It’s more stable than I thought, with a couple dozen brothels currently in business. But even perusing the sites given [note: some are NSFW] you find that they fade in and out of existence and ownership, and none look to be very wealthy besides (that is, they all look kind of run-down). The famous Mustang Ranch is always in financial trouble.
You’d think (at least, I’d think) that running a brothel would be basically a license to print money, but the reality suggests otherwise. Why isn’t prostitution on or anywhere near the level of Nevada’s other legal vice, gambling, when it comes to glitz, glamour, and dollars? Too far out in the sticks?
Maybe competition from illegal prostitution too, I’ll gather.
I see your point that it should be a license to print money. Sex is used to sell everything else, you’d think directly selling sex itself, legally, would be the most successful business ever. There should be gargantuan vaginaplexes built in the desert, each the size of ten casinos!
Even though it’s legal, it’s still heavily regulated. That might take its toll, too (especially given the aforementioned competition from illegal prostitutes).
I’ve never used the services of a prostitute but when I was in Las Vegas there were a lot of fairly obvious escorts floating around the hotels and venues and some extremely good looking ones. I’m thinking that it doesn’t take much effort to get action in Nevada outside the ranches and it would be more discreet than visiting a place where it is supposed to happen.
Going way out to a ranch to fuck women who fuck lots of men daily doesn’t seem (to me) like any kind of attractive exercise. Honestly it seems kind of gross, better to get a private escort hook up. I’m thinking a lot of hetero men might feel the same way.
Prostitution is only potentially legal in Nevada in counties with populations under 400,000, leaving out the counties containing Las Vegas and Reno. Counties where prostitution is potentially legal may further regulate or ban it, as may individual cities (it is illegal in the capital of Carson City). These regulations mean that legal brothels tend to be out in the boonies, inconvenient to the more populous and tourist-friendly areas. I’m guessing a lot of potential customers would rather see an illegal prostitute in Vegas than take a long trip into the desert, where there is nothing else to do.
The competition from the nonlegal side is an important consideration. This is then further reinforced by the regulation encumbering how they run the place, and especially how the law limits the legal brothels to being located out in the rural counties. In the case of Vegas, that means driving almost an hour to get out of Clark County, when the high roller, or even the not-high-rolling vacationer/conventioneer from the Heartland checking out what this “Sin City” thing’s about, has quick access to strictly non-legal but otherwise easily available and usually reliable outcall/incall escorts, OTC strippers, “casino girls” etc. at various price ranges right in town. (And can you imagine an Ashley Dupré/Eliot Spitzer $5K-a-trick type provider/customer pair out in a trailer court in Pahrump, rather than at a suite at the Palms?).
And guess what, interests in Vegas and Reno would rather have it that way and NOT see giant vaginaplex sex resorts out in the desert. So they tend to support the statu quo which keeps the travelers and the working girls in their hotels and bars.
The only brother I’ve ever seen in Nevada was called “Salt Wells” in the middle of nowhere on highway 50 in the late 90s. I was driving past and drove each way within a few days. I passed during the daytime. There were no cars in parking lot, and it was surrounded by high chain link fence with razor wire on top. It was a cinder block building, and other than the outlines of ladies on the sign, there was no indication of what it really was. I’ve seen prisons that looked more appealing, although I gather the sexual experiences in prison would not be to my liking.
Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City areas. These are the populated regions of Nevada. Once you remove those areas from the legal brothel areas, what you are left with is a lot of nothing much. Apart from those areas, most of the remainder of Nevada is pretty empty and bleak.
Short answer…the brothels tend to be very small, very isolated and do not have the customer base you would hope for.
Wasn’t there some joke or urban legend about the guy who goes to a brothel and finds one of the working girls is his sister?
“I won’t tell mom about you if you don’t tell her about me…”
All sensible comments about just how unappealing whore-hookers in a crib are. Most escorts are far better looking, reasonably good company and probably haven’t fucked more than one or two men before you that day.
