Leaving aside women’s day spas, I always assume any ad for a massage parlor is really an ad for a massage wink parlor.
Having just driven a number of smaller highways through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, I saw a lot of billboards for places with names like Happy Number One Lucky Massage!, “Truckers Welcome”. Come on! There no way these places are just offering back rubs!
Or are they?
Actually they can and probably are perfectly legal. At least around here anyone running a massage parlor has to have a permit issued by the police dept and they get checked randomly by vice guys all the time. I have a friend who does massage and yes plenty of the onsite/fly-by-night/only seem to advertise by word of mouth ones are probably illegal. Hanging out a big billboard is just begging to get busted if you are doing anything shady. They wouldn’t last more than 30 days before a vice cop noticed a new billboard and wondered if they had a permit.
If you look them up in the phonebook and their ad says Certified Massage Therapist, they are probably legit.
I’d also take a look at their business hours - if they’re open until 2 AM, not legit.
It was a lot of fun watching my mother try to find a massage therapist. She finally figured out what the problem was, and called the massage parlor nearest the police station. Yep, they were legit. She’s been going there for years now.
Interesting. I figured some place like that would be raided every other day, but that maybe, being out in the sticks, no one really got too worked up about it. Good for a bust every now and then, but generally ignored.
I didn’t notice the hours or certification, but, yeah, a big billboard is probably not the best way to remain under the radar.
The Great American Backrub has branches in malls all over Toronto. 
Down the road from me are two Korean-owned massage establishments, one legit, one not, both unfortunately with the same name. Hilarity ensues frequently.
Yes, there are legit massage parlors. No, there’s no clear-cut way of knowing one way or the other before you put your money down. Or so I’m told.
Heh heh…I know this is GQ, but this thread reminded me and I have to share DeathLlama’s massage parlor story.
A few years after graduating college and embarking on his own, he tweaked his back and decided to look for a place to get it un-tweaked. Having been to masseusses in the past, he opened up the Yellow Pages and made an appointment at a local massage parlor.
He was weirded out when this older woman (the madame, we assumed later) came out first to talk to him in the room, then was followed by a “massage therapist” who turned out to be a young Asian woman dressed in an evening gown. The “therapist” talked nervously to DL, kept asking if he wanted to touch her, and then gave him–in his words–the worst back massage of his life. At one point, she “accidentally” placed her hand where he was about to reposition himself so he effectively sat/lay down on her hand. He quickly apologized and shuffled away, and she only then tried to rub his shoulders weakly. He left feeling dirty and creepy…and still in need of a good back tension massage.
This was years before we were married–knowing how shy, upright, and morally conscious DL is, and especially so in his early 20s, I find the whole scenario hilarious. Well…except for the fact that poor girl is a prostitute. That’s not so funny.
Legit places often have New Age clue-words like “therapy” or “soul” in the business name. Like “Therapeutic Body Kneading” or “Body and Soul Pilates, Massage, and Yoga”.
In our local weekly paper there’s a notice by the ads that says “Massage Parlor listed in this section have licenced massage therapists”, or somesuch. Then there’s another section with ads for “Alyssa’s Massage and Modeling”. I’m gussing Alyssa is not a licenced massage therapist. I’ve always wondered how they keep from getting busted, too. I mean, if **this **section has legitimate massage parlors… what is that other section? Don’t the cops read the paper too?
Well, they need to, er . . . gather evidence first. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200943_pf.html 
Most of them do not last more than thirty days anyway. They get shut down by some kind of bust or word-of-mouth that they are going to get busted. They shut down, and reopen the next day with a different business name and/or different ownership.
When I was stationed at Camp Lejeune (North Carolina) they were all over the place and reminded us Marines of the places in Okinawa and the Phillipines where you could get a baby oil massage for $10 or $20. The places would constantly get raided and the name would change the next day. The Marines constantly had to update the list of ‘off-limits’ places (you could get charged if caught going but they would really only charge you if something happened while there - police bust, etc.).
Now I am in South Florida and you see them all over. This one place I went to for a beer when I first moved here two years ago had one. It had dark black windows and advertised ‘full body shampoo’ on a hand written paper out front. I figure that place was not too legit. I went by there a couple of months ago and it was still there just using a different name. Funny.
I’ve gone to several in NYC and unless it’s one of those “speak-easy” deals where you say the magic word and get a different massage experience, they were all just places where you get a deep muscles workover. I can vouch for one just east of the West 4th Street subway station with a big marquee BEST BACK RUB FOR MEN AND WOMEN.
There are plenty of legitimate massage parlors in and arround silicon valley, so much so that the local paper has two sections for listing massage adverts, one for legitimate places and one for knocking shops. There are a few places which borderline between the two, but the real massage artists are especially agrieved by those places.
And it actually makes sense that truckers, who sit in the same position for hours at a time, would be in need of a legit massage every so often.
Many Chiropractic offices also offer Massage. They are legit.
The word “parlor” might be a clue.
“Your honor, I was just getting a back rub.”
“Yeah, but she was rubbing the back of your penis.”
Non-sexual* massage places around here (Toronto) tend to hire RMTs, Registered Massage Therapists. Around here, they tend to be either new-agey, yogic, or medical in aspect. They advertise on the subway, in malls, etc.
Sexual massage places seem to ba a lot more fly-by-night and advertise in the back of alternative weekly newspapers, if at all.
[sub]*Let’s set the word “legit” aside. I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with sexual massage. As long as no-one is cheating or anything, of course.[/sub]
From that page:
“It’s insane,” said Charles J. Key Sr., a retired Baltimore police lieutenant who trains police officers and federal agents across the country. “If you allow officers to go through with the act, they’ve violated the law. You don’t get an exception for participating in a violation of law.”
So how are the police supposed to get evidence? Should they reach an agreement, stop at the beginning, or what? It seems they’re a bit trapped. What I really don’t get is the statement that " You don’t get an exception for participating in a violation of law." Police get this all the time. Undercover officers would almost never be able to do their jobs if this weren’t true.
Unless Hollywood has been lying to me. But it would never do that.