Read more at Las Vegas Citylife…

Brothel bound
Nevada’s brothels a leading example for other states
by AMY KINGSLEY

Nevada’s relationship with its legal brothels is a lot like the one between a john and a hooker — financially rewarding for one party, vaguely shameful to the other and thoroughly unacceptable as a subject of polite conversation.

The tourism and prostitution industries feed off each other. But that doesn’t keep casino moguls from turning up their noses at brothel owners. They barely tolerate their presence in the rural counties outside Reno and Las Vegas, and balk at the prospect of bringing them to the big cities.

In her new book, State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland, UNLV professor Barb Brents tackles the complicated relationship between the state and its brothels. Brents, along with co-authors Kate Hausbeck and Crystal Jackson, spent the better part of a decade researching the history, structure and working environment within legal brothels. Her research led her to some surprising conclusions.

“I used to think that women had no power in that situation,” she said. “But then, as a feminist, I started listening to the voices of the women, and more and more of them were telling me that it wasn’t exploitation.”

State of Sex is the first book that uses academic research methods to contextualize Nevada’s unusual system of legal prostitution. Readers looking for randy tales of sexual adventure might want to look elsewhere. Marketing aside, most of the women who work in brothels aren’t hypersexual, they’re just regular working women in search of a high-paying gig. For them, working in a brothel may not be much different than working in a shoe store.

“There are all different kinds of women with different levels of commitment,” Brents said. “It becomes kind of impossible to say that prostitution is any one thing. But the women all talk about the work as a job.”

Read more at RGJ.com…

Angel in red: Reno woman helps sex workers
By Geralda Miller

Women who work in the sex industry are not invisible to Sharnel Silvey.

As founder of A Scarlet Covering, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling and resources to women in the sex industry, she continues to work with women who she feels are neglected.

“I embrace them as a human being and want them to know that they’re loved and that we’re here for them,” she said.

Silvey has been busy since the stories that ran two months ago in the Reno Gazette-Journal about her and her organization.

She served Thanksgiving dinner to 40 women who work at Diamond Dolls and Fantasy Girls strip clubs; served dinner, decorated a Christmas tree and delivered gifts to women at the Big 4 Ranch brothel in Ely with members of the Strip Church in Las Vegas. She also has been working two days a month with Judge James Van Winkel in Reno Municipal Court with women arrested for solicitation, a misdemeanor in Nevada.

“We want them to know that we’re here,” Silvey said. “This is an avenue for us to let them know that we support them, regardless of what they’re doing. Society has rejected them and considered them an outcast.”

Sandy McClelland, house mom at Fantasy Girls, said the women who work at the strip club were surprised that Silvey and her organization wanted to serve them dinner.

“I think it’s incredible, really, that there are people that want to go out and do good things for no monetary gain and they just want to do it out of the goodness of their heart,” McClelland said. “I think they like the idea of somebody giving back to them and actually caring.”

Read more at The Las Vegas Sun…

Henderson postpones vote on toughening law on massage parlors
Number of licenses would increase because more would need them
By Sam Skolnik

The Henderson City Council on Tuesday postponed action on a proposed ordinance clamping down on massage parlors. Without comment, the vote was moved to early next year, probably in January or February.

The ordinance is an effort to combat illegal activities in massage parlors and “reflexology” establishments, which are supposed to offer a type of “pressure point” massage to the hands and feet.

Both types of establishments throughout the valley have often served as fronts for prostitution. Henderson would like to at least try to put a stop to that.

The ordinance — aiming to be “responsive to community concerns” — would restrict the hours the parlors may operate to 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. It also would forbid the use of tinted glass on the establishments’ exterior windows, and mandate that the front and back doors remain unlocked during business hours. The ordinance would also prohibit “false or deceptive advertising” about the businesses.

The changes would mean massage businesses in Henderson would be more tightly regulated than those in Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County.

The LVPD asks Clark County to tighten its enforcement of prostitution laws. Read more at The San Francisco Examiner…

Clark County asked to tighten prostitution laws

Las Vegas police are asking Clark County to tighten its prostitution enforcement by bringing it more in line with the city’s ordinances.

Las Vegas vice officers on Tuesday presented county commissioners with two proposed ordinance amendments aimed at closing the gap between city and county laws.

Las Vegas police say prostitution workers know it’s better to be arrested for solicitation in unincorporated county areas than in the city.

One proposed change would make it easier for police to arrest prostitutes who try to entrap undercover officers.

The other would let police arrest prostitutes who loiter in areas of resorts such as hallways that aren’t open to the general public without a key.

Like a bad penny, this one just keeps coming up. Read more at Fox5 Vegas…

Fleiss Gets Probation In Drug Case

Former “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss has been sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to felony drug charges in the town of Pahrump.

Fleiss pleaded guilty July 7 to unlawful use of methamphetamine and possession of the painkiller hydrocodone without a prescription.

The charges stem from a Feb. 7, 2008, arrest outside a plumbing supply store.

Fleiss, 43, moved to Nevada after serving prison time in California for running a prostitution ring.

