Prostitution

marketing

Brothels Offer Barbecue, Billboards, Beans (And Hookers)

These high gas prices are an absolute killer for the legalized sex trade. Truckers who enjoy paying for sex with hookers at isolated Nevada brothels have a lot less disposable income these days, so those brothels are being forced to do what once was unnecessary: marketing. Sex with anonymous prostitutes just doesn't sell itself these days! So the pimps, or whatever the legitimate business equivalent is called, are getting creative: not just billboards, but barbecue, beans, and trucker loyalty (to hookers) programs:
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9:34 AM on Tue Jun 3 2008
By Hamilton Nolan
2,103 views, 53 comments

Latest by n/a: @AuntPeniston: How fresh is the fish? more »

and now she's dead

DC Madam Deborah Palfrey: 1956-2008

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam" who was convicted in April of charges related to her famous prostitution ring, died today in an apparent suicide at her mother's house in Florida. She was 52. Palfrey was busted in October of 2006, and it wasn't long before she captured national attention by threatening to release her phone records—records that could've destroyed the careers of hundreds of Washington politicians and officials. Or so went speculation at the time. More »

1:58 PM on Thu May 1 2008
By Pareene
6,940 views, 45 comments

Latest by Buzz Killington: @SuperBien: Oh yeah, the Law & Order episode is going to be classic. It'll turn out to be the governors social-climbing wife who set up the hit or something though. more »

scandal

Silda Spitzer Knew Eliot Was a Cheater

Reports by the Post hinting that Silda knew about her governor husband's hooker habit could change her narrative from a reluctant political wife to a complicit, calculating Hillary. Maybe she didn't know the gritty details and thought Eliot was just having an affair, like normal politicians. But according to the Post, a source told Richard Johnson that Eliot said his "[bleep]ing wife doesn't care [about the prostitutes], so why does anybody else care?"
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10:20 AM on Thu Apr 10 2008
By Sheila
5,665 views, 54 comments

the oldest profession

The Emperors Club Whored Artists, Too

Modern art is more or less indistinguishable from prostitution, but every now and then something happens to make that relationship a little less symbolic and a little more literal. Emperors Club, the high-priced call girl outfit that provided Eliot Spitzer and countless other wealthy elites with classy sex, also hooked the same wealthy clients up with classy art. According to Artnet: "As it turns out, the company that ran Emperors Club VIP, the Emperors Publishing Media Group, also runs a parallel website titled Emperors Club Contemporary Art." Millionaires and billionaires who signed up with the service would supposedly gain access to "exclusive auctions" of works by folks like Jeff Koons and Andrew Wyeth. More »

12:51 PM on Fri Mar 28 2008
By Pareene
2,064 views, 20 comments

Latest by n/a: For me it IS the pleasure of the act and the object itself. I guess that's why I never graduated from whore to "art buyer". more »

washington slept here

Fancy Hotel is Hotbed of Sin!

Shock! The Mayflower Hotel, a charming old Washington DC institution, apparently doesn't forcibly stop women who may be prostitutes from going up to the rooms of men who may be johns! Attractive women in "stilettos and lacy camisoles" are so out-of-place in downtown DC that the hotel staff play a game called "Guess the Call Girl," where they quietly declare these women to be whores. But even after spotting the loose women, the staff sit idly by and do nothing while innocent men are led down the path of temptation. Disgusting. [NYT]

11:10 AM on Thu Mar 20 2008
By Pareene
1,508 views, 25 comments

Latest by raincoaster: @collegecallgirl: I know her. And she DOES get mistaken for a call girl all the time. She just bought some dumpy khakis to blend in more. more »

newspapers

How the NYT Got One Escort's Story Wrong

You might remember the article about sex workers in the Sunday New York Times, "The Double Lives of High-Priced Call Girls," that interviewed a Williamsburg artist and "part-time prostitute," an internet escort raising money for her uninsured father's operation, and a dominatrix. The article appeared calm and fair, and didn't identify the working women as victims. However, one of the women profiled, the artist/part time prostitute "Faith O'Donnell," was unhappy with how she was represented. The article described her as "25, is a hipster with entrancing blue eyes who carries an NPR tote bag and might offer up a few pleasantries on the Whole Foods checkout line before turning back to her Junot Diaz novel." But that's not what irked her! On the sex workers' blog Bound, Not Gagged, she tells us "How the NYT Got an Interview Wrong: For one thing, basic details were wrong, but too many identifying details were included, despite my request to the contrary (I wish I had paid off my student loans!)..." More »

3:30 PM on Tue Mar 18 2008
By Sheila
8,842 views, 44 comments

Latest by n/a: @lefty: Comment on How the NYT Got One Escort's Story Wrong It's after midnight and "Chill Slut" is still funny. more »

scandal

"Spitzer is going through a Saturn/Pluto double whammy"

Eliot Spitzer paid for a lady, and astrologists are already offering unsolicited advice. Did you know he's a Gemini? You know what that means...
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6:01 PM on Tue Mar 11 2008
By Sheila
2,041 views, 10 comments

scandal roundup

In Which Eliot Spitzer Does Something He Shouldn't — With a Lady!

Spitzer paid to see a lady and he's sorry. He said so on the TV.

Who else has done bad things with fast girls? Everyone, pretty much.

Will his wife handle the news with stoic grace, as is the custom?