OTOH, the wild success of stripper bars boggles me. Paying a fortune in drinks and tips to have nekkid girls make eyes at you and maybe rub their butt in your lap seems so unappealing.
I’m with you on that one. Even in a regular bar setting where they have scantily clad dancers, I barely glance at them. Unless one really catches my eye, then he gets maybe a dollar or two.
Another consideration is the cost – and the haggling. If the Cathouse series is to believed, some of the talent there want to charge $2500 for a “basic” service. You can “haggle” the price down, but often that comes with a decrease in the allowed activities. Also, consider that the house gets half of the charge, so the women immediately lose half of the fee, encouraging them to charge higher rates.
Las Vegas escorts have a fixed rate per hour, which you know up front. No haggling is generally allowed. (I’m not talking about casino girls, but escorts you find on the internet.) Typically, there are no middle men: the escort keeps the entire charge, allowing them to charge lower rates and still generate a good income for themselves.
Add in the convenience of them coming to your hotel room, and legal brothels don’t look so good anymore.
Well, if I was a customer I can think of several reasons why I’d eschew them for other venues:
(1) Convenience. They’re all located in the middle of bumfuck, nowhere. If I’m driving hours out of my way they’re gonna have to provide a steller service to make it worthwhile.
(2) Local Competition. I had a really hard time determining prices at a typical brothel. Most of their websites, which look like they were designed 15 years ago, make no mention of rates. I did find one article which said “Most have a minimum charge of $150, with some charging as much as $300 minimum… At Sheri’s Ranch, which Flint calls one of the state’s more upscale spots, the average transaction works out to $900.” There’s a huge amount of variability there, but let’s go with those numbers.
Compare with some of the prices of escorts I got from this blog. $150/hr on the low end, $200/hr for most you can pick up in a bar, and $250+/hr if you use agencies and websites. Combine those prices with (1) and it makes traveling even more unappealing.
(3) Bureaucracy and overhead. In this article one brothel owner says he spent $20 million over the years to get his establishment up and running and to comply with the myriad permits and regulations. $20 million! Can you imagine how many customers you’d need every year just to break even with those kind of expenses?
(4) Business cycles. Think brothels are recession proof? Think again. It’s hard to justify visiting a brothel when times are tough and belts are tightened.
(5) Foreign competition. Assume for the moment I’ve got thousands of dollars to burn on hookers. Why would I really shop local, with their high prices and so-so looks (going from all the pictures I’ve seen), when I could just use my money to fly to a popular sex tourism destination where I KNOW I can get better for my dollar? And I don’t just mean Thailand or Germany–on this side of the pond there’s Tijuana, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina, etc.
The VAST majority of all sex is free. Paid for sex is a very small chunk of it.
Just because you can have sex for a price doesn’t mean you will. Some people have standards and morals that prohibit buying sex. Besides, if you ever pay for sex, you will always be a person that has paid for sex, which can be a stigma.
These ladies be EXPENSIVE AS HELL! That deters a TON of people. IMO if you have enough cheddar to pay for a call girl, you have more than enough to entice a girl from the club to have willing, free sex.
Profit would increase with frequency, but that also results in infection sometimes.
If someone is offering a $20 beej, why pay more? Free ones are even better.
I vaguely remember reading a magazine article in which the author described his visit to a (legal) Nevada brothel. The experience must have been sterile, very much like an unpleasant medical examination. A special emphasis was put on complying with all sorts of official rules and regulations. It didn’t sound like fun at all, rather like an operation which is run by the government.
I’ll add that y’all seem to have an inflated notion of what individual services cost. You can get a very pleasant hour with the very attractive and pleasant lady of your choice for $3-600 in pretty much any city of the world.
If you want four or five hours out in public with an aspiring model or actress, it will be three times that. With a slightly known name, ten times that. But we’ve just been kicking around a little sheet-mussing, and that does not get into four figures, or (in all but a handful of cities) even near it.