to exploitation, Weitzer writes. Not surprisingly, they report less job satisfaction and get paid less than "indoor prostitutes" (bar workers, brothel workers, or call girls).

Streetwalking is also notoriously dangerous. One study found prostitutes in Colorado Springs were 18 times more likely to be murdered than other women of a similar age. Some experts say making prostitution legal everywhere — as it is in the Netherlands, parts of Mexico, and parts of Nevada — is the only way to make it safer and less stigmatized.

SEE ALSO: I Walked Into A Nevada Brothel And My Expectations Were Shattered

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Business Insider's Dylan Love had his expectations shattered when he reported on a Nevada brothel and observed that legalized, well-regulated prostitution can be both safe and profitable.

Nevada only allows prostitution in licensed brothels that test workers routinely for sexually transmitted infections. While Love is not the first to observe legal prostitution can be relatively safe, Nevada's rural counties are the only place in America where the world's oldest profession is officially allowed.

Here are seven solid arguments for why the rest of the United States should let people sell sex in a well-regulated capacity, as they do in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and parts of Mexico, among other countries.

It Would Reduce Violence Against Women

Prostitutes in America (mostly women) are vulnerable to violence from customers and pimps.

A study of San Francisco prostitutes found that 82% had been assaulted and 68% had been raped while working as prostitutes. Another study of prostitutes in Colorado Springs found they were 18 times more likely to be murdered than non-prostitutes their age and race.

Prostitutes who experience violence may be reluctant to call the cops since what they're doing is illegal. Sex workers in licensed brothels, on the other hand, can have somebody to back them up, according to a paper by Barbara Brents and Kathryn Hausbeck of the University of Nevada. Brents and Hausbeck interviewed brothel owners and made these observations:

Brothel owners have a clear interest in maintaining their image as law-abiding, trouble-free businesses to keep their licenses and maintain good relations within their communities. The owners we interviewed ensure this by making it policy to call the police at the slightest hint of trouble to send a message that they don’t tolerate bad behavior. "The whole name of the game is control. But that control also makes us get along pretty well with the sheriff’s office," one owner told the researchers. "There are two reasons for doing it, one, the sheriff’s office, but also the girls’ personal safety."

The study concluded that "brothels offer the safest environment available for women to sell consensual sex acts for money."

Legalization Would Make Sex Workers Healthier

Illegal street prostitutes might face pressure from pimps and Johns to forgo condoms. But states that legalize prostitution can require sex workers to use condoms and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Sex workers in Nevada have to get monthly tests for syphilis and HIV and weekly tests for gonorrhea and chlamydia. Nevada also requires condoms for all sex in brothels. This law is posted on the outside of the state's brothels, according to the paper by Barbara Brents and Kathryn Hausbeck of the University of Nevada.

"All of the women we interviewed were passionate about expressing their support for these law. For example, they insisted that they always use condoms, whether the client prefers to or not," the report stated.

Making sex work a crime can drive prostitutes underground and make them less likely to practice safe sex and get tested for sexually transmitted disease.

An April 2012 study by the Urban Justice Center found that New York City cops were actually using condoms found on women as evidence in criminal prostitution cases against them. It's easy to imagine how this practice might deter sex workers from carrying protection.

The United Nations Development Programme published a report last year on illegal sex work in Asia and the Pacific that highlighted just how damaging the criminalization of sex work can be to women's health. Here's what it said:

Criminalization increases vulnerability to HIV by fueling stigma and discrimination, limiting access to HIV and sexual health services, condoms and harm reduction services, and adversely affecting the self-esteem of sex workers and their ability to make informed choices about their health.

Prostitution Is Arguably A Victimless Crime

While some advocates argue that prostitutes are victims of Johns and pimps, sex work can be a victimless crime if women sell their bodies of their own volition. (Moreover, it doesn't make sense to arrest sex workers if they are their own "victims.")

As Cornell law professor Sherry Colb has written, "Prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes are not committing an inherently harmful act. While the spread of disease and other detriments are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way of exacerbating rather than addressing such effects."

