| SykkBoy |
07-27-2007 03:36 PM |
So, nevada brothels can advertise now, but some of them...won't?
Quote:
Brothel advertising may be about to be legal, but don't expect to notice a lot of it in the near future.
Sure, two weeks ago a federal judge ruled in favor of the Shady Lady brothel in Nye County and Las Vegas alternative weekly City Life and struck down a 1979 law banning brothel advertising in counties where prostitution is illegal. But the mainstream media are hesitant to run the ads and the brothel industry greeted his ruling with trepidation.
"If we got a brain in our freaking head, we'll be careful," said George Flint, lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association. "It is not our intention to abuse the privilege and the right to advertise. We're going to be very, very careful and very, very conservative."
Conservative may sound like an odd description for bordellos and an even odder strategy for selling sex in a town that uses sex to sell everything, but it's the watchword of Nevada's legal brothel owners, whose survival tactic is to hope most of the public forgets they exist.
Most of the owners, anyway.
To see the tensions roiling the industry, one need look no further than the passions stirred by Dennis Hof. The owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch outside of Carson City and America's self-declared Pimp Master General (he has business cards) is not shy about attracting attention. He's even gone so far as to have his brothel featured in the HBO reality show "Cathouse." For Hof, publicity isn't a problem but a business plan. It's about attracting customers. And he's thrilled to build on his national exposure by advertising.
He said he'll start small in Reno and Lake Tahoe, but eventually expand his ads to Las Vegas, which he said would-be customers travel to, not realizing his brothel is an eight-hour drive away. It's one of the hazards of being a national brand, he said.
His plans and boasts have not made him popular in more traditional quarters of the world's oldest profession and Nevada's most publicity shy.
"The guy is a living, breathing malignancy on our industry, and you brought his name up and I didn't," Flint said. "If we have a problem, it will be Dennis Hof. He's a big pimple on the issue."
Flint and traditional brothel owners worry that attracting attention could be a quick way to get their business outlawed. But Hof said times have changed and his success proves that attracting attention is good business.
"Fifteen years ago, here's what they told me: 'Dennis, lie low in the sagebrush. Don't tell anybody about your business,' " Hof said. "Well, we've had a 4,000 percent increase in our business since then. I'm so glad I didn't listen to them."
"It's a whole new world out there."
It is, Hof said, a much more sexual world. The public tolerance for raunch is much higher than it was.
And nowhere is there more public raunch than in Las Vegas. Restaurant billboards tease with naked women's backs. Topless revues and strip clubs abound, and that's just the legal stuff.
The yellow pages has 106-and-change pages of "adult entertainers." No doubt there are mere strippers hiding among the "girls direct to your room" but probably not the ones advertising "full service blue-eyed blonde," "19 & Very Naughty," "meet me first free" and "no happy - no pay."
|
more of the story...
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/st...566671299.html
It's interesting how "conservative" a lot of these brothel owners are...
I was talking to an owner of one them a couple years ago about a website and he seemed more like a Wall Street type guy who basically just saw it as an investment. |