An interesting article regarding how the recession is impacting Nevada’s most notorious business, by way of New Zealand, of all places.  Read the entire article at The Mail & Guardian…

Sex feels the credit squeeze in Nevada
by Andrew Clark

Nobody in the business world has emerged unscathed from the financial carnage wreaked by the global recession. That includes those who ply their trade entirely legally – in the world’s oldest profession.

Nevada is famous for its licensed brothels, which originally catered for miners and cowboys working in the sun-scorched desert. Now a lure for lascivious tourists, they have suffered a plunge in earnings as men become parsimonious about their spending on sex.

In good years, Nevada’s 25 or so bordellos pulled in as much as $50-million in revenue. But George Flint, director of the Nevada Brothel Owners’ Association, says takings at the state’s worst-hit establishments have slumped by 60% to 70%, and even the most robust have suffered to the tune of at least 20%.

“It’s been a negative effect,” he says. “More so than anything that’s had an impact on the industry in the half century that I’ve been around.”

The downturn, says Flint, has drawn more women into both legal and illegal prostitution, but customers are scarce and prices, typically $75 to $250 for a quick “date”, are under pressure: “More women are reaching out to work in the industry. The biggest visible effect is that a lot of women are working for about half what they were a few years ago.”

…

The recession has come at a tricky time. Bordellos were already facing competition from a whole new digital avenue as free listings websites such as Craigslist made sex available at the touch of a mouse.

Brothels are not permitted in the county around Las Vegas, which is by far Nevada’s biggest city, but an hour’s drive into the desert is sufficient to cross the county line. At establishments within 90 minutes’ drive of so-called Sin City, as many as 70% of customers are tourists, of whom about a quarter tend to be foreign. But Vegas is suffering — visitor numbers have fallen as penny-pinching gamblers stay away.

Given the long drive involved in reaching brothels, high petrol prices have hardly helped. One establishment, the Shady Lady Ranch, has been offering $50 fuel vouchers to anybody spending more than $300.

Sheri’s Ranch sits beneath a spectacular view of the snow-topped peak of Mount Charleston, in the cotton farming town of Pahrump, near the California border. On a eight hectare site, Sheri’s boasts tennis courts, a hotel and spa, a sports bar and a rose garden. It is owned by Resort Entertainment, which also operates two lapdancing clubs in Las Vegas. Its chief operating officer, Jonathan Klempa, readily admits that the downturn is hurting.

He says men who arrive at Sheri’s are still willing to pay the same, but footfall is slower: “Our customer quality is about the same, there are just fewer of them.”

Staff at Sheri’s repeatedly emphasise that the place is like any business. Gloria Mandarino, the ranch’s back-of-house manager, used to work at the internet advertising firm Razorfish. She says: “You soon learn this is a company like any other. It’s got accounts payable, receivables, the whole lot.”

Read the entire article at The Las Vegas Sun…

Pimps, Las Vegas Metro’s coming for you
Cops’ focus shifts from prostitutes to their managers
By Abigail Goldman

Thousands of prostitutes are arrested in Clark County every year. Their mug shots flip past like school portraits from the Mean Streets Academy, a few smiles but more slack stares, asleep with eyes open.

They’re criminals, but they’re also victims because, vice detectives will tell you, behind every prostitute is a pimp. These relationships are by nature coercive, and these coercions are often cemented with violence. Women who try to secret their own earnings, who try to leave, who violate some rule of the game, are broken with beatings. Detectives sometimes catch prostitutes like this, injured but hustling, afraid to get help.

In February, when news broke about Metro’s plan to arrest the county’s most prolific prostitutes, the department was alternately extolled and attacked. Some people called for sex worker roundups, others said Metro was wasting money, and many people questioned whether it was fair for media outlets to publish mug shots of prolific prostitutes.

Meanwhile, vice Lt. Karen Hughes kept quiet. To her, the complaints sounded like squealing over mice in a lions den.

Hughes and her detectives have been on to bigger game for months. They are far more interested in arresting pimps than prostitutes. In fact, Metro’s entire vice section has been reorganized to focus on pimps: Detectives have been reassigned, investigative teams have been formed and alleged pimps are being arrested, one by one.

This is a sea change for Metro, a step forward that forces a look back. By focusing on pimps, the department tacitly acknowledges that previous priorities were out of order, that the days of catch-and-release prostitution arrests were, while plentiful, not getting close enough to the root of the problem. Yes, Metro detectives have arrested pimps before. The difference is now they’re hunting them.

But these are complicated cases. Some take months of investigation, weeks spent penetrating an underworld, convincing inhabitants you jailed yesterday to trust you today, persuading prostitutes to turn on the pimps who got into their heads first, who already sold them on selling themselves.

This is part of pandering’s perverse genius: The girls get put behind bars over and over again, before anyone can trace them back to the source.

Read the whole story at Las Vegas Now…

Las Vegas Closes Massage Parlor Alleging Prostitution

The City of Las Vegas has shut down a tanning salon that police say was a front for prostitution. The business lost its license after undercover detectives learned massages at the tanning salon were going too far.