Legal Prostitution Can Be A Source Of Tax Revenue

While brothels in Nevada pay no state taxes, they pay "significant amounts of tax" to the rural counties where they do business, according to The New York Times. (Nevada Republicans blocked a plan a couple of years ago to subject brothels to state taxes, as they didn't want schools and other state services funded by sex work.)

Illegal prostitution businesses in America, of course, pay no taxes. If those brothels were legalized, then state and county governments could gain significant revenue.

"Let government share in the revenue, but otherwise stay out of the affairs of consenting adults," MSNBC political analyst Michael Smerconish has written.

Legalization Could Save Precious Law Enforcement Resources

The investigation into notorious John, and former New York governor, Eliot Spitzer is a perfect example of how costly it can be to probe sophisticated prostitution rings.

"In this case, they wiretapped 5,000 phone conversations, intercepted 6,000 emails, used surveillance and undercover tactics that are more appropriate for trapping terrorists than entrapping Johns," famed Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Dershowitz has also told MSNBC's Michael Smerconish, "Every hour spent going after prostitution is an hour that could have been spent going after terrorists and going after people who victimize."

Legal Prostitutes Could Get Labor Rights

Legally employed people in America get rights like a minimum wage, freedom from discrimination, and a safe work environment. Since prostitutes don't work legally, they don't get any of those rights.

The United Nations Development Programme's report on sex work in Asia and the Pacific highlighted why it's problematic when sex workers don't have legal rights.

Sex workers in all countries of the region except New Zealand and the state of New South Wales (Australia) lack the labour rights afforded to other workers, including the legal right to a safe and healthy workplace and to reasonable terms and conditions of employment ... Labour laws and social security laws that do not recognize sex work as legitimate work contribute to stigma and marginalization of sex workers.

Prostitution Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon

There will always be lonely or kinky men in America who will pay for sex, and there will always be women willing to rent out their bodies. As the anthropologist Patty Kelly has written in the Los Angeles Times, prostitution has become a "part of our culture" in the United States.

It's high time to legalize and regulate this part of American life, even if a lot of people have ethical problems with it.

We legalize and regulate a ton of commerce that's morally controversial — like gambling, alcohol, tobacco, lap-dancing, and pornography. Yes, women can be coerced into prostituting themselves. But we're not helping them by making consenting sex work a crime.

SEE ALSO: The 6 Types Of Prostitutes And Where They Work

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Antwerp, Belgium has turned its once-violent prostitution zone into an incredibly safe and efficient red light district, criminology professor Ronald Weitzer writes in a fascinating book that advocates for legalizing prostitution.

His book, "Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business," shows pictures of the pristine district, which is far from the city's center and resembles an upscale outlet mall on a slow day.

Here's what clients of Antwerp's red light district said in online comments:

• Antwerp is a secret, little known gem. Fantastic place ... Clean, safe ... Loads of choice and no frigging tourists.

• Probably the best RLD [Red Light District] that I've visited. Like AMS [Amsterdam] without the bachelor party and tourist groups.
• Very laid back and well policed.

The new sex district was created in 2000, after a decade when Antwerp faced a growing problem of dangerous prostitution in the part of the city where sailors stayed. Mobsters moved onto those streets and occasionally fought, driving out non-prostitution businesses, Weitzer writes.

In 2000, the city's mayor squeezed prostitution into a heavily regulated, three-block "tolerance zone." The mayor personally signs all permits for owners of prostitution "windows," so the city takes its rules and building codes seriously. This regulation makes Antwerp's red light district a relaxing place to visit, even if it may not be as entertaining as other red light districts.

A New York Times Magazine travel piece described the city's prostitution district as the perfect place for an after-dinner walk:

Inside the tiny, large-windowed storefronts, women of all ages, races and shapes chatted on cell phones, read magazines or posed suggestively. Many were strikingly beautiful and most, apparently health conscious, had large bottles of spring water beside their stools.

These women may be happier than sex workers in other red light districts because they get to socialize with one another. While "window rooms" in other districts may be relatively siloed, the units in Antwerp are connected in blocks of three, five, or seven units, according to Weitzer.

