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We all have a fetish . . .
. . . and mine is for zombies. But I'm also happy to see latex, leather, etc., if it's for a good cause. In this case, the cause was a Save the Main event. These guys are campaigning to keep Montréal's red light district from being turned into yet more office space (we already have more than we can lease!). Anyway, part of Bonnie's baladi troupe was dancing in the evening's cabaret element, although the feature event was a fetish film festival as part of the Montréal Fetish Weekend.
The dance connection wasn't the only reason I went. As it happens, I believe that cities need red light districts. Tonight, I heard that lots of cities are bulldozing red light districts to make room for more offices. Well, I've seen that happen, folks, and the reality is this: It disperses the district's people and activities all over the city. If you're into this stuff, it becomes harder to find. If you're opposed to it, guess what? It ends up in your back alley. Either way, nobody wins . . . least of all the people who work there.
And that's enough politics for one night.
The dance connection wasn't the only reason I went. As it happens, I believe that cities need red light districts. Tonight, I heard that lots of cities are bulldozing red light districts to make room for more offices. Well, I've seen that happen, folks, and the reality is this: It disperses the district's people and activities all over the city. If you're into this stuff, it becomes harder to find. If you're opposed to it, guess what? It ends up in your back alley. Either way, nobody wins . . . least of all the people who work there.
And that's enough politics for one night.
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No Red-light: Portland doesn't have a red-light district I can point to (it used to, I think, if my memories of the old Pearl are any guide). The sex trade is dispersed all over the city. Advertising is simultaneously blunt and non-graphic, i.e. the signs are textual but not subtle. I never really hear locals complain; Portlanders are nothing if not blasé about vice. Crime is very solidly in the lower middle of the chart for large US cities.
Mixed Red-light: Los Angeles also seems to match low-end sex to high rates of violent crime, creating numerous red zones. Meanwhile the mid-level "massage parlours" have a racket set up with the local chiropractors that offers them considerable legal shelter. Before he retired, my father became something of a specialist in taxing the mid-to-high sex trades (tax evasion by other groups required less innovation to counter). Like all retail, it needs to be close to the customers, and so is dispersed away from any definable red-light district. His stories of visits to high end defence attorneys are far more harrowing than his more comedic tales about his treatment at various tax-dodging brothels.
Definite Red-light: In San Jose, Costa Rica, there was a clear red light district, which happened to lie along my way home between two expatriate colonies. I got into a knife fight in San Jose's red-light district (in the alley behind "The Red Windmill", which was far less classy than the French establishment that inspired its name), one of the few times I've been assaulted. Nobody intervened or, perhaps more shockingly, even ran away. The police also didn't go into that area. There was "blight".
An additional observation: Amsterdam was, from what I am told, cutting back on its red light district primarily because it was a magnet for human trafficking. This seems like a legitimate concern to me.
(By the way, I've been working almost exclusively in non-English or in very badly translated English for the last several days. If my prose is choppy, and it feels like it is very choppy, this is why.)
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Los Angeles also seems to match low-end sex to high rates of violent crime
The police also didn't go into that area.
Amsterdam was, from what I am told, cutting back on its red light district primarily because it was a magnet for human trafficking.
This argument seems to be focusing on crime and/or lawlessness. Mostly, that's a nonissue here. We're not talking about crime . . . we're talking about Joe Blow having to see signs for burlesque joints. Or his mother, Mrs. Effie Blow (91 years of age), being offended at a 200-lb. man in a leather suit being led on a chain by a girl in latex.
Locally – and it's always anecdotal, isn't it? – I could point to half a dozen spots on the Montréal map with higher crime rates and scarier crimes than this one. For instance, there are areas run by street gangs and others terrorized by cycle gangs, and several where ethnic tensions result in regular deaths. For the most part, the dominant "crime" in the region I'm talking about is manufactured, in the sense that hookers work there and Canada hasn't seen fit to legalize their trade.
I do hear the human-trafficking angle – see my latest campaign recaps for how I feel about that, really. Here, it's internal: Girls are spirited into Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver from towns and smaller cities. It's hard to say whether Amsterdam's experience applies. It's a reasonable claim that demand stimulates supply, but it's just as reasonable to assume that defining a region and a tax rate makes things easier to police. I'm not sure that anecdotes are enough to decide the issue.
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