Illegal sex acts are a problem Metro Vice officers continue to fight. Police got some anonymous tips that the Hawaii Relax Tanning and Spa had some shady business going on behind closed doors.

The city says the shop didn’t even have the right license to be open in the first place. The spa is now closed.

A recent City Council meeting bordered on being x-rated. The owner of the tanning salon hoped to renew his business license while city staff wanted the place shutdown.

“I personally have received massages in this place and have been solicited for acts of prostitution,” said Metro Detective Jeff Gentry.

The city says the shop did not have the license to even be a massage parlor. Authorities say some women were turning tricks in a place that wasn’t exactly what it was advertised as.

“There is only one tanning bed on the premises,” said Jim Difiore with the City of Las Vegas Business Services.

Metro Vice Lt. Karen Hughes says Metro aggressively enforces prostitution laws across the board, “We have a lot of businesses where the employees will try to make their massage license to the next level and offer acts of prostitution.”

She says some massage parlors are legitimate, but others are part of the world’s oldest profession, “It’s not a victimless crime. These girls often fall prey to deception and fall prey to the violence.”

A woman answering the phone at Hawaii Relax says nothing illegal went on.

“Why do we have people acting as bodyguards and out in the parking lots? Why do we have women dressed in lingerie running around bearing their breasts? Why do we have women inside offering sex acts for money?” asked Las Vegas City Attorney Brad Jerbic.

The City Council voted to strip the Hawaii Relax Tanning and Spa of its license.

The attorney for the salon says none of the ladies working there have been convicted of any crimes. The owner is also not accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

Read the whole story at The International Herald Tribune…

Nevada brothels want to pay tax, but state says no

It is virtually unheard of for any legal industry to ask to be taxed. And it would seem even more unlikely for any government, especially one facing down a nearly $2 billion budget gap, to hesitate when a business is willing to pay up.

Yet such is the case for Nevada’s brothels, a $50-million-a-year industry that pays significant amounts of tax to the rural counties in which they operate but only a $100 business license fee to the state.

The industry’s lobbyist, George Flint, director of the Nevada Brothel Association, has been approaching the Legislature’s leadership for months about creating an entertainment tax that would require the state’s 25 legal brothels to give the state some money on a per-transaction basis.

“I am a voice crying in the wilderness,” said Flint, who does not own any brothels himself. “It’s not going to make a hell of a lot of money, but we would be happy to pay our fair share. We can’t even get a hearing. The speaker of the House told me, ‘As bad as it is, I don’t think we want to go there.”‘

Nevada is the only state where prostitution is legal, but by state law it also is restricted to counties with fewer than 400,000 residents. That outlaws it in two counties, Clark, which contains Las Vegas, and Washoe, which contains Reno. There are about 225 women licensed by the state as prostitutes; no county allows brothels to have men who sell sexual services.

Still, since 1971, when prostitution was legalized, Nevada has added more than two million residents and become significantly more socially conservative. The state has also lost much of its frontier mentality, so Flint acknowledges that the tax effort is “something of an insurance policy” against the Legislature’s deciding one day to do away with the industry.

“Anytime you’re going to take tax money, the state’s not going to view you as a relic of a past time and put you out of business,” said Flint, who said he was gaining traction for a brothel tax in 2003 until he made the faux pas of joking to a reporter that he would commit to putting the governor’s portrait in every prostitute’s lair along with a note reading, “Don’t forget the governor’s share.”

How’s that for an economic stimulus, Barack? Read the whole story at The Las Vegas Review Journal…

Brothel finds more ways to stimulate economy
Shady Lady customers receive $50 gift cards
By HENRY BREAN

Fuel prices have come down but the economy still stinks. So what’s a far-flung Nevada brothel to do?

At the Shady Lady Ranch, owner Bobbi Davis has swapped gas cards for credit cards.

Throughout the month of January, the Nye County bordello about 150 miles northwest of Las Vegas will hand out prepaid Discover gift cards worth $50 to anyone who purchases at least 300 bucks in services.

“Basically we’re just trying to give a little something back,” Davis said. “This is something they can spend on anything.”

The Shady Lady made headlines in June when Davis announced plans to “stimulate the economy” by giving out $50 gasoline gift cards to paying customers.

The promotion worked like a charm. “We gave out over 2,000 (gas) cards in one month. It really helped us a lot,” Davis said.

That’s a handout worth more than $100,000. All told, Davis said, the gas cards attracted about 500 extra customers on top of the thousand or so the brothel normally services in July.

Those numbers, which translate to about six customers a day every day for each of the five women who work at the brothel when it is fully staffed, could not be verified.

At least one person familiar with Davis’ operation dismissed the sales figures as bogus.

“That’s a whole truckload of misinformation,” said George Flint, who owns a Reno wedding chapel and lobbies on the behalf of the state’s legal bordellos. “I know every brothel in the state intimately. If she sees even 100 tricks in a month, she’s got to be jumping for joy.”

Flint said not even Sherri’s Ranch, Southern Nevada’s largest legal brothel, posts numbers like the ones Davis is claiming.