"This has two important advantages: the women can socialize with each other, and they can collectively assert control over troublesome men," he writes. "In other words, both camaraderie and empowerment are enhanced by this proximity to other workers."

Antwerp's prostitution zone is pretty much the antithesis of the spectacle found in Amsterdam. Here's what Amsterdam resident Shannon McAllister had to say about the red light district in a post on About.com:

The close proximity of Amsterdam's Red Light District to the city's main train terminal, Centraal Station, means it's often a first stop for visitors who arrive having heard all about the famously provocative area. Expect the obvious groups — herds of men celebrating a bachelor weekend, gaggles of girls embarrassing a bride, college kids who've been planted in bars and coffee shops for hours on end — as well as the more unexpected — senior travelers fresh off a cruise ship, pointing and giggling at the fleshy sights all around.

Of course, if you're a tourist who's not actually in the market for sex, you may opt for a lively and loud district over the clean and efficient district in Antwerp.

SEE ALSO: The 6 Types Of Prostitutes And Where They Work

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ALFRED, Maine (AP) — The Zumba instructor who ran a prostitution business in which she videotaped unsuspecting clients so her business partner could watch from his office 100 miles away has been released from jail, bringing to a close a scandal featuring sex videos, adultery and a client list with more than 100 names.

Alexis Wright left the York County Jail at about 9:45 a.m. Saturday after serving nearly six months of a 10-month sentence for engaging in and promoting prostitution, as well as several welfare- and tax-related charges. Her jail term was cut short because of good behavior and participation in a work program.

Wearing a gray suit and clutching a stack of folders, Wright strode out of the jail and into the waiting SUV driven by her husband, Jason Trowbridge.

"I have no comment," she said.

The scandal erupted a year ago in an unlikely place, a small town known for its beaches, New England charm and proximity to former President George H.W. Bush's seaside estate in Kennebunkport.

Wright's prostitution business came as a surprise to her fitness clients but not to police officers who'd become suspicious after fielding complaints about groaning, loud music and men coming and going from an office Wright rented across the street from her studio.

According to police, her business partner, Mark Strong of Thomaston, watched the sexual encounters unfold in real time on a computer in his insurance business office. In a twist at her sentencing, Wright divulged that her business partner had tricked her into believing she was a secret operative investigating sexual deviance.

Prosecutors didn't buy Wright's story, saying investigators continue to believe the 30-year-old Wright was "a willing participant" in the prostitution business.

Detailed records over an 18-month period indicated Wright made $150,000 tax-free. She also collected more than $40,000 in welfare benefits, prosecutors said.

Strong, a 58-year-old married father of two, acknowledged having an affair with Wright and helping her start the fitness studio but said he didn't profit from the prostitution. He was convicted of 13 counts related to promotion of prostitution and sentenced to 20 days in jail.

___

Follow David Sharp on Twitter at https://twitter.com/David_Sharp_AP

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PARIS (Reuters) - The French parliament early on Saturday backed a reform of the country's prostitution law that will impose a 1,500-euro fine on anyone paying for sex.

The bill will give France some of the toughest legislation on prostitution in Europe, similar to that of Sweden.

Under the new bill, prostitutes' clients will become offenders while soliciting itself will no longer be considered a criminal offence.

Previously, buying and selling sex for money was not illegal in France but the act of soliciting was, as was pimping.

The reform, which has divided the country, still needs to be formerly endorsed by parliament on Wednesday.

Movie stars like Catherine Deneuve, who played a middle-class housewife who chooses to prostitute herself in the 1960s film "Belle de Jour", is one of several dozen celebrities who have signed a petition against the law.

Some 90 percent of France's estimated 20,000 to 40,000 prostitutes are foreign, mostly victims of Nigerian, Chinese and Romanian trafficking networks, the government says.

That is a very different picture from just over a decade ago, when only one in five prostitutes were foreign and organized crime rings much less prevalent - one of the main reasons the law needs tightening, proponents say.

(Reporting by Astrid Wendlandt; editing by Andrew Roche)

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A veteran Washington D.C. police officer is suspected of running a prostitution ring after police found a 16-year-old girl who had been reported missing in his apartment, The Washington Post reports.

