Eliot Spitzer should have gone to Nevada. But how was he to know?

 

Recently I got a call from the publicist for the Chicken Ranch, a legal brothel just over the Clark County line in Pahrump. The publicist wanted to pitch me on writing a story about the differences between legal and illegal prostitution. He wanted me to write about how much physically safer a brothel is than the streets and how the tested brothel workers and strict rules reduce the risk of STD transmission; and, mostly, to note the sorts of advantages that come from the difference between breaking the law and being a legal business.

This was all old news to me. But then he surprised me by mentioning that there was also one huge drawback to being legally in the business of selling sex, and he wanted me to note the hypocrisies of it: buying advertising.

 

It turns out to be a big advantage for the operations of dubious legality when it comes to placing advertising in the Las Vegas media. Any visitor to town has seen the billboards and banners and been handed cards offering escorts or private dances in your hotel room. In fact, it seems almost impossible to be on the Strip and not view advertising for an illegal hooker in Vegas. The only place on the Strip where it seems that illegal prostitution advertising hasn't found a spot -- yet -- is on a resort marquee. But legal brothels have not found it so easy to get the word out through advertising.

A recent change in the law has for the first time allowed legal brothels to advertise in Vegas. Now, they need to find someone to take their money. Apparently, in Las Vegas, it is turning out that most mainstream publications, billboard companies and other media that run advertising for thinly disguised escort services and massage parlors are refusing advertising from legal brothels. (Photo by Sarah Gerke)