If not, at least she can retreat to their eco-friendly Governor's Mansion. It's "green."

Unless he resigns? Which he shouldn't.

Is this the tryst-hotel room? Omg omg omg.

Hillary Clinton is taking back all the nice things she said about him.

Need informed cocktail party chatter? Here it is. Now don't you get caught doing whatever bad things you're doing!

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6:19 PM on Mon Mar 10 2008
By Sheila
5,269 views, 58 comments

Latest by n/a: As a former pro-Domme with no supporting evidence, I predict that it will be revealed that Spitzer was a sexual submissive whose "call girl" was in fact another pro-Domme. The powerful needs of submissive men will not be subjugated to more »

eliot spitzer

"He Would Ask You To Do Things That, Like, You Might Not Think Were Safe"

Governor Eliot Spitzer apparently got one of those street-smart hookers with hearts of gold. He had, as the attached passage shows, a reputation as something of a difficult client. But "Kristen"? She straightened him out. The Smoking Gun has posted the Spitzer-relevant portions of the FBI affidavit detailing the operation of the Emperors Club, in case you were curious about how a governor goes about setting up a date while he's on a business trip. [TSG]

3:55 PM on Mon Mar 10 2008
By Pareene
16,098 views, 77 comments

Latest by MartyPants: @trojanhorse: @Morningstar: Marginally better, I guess. Just reading the dry legal text and the reference to February 14 was like an extra kick in the gut. I imagine that no matter what Spitzer and the FL did that Thursday night, more »

how things work

A Brief Guide to Luxury Callgirl Rings

Whoops! Spitzer ain't the only john to be caught up in a prostitution ring... but a classy one. We provide a very brief, very incomplete history of so-called high-class organizations offering the services of paid girls.
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3:19 PM on Mon Mar 10 2008
By Sheila
12,789 views, 17 comments

prostitution reform

"RESPONSABILITY IN COUNTER CULTURE," Demands Nutty Sex Flier

The Village Voice will soon be facing a crippling boycott aimed at ending the paper's sex industry ads, if some semi-literate pink fliers littering the East Village have anything to say about it. The improbably located double-sided fliers also call for the automobile industry to stop giving assistance to forced homelessness, and a revamping of prostitution laws: "Greatest prostitution offense; person with AIDS or STD's prostituting patronizing them selves." An interesting viewpoint, certainly. But it's this idea for strip club reform that could succeed in stimulating us economically and otherwise, and may in fact save the world: More »

11:53 AM on Sun Feb 17 2008
By Hamilton Nolan
1,280 views, 18 comments

Latest by famousauthor: @Michael Jahn: Different principles apply in the miraculous conception world... more »

when things get real

Intellectual Paradise Becomes Harlot Convention!

Oh, there was so much hubbub when Boykin Curry and Celerie Kemble, the most adorable rich people in town, hatched their scheme for a smarty-pants playground in the Dominican Republic! (Weirdo New Yorker summary here.) Moby was in on the deal—and so was Alex von Furstenberg! Now it seems that the golf course on the still unfinished little utopia is being rented out to whores? The brothel next door apparently held a golf tournament on the grounds of the utopia. Boykin and Celerie better hope the National Organization For Women doesn't go to the D.R. because they will flip their wigs over this.

Boinkin' With Boykin [Daniel Radosh]

1:10 PM on Wed Nov 7 2007
By Choire
2,488 views, 32 comments

Latest by peterparker69: @ PIMPMYCOUCH: I was just 'flattering' SASSYPANTS by parroting what s/he said about Boykin's name. Oh, alright...I wanted to contribute but couldn't think of anything witty so I engaged in the Gawker.com form of plagiarism. Beat me! more »

call off your old tired ethics

'New York' Mag Is A Foul Pimp Of Sex Slaves, Claim Ladies

The amazingly old-school feminists at the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women will be protesting New York magazine on Thursday at noon! Why? "With ads for sex tours that advertise 'have your own harem' and ads for massage parlors that promise 'accommodating Asian women' New York Magazine is the marketing arm of the organized crime world of prostitution and trafficking.... It makes $10,000 a week facilitating the commercial sex industry." Oh my God, 10,000 whole dollars a week? Our femiladyist friends do have at least one good point: Some of the advertising brothels of New York probably are full of Peter Landesman-style sex slaves! Eww! But after going Andrea Dworkin-wrong by painting all prostitution ads with the brush of duress and international conspiracy, they then go further afield: "New York Magazine represents the life and times of New Yorkers," they claim. Well, we've got bigger problems than sex trafficking if that's true. Update: OMG, sex ads and protest canceled!

12:45 PM on Tue Nov 6 2007
By Choire
2,002 views, 31 comments

Latest by Fishman: It's not like anybody buys that mag for the articles. more »

web 2.ho

There Are Hookers On The Internet!

How great is the Internet? The ease of communication that technology provides has allowed a once highly-localized industry to become incredibly mobile, enabling its itinerant practitioners to travel from one city to another, where they briefly set up shop to hawk their wares and then move on to the next welcoming town. The industry, of course, is prostitution, and, as is his wont, The Man is cracking down. Take eight jetsetters who simply wanted to summer (and whore) on Long Island: More »

3:00 PM on Wed Sep 5 2007
By abalk
13,562 views, 85 comments

Latest by Nard: @newtojezebel: It's "smarter than I," not "smarter than me." more »

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