Police visited the home of the unnamed officer, who has been on the force for 24 years, after detectives learned that a missing 16-year-old girl might be at his home.

Authorities discovered the missing girl as well as an 18-year-old girl and confiscated various items including "a mirror with names written on it and that the 16-year-old told police that the names were of women who had worked as prostitutes."

From the Post:

According to court documents, the [16-year-old] girl told police that she had gone to the officer’s apartment at least twice and that the officer took nude photos of her wearing sparkly high-heeled shoes and showed them to a potential customer. The man liked the photos, and was scheduled to meet her and pay $80 for sex, the girl told police. Of that, she said, $20 was to go to the officer. The girl said that the officer was to pay for her hairstyle, shoes and new clothes, and that her working name would be “Juicy.” It was not clear whether the girl ever met the customer.

The girl said that six other women worked out of the apartment and that advertisements were posted on the Internet site backpage.com, the documents said.

Check out the full story at the Post »

(h/t @mitchprothero)

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Chris Arnade left his job as a foreign exchange trader at a major investment bank to pursue photography full-time.

He's not your typical photographer, though.

Arnade, who is very critical of Wall Street, spends his time in some of the city's roughest neighborhoods.

Some of his most powerful work comes from Hunts Point, Bronx, where he has photographed hundreds of drug addicts. Along with his photos, Arnade writes down his subjects' stories, with help from writer Cassie Rodenberg.

Below is a sample of photos and stories from Arnade's "Faces Of Addiction."

You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr.

A small moment on a snowy evening

Sonya was past complaining about the eye. The feet were the issue. The Uggs knockoffs, great when dry, were now a frozen mush of fur and dirt.

A month of cold weather was wearing. She rubbed the eye, “I can still see out of it, so it's not getting worse.”

My phone rang. Shelly had three minutes to speak, her call of the day from Rikers. “When you coming to visit? Did you get my stuff?”

I handed the phone to Sonya who made two minutes of promises. They have been living under the same bridge for the last three weeks.

The line clicked dead before I could talk more.

“He wants his make-up saved. He hid it before he got arrested.”

Shelly. Arrested for shoplifting in the CVS. Always the same CVS. One month in Rikers. A forced detox for Christmas.

Sonya limped towards the drug dealers clustered on the corner, looking for Xanax. “Five sticks. I can make it through detox if I have five sticks.”

The Ritual of Drugs

Shelly bent over, focused on the items arrayed in front of her: Needle, cap, water, lighter, and cotton. All lit by candle.

She spilled the heroin into the cap, added water, heated it into syrup. She dropped in a small swab of cotton, inserted the needle into the swab, and drew up the liquid.

She looked down at her left forearm, slapped a vein, and slowly put in the needle, drawing up the blood to mix with the heroin.

She blew on the needle, and pushed the blood and heroin back in. Her face and body went slack.

Ritual of Drugs 2

A low needs a high, especially a low that now only gets you straight, keeps the sick away.

Find any pipe, everyone has one. Pepsi keeps hers jammed in her bra. "Jessica keep hers jammed in her pussy. Cops won't go searching there."

Place a wad of screen in end of pipe. Pour a few rocks onto it.

Two lungs full, that is all you need.

Five seconds of euphoria. Ten minutes of paranoia.

"Reality is no TV show"

Sonya knows how to look bad. It helps her make money panhandling. Today she wasn’t panhandling. It was too cold and wet for that.

She just looked bad.

The snow had beat down her camp, now a pile of garbage and just the outline of a tent. When the wind blows hard enough, like today, the Bruckner, fifteen feet above, provides little protection. It was also a dumb decision to build on low-lying land.

She sat in the mud working on her foot, the only place with a vein that wasn’t corrupted. For five minutes she sat there, snow collecting on her hair, water working its way into her pants, and tried to make a needle go where it wasn’t wanted.

The busses, BX 6 and BX 7, came by every five minutes, spraying slush over the camp. Sonya stayed still focused on the needle, on the vein that wasn’t much of a vein anymore.

“SHIT! You fucking piece of shit! Go in damn you.”

