Studmuffins

Too bad you have to pay for this strange article, but the Sunday NY Times featured the brewing battle between the brothel owners of Nevada, who believe a low profile is vital for their future, and publicity lightning rod Heidi Fleiss, who is starting up a brothel that will exclusively offer men for female customers. I especially liked the interview with Heidi's first employee, an unemployed actor who easily admitted he has no relevant experience for his new career direction (which I'm sure the stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius would have said, sotto voce, also applied to his first choice of a career).

The brothel owners may be right: in some ways, despite all the newfound 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' hoopla, Nevada is probably less-welcoming towards vice than ever, which is a function of population growth. For decades, in order to put together barely-adequate annual budgets, some underpopulated counties in Nevada have depended heavily on income from taxes on brothel traffic. As vulnerable rural economies broaden and strengthen, vice automatically weakens. And rural Nevada, like the rest of the Great Basin, with its many churchgoers, Mormon and Catholic, is basically a pretty conservative place. If rural taxpayers can bear the punch in the wallet, prostitution will likely become illegal everywhere in Nevada.

When I first started travelling through Nevada by car, back-and-forth between in Albuquerque and Sacramento in the early 90's, you'd sometimes see isolated, homely trailers and cottages sporting signs advertising massages. I looked askance at these signs as I drove past. I mean, who would come out here for a massage, even granting steering-wheel fatigue? These businesses were located in empty, desolate places, even by Nevada standards. In any event, these roadside businesses have vanished, usually to be replaced by nothing, or occasionally, by trailer park ranchettes glued together by small churches.

On my recent trip, I noticed an oddity: there's an adult book store strip between the city limits of Needles, CA, and Bullhead City, AZ. The strip is almost entirely in AZ, and the number of stores seems way out-of-proportion to the population. No such strip exists in neighboring Laughlin, NV, that I'm aware of.

So ... why? Are these kinds of businesses unwelcome in Nevada these days, or just unwelcome in Clark County, where Laughlin is located? Clark County is less forgiving than many realize. All appearances to the contrary, prostitution is illegal in Clark County, including Las Vegas, which forces the traffic there (barely) underground. I've read that Nevada's Democratic Senator Harry Reid, a Clark County Mormon who grew up in the town of Searchlight, traces his opposition to abortion to the sad side effects of the brothel traffic that used to occur in his hometown, before the ban.

Or is it some sort of zoning thing that makes the Arizona location particularly inviting for adult book stores? Depending on where the city limits are drawn, it may be the presence of 'rez' in-between Needles and Bullhead City. Well, whatever happens in Vegas apparently stays on Arizona's Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, these days.

Too bad I had to cut my recent trip short a day or two. As a result, I missed dropping by the AVN Convention in Las Vegas. I hope a million geeks showed up! No substitute for being in Vegas to see what happens in Vegas (even if it is all sizzle, and no steak).