She finally quit, rolling her sock back onto her foot, her foot back into the boots. Everything was wet.

“My eye, it’s red and oozing. Hard to open. My ear hurts. It was fine last night. I might have gotten glass in it. Glass is everywhere.”

I offered to take her to the hospital, but Sonya doesn’t like help, doesn’t like doctors, and doesn’t like needing anyone. Except that dirty bastard of a husband of hers, Eric. (Yes, Eric, when you are in detox and clean and reading this, you know that is what she calls you. It’s what you call yourself after all. You know she loves you more than anyone loves someone else. Still, you are a dirty bastard of a husband.)

She smiled though. Sonya always manages a smile.

She asked about my children, about my Thanksgiving, about me. “You look tired Chris. You need some rest.”

We went into the Bodega and she watched a TV she couldn’t understand. She stood there for fifteen minutes, absorbing the heat and dry, laughing at the Spanish show, a drama about prisons and drugs.

Actors shot pretend drugs into their arms and yelled at each other.

“Everyone looks so clean. I guess they got a better drugs down there in Mexico. Reality is no TV show.”

Bedside table for a place with no bed

* Needles
* Crack Pipes
* Cigs
* Lighters
* Condoms
* Make-up kit
* Pipe cleaners
* Mixing caps
* Methadone program ID
* Semi-sterile water
* Left over McDonalds

A coincidence revealed between hits of crack, between dates, sitting in a dark van

A man had just left, a small man hidden behind jackets, a man who paid $20 to have his dick sucked. Ramone had also left, to buy gas and drugs for Sarah and himself.

Alone, Sarah and I talked about Thanksgiving, about being in the country, about being away from the city. She told of going to nature camp in Vermont when she was younger. “It was my happiest moments, we raised the animals, swam, and every night we sat in a circle and told what was on our mind. Nobody made fun of anyone else. It was a Quaker camp, called Farm and Wilderness. I stopped going my last year, I still regret that decision.”

I asked, “Farm and Wilderness, in Plymouth Vermont? My wife went to that camp.”

I called my wife and [she and] Sarah spoke, reminiscing about a place they both attended, but at different times.

Sarah put down the phone, took in hit of crack. “I loved that place. Loved it. Do you mind staying here alone for a bit. I got to run over to that truck. Will only be fifteen minutes.”

A van for three

Jennifer arrived with $200, manic and generous. Enough money to let her stay the night, enough money to start the van and run the heat, enough money for McDonalds, enough money for Ramone to run to Gilbert Street, past the man hunched against the wind, through the door opened with a brick, up the stairs, into an apartment sweet with crack.

$180 worth of drugs to bring back. Enough drugs to turn an old van into a drug trap.

Ramone couldn’t hit, his vein was too stingy. He could draw the blood out, mixing with heroin in the syringe, but it stayed there. He couldn’t push it back in. Sarah held a light to his arm, encouraged him, keeping him calm.

Jennifer laughed, crackling to herself, manic, rearranging her purse, her pipe, her dildo, her lighter, her condoms, her makeup, her purse again, her pipe again. A date was coming. A date, despite the cold, despite the wind. Can you believe it? Did you see the pipe? Did you? Do you know where the condoms are? You have a lighter? Where is the pipe? WHERE IS THE PIPE?

Jennifer left, under dressed for the cold.

Ramone pulled the needle, still filled with heroin and blood. He took in two pipes of crack, put on his layers. Back to Gilbert Street. Another bag. Maybe this one would be lucky.

Sarah, alone in the van, let in a man, hidden beneath layers. She turned off the flashlight as he lowered his pants.

Takeesha and Carmela: Hunts Point, Bronx

Both were raped by family members before they were ten.

Both escaped to the Bronx streets: Takeesha at eleven and Carmela at twelve.

Both started prostituting by thirteen. Carmela found men gave her things in exchange for her body. Takeesha’s mother sold her.

Both started injecting heroin into their bodies soon after.

Both have fought with addiction, the police, and men since.

Both now have a habit that is close to $200 a day: Heroin to kill the sickness and crack to get a “little something.”

Takeesha still believes in love. “I did love Steve. He got an anger problem but I can be a crazy bitch.”

Carmela does not. “Love? There is no love out here. People only want what they can get from you.”

Both are now together. “We stayed up the first night talking and talking. We both like, “wow this person really understands what I have been through, understands I ain’t just trash.’ We watch each other’s back. Right girl?”

The War on Drugs

The police, narcotics, and vice all swarmed Hunts Point two weeks ago in a crackdown that netted low-level possession, dealing, and prostitution charges. It also ensnared Takeesha who is now serving a two-month sentence in Rikers.

This is common. Presently ten of my Bronx subjects sit in Rikers or upstate New York prisons on non-violent drug charges.

When I left Hunts Point after Takeesha’s arrest I stopped by a bar close to my home in Brooklyn to write and drink a few beers.

I often do this to collect my thoughts. I try to choose bars without a large drug scene, without lines to use the bathrooms, without annoying coked-out customers. That is hard to do since cocaine, pills, and other drugs are a reality of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bar scene.

The drugs are done by white affluent customers.

I have never seen any arrests. I have never seen anyone worried about being arrested.

The stark difference I see between how drugs are treated in the Bronx and brownstone Brooklyn is jarring but not surprising. The statistics show exactly the same thing.

The war on drugs is a war on the poor.

It is as simple as that.

From one addict to another

She slumped, arms splayed on the table, the pupils of her eyes pinholes. He watched their stuff; six plastic bags overflowing with clothes.

They looked out of sorts in Hunts Point. White with New England accents, wearing second hand clothes, overly tight, or loose sweaters and slacks.

An hour later they were asked to leave, their table needed to be cleaned. They walked into the McDonalds parking lot, hugged, and made out. She grabbed his crotch and smiled. Both laughed.

They walked up the hill, towards the auto stores, counting their money. $9.50.

They passed Sarah and Ramone, both who where resting before the three-mile walk to their methadone clinic.

The woman stopped and looked at Sarah, “You got fifty cents? We need it for the subway.” Sarah was putting on makeup, trying to hide the dirt from a night sleeping outdoors.

Sarah smiled, “You new ain’t you.”

“We from Boston, on an adventure, towards the west. They told us to leave Manhattan, to come here. We didn’t know Hunts Point was so bad, so many drugs. We don’t do that. We just trying to make it on the cheap.”

Sarah rolled up her sleeves, held out her arms, “It’s ok, you can tell me. I been doing it all my life.”

“Naaaa. That ain’t us. We just looking for an adventure.”

Sarah handed them a quarter. “It’s all I got.”

The couple smiled. “My name’s Wendy. Maybe we see each other around.” They walked away.

Sarah went back to putting on makeup. “Why lie to another addict? Why? She don’t think I can see it in her eyes, in her clothes, in her hair? She don’t think I saw her passed out on the corner the other day? You can’t start getting clean unless you admit it to yourself and others.”

A dollar so I don't die

“I found the hat on the ground. At first I thought it was a dead animal. It’s really warm. Really warm.”

“I am sure there is a kid who lost it, who wants it back. When I am walking I am waiting for a child to run up to me and say, ‘That’s mine!’ although they probably too scared of me.”

“When I stand panhandling I always remember an old addict I knew in Philadelphia. She was cold, tired, and hungry, and nobody was giving her anything. Eventually she just started saying, ‘Can I have a dollar so I WON’T DIE! JUST A DOLLAR TO KEEP ME ALIVE.’ Some days I feel like that.”

Deja: Hunts Point, Bronx

Déjà’s mother was a crack addict and prostitute. At five Déjà started raising the other five children in the house. All shared a mother and none shared a father.

At nine her mother was taken away and the children split up. Déjà ran away from her foster family at twelve and came out as a woman. “I picked up all sorts of habits. I started doing things I don’t do, including smoking crack like my momma did.”

She has been in Hunts Point only a week, “I relapsed so here I am.”

She lives with Michael in an empty lot, working the track at night. “The only way I can prostitute is to drink and to do cocaine. How can you pretend to love and have sex otherwise? Addiction makes you do things you don't want to do.”

She sat in the cold spray of the hydrant, cooling off.

“I want the white picket fence, the Tupperware parties, the husband and kids.”

“Dream? That’s a fairy tale not a dream. Out here you can’t have dreams.”

Jennifer: Hunts Point, Bronx 

"I'm very intelligent but sometimes I feel disgusting because of what I do. I'm not really too happy with life, but I'm happy to be alive." -- Jennifer

Jennifer, 21, grew up with various foster parents. Her biological mother and father were addicts. She remembers the smell of drugs from being a child.

The sexual abuse started at 7 and continued until she fled her foster home. “My virginity was taken by my step brother. He raped me when I was 12. Raped me repeatedly.”

She now sells her body in Hunts Point for drugs, mostly heroin. She started crying as she told me her story.

"Because of the sexual abuse, sometimes I don't like having sex because it does bother me mentally. But if it's fast, quick money...like I said, I'm homeless. I have nothing. I grew up in a fucked up situation. Because of my father and brother, I'm screwed up in the brain right now. I'm not scared to say what I am and what I do. I see so many prostitutes who deny it. Don't be ashamed of who you are."

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A 26-year-old pimp convicted and sentenced to 100 years in the brutal beating of a prostitute and another man is now suing Nike, claiming the shoe company is partially responsible since the Jordans he used to stomp the victims did not come with a warning label, The Oregonian reports.

From NBC:

[Sirgiorgio Sanford] Clardy wrote a three-page complaint against Nike from the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution where he is incarcerated, reported The Oregonian. In the claim he said Nike “failed to warn of risk or to provide an adequate warning or instruction,” by not cautioning that their shoes are “potentially dangerous.” 

In June, Clardy repeatedly stomped on the head of a man with his Nike Air Jordan shoes for refusing to pay his prostitute, who Clardy also injured, USA Today reports. The man — who required stitches and plastic surgery on his nose — was then robbed of all his money, according to The Oregonian.

After a two-week trial in which Clardy threatened people and often shouted expletives at the judge, he was declared a dangerous offender unlikely of being rehabilitated, The Oregonian reported.

This latest conviction is another addition to Clardy's extensive rap sheet of felonies and misdemeanors, according to Multnomah County Sherriff's Office.

Nike has not yet been served with the lawsuit, and a company spokeswoman had no comment, according to NBC.

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There’s no business like show business, but are some A-listers supplementing their income by dabbling in the world’s oldest profession? 

Former high-class call girl Rebecca Woodard tears the lid off of the sex industry in her new book, Call Girl Confidential, and claims that some of her co-workers were well-known celebrities!

Woodard, writing under the name Rebecca Kade, first got a glimpse at the underbelly of the X-rated trade while working as a call girl for notorious NYC madam Kristin Davis.

She claims, “There were some very famous models that worked for Kristin,” as well as “Girls who’d been on the cover of Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar.” As regular readers know, those magazines almost exclusively feature celebrities.

“They usually did outcalls, [meeting clients at luxurious hotels],” she says of her famous co-workers. “But occasionally they would pop in to meet a client at Kristin’s place and their attitudes were above and beyond atrocious.”

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“They behaved as if they were better than we were,” she writes, “even though they were putting their stilettos in the air just the same.”

Woodard doesn’t give any hints about the women who earned cash on their backs, but she does offer some clues as to the identities of the men who hired them. See if you recognize any of these characters:

+A conservative governor who had his aide give Woodard a test run first.

+The successful nightclub impresario who regularly hosted coke-fueled parties in the Hamptons and group outings to see the Knicks.

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+A “major financier” with offices in NYC, Switzerland, and London who was partly responsible for the 2008 market crash and had a predilection for S&M and young boys.

+A Middle Eastern prince who stayed at the Plaza Hotel and assuaged his disappointment at the fact he wouldn’t inherit the throne by doing mountains of cocaine.

+A “famous classical pianist” who “would call whenever he was in town to play Carnegie Hall. Apparently, he liked to have his ladies lie on the floor and pretend to sunbathe in his hotel room.

Any guesses as to who the famous hookers were or their clients? Let us know in the comments!

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