We all have a fetish . . .

[dr_kromm]

. . . 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.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Here in moralistic California, I don't think most cities have red light districts. I know which street in my neighborhood is famed for its streetwalker population . . . but streetwalkers are a poor substitute, even for the streetwalker. Montreal's approach strikes me as more civilized. I'm glad to see an attempt being made to preserve it.

Of course, San Diego already has a large amount of half-occupied office and commercial space. But I doubt that would stop the city from encouraging people to build more, if we had any red light districts to tear down. The only thing most Californians have learned from the real estate bubble is that they want the government to bring it back.

Save The Red Light District!

[claydowling.livejournal.com]

Wow, what an amusing concept to an American. In Lansing, they bulldozed the redlight district to build a ball park. And a bunch of bars, and a convention center.

Of course, it did disperse the prostitutes around the city.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

I'm not against urban improvement where it's justified. If a city needs ballparks, gardens, parking lots, etc. . . . well, build them. However, it's hard to justify more steel-and-glass offices when you have millions of square feet of them standing empty and the number has been rising for years. It's especially iffy when the space in question isn't in the city's main business district. And it's morally questionable to act via expropriations and evictions – doubly so when you're citing "urban renewal" as your justification but really using that as a cover story to disenfranchise people who lack a voice.

I realize that it's common to have moral objections to lap dancers, strippers, and prostitutes, but let's be honest: There's enough of them in business in one area because the demand exists. The demand won't go away. Why put these people out of a workplace and then lie about the reasons? ("We need more office space!") How is lying a moral thing?

Setting that aside and getting to something I actually know about: There's also the fact that the same district supports alternative entertainment. A percentage of that is risqué, like most fetish shows and some burlesque. However, much of it – like a lot of niche dance and performance art – simply lacks a venue. How do the forces crushing a red light district on two-faced moral grounds justify tossing artists in the street in order to build empty towers?

It's a complex problem. However, it has its roots in the fallacy that the square feet of city you get to have dedicated to your particular interests should be proportional to the tax dollars you pay. Thus, wealthy developers and suburbanites feel entitled to dictate how the inner city is used, despite rarely going there. Meanwhile, people who work or perform there are silenced.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

we all have a fetish . . .
. . . and mine is for zombies

I find the notion of ZDSM equally amusing and disturbing.

[zonemind.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Not sure I agree. Now I shall very unscientifically extrapolate from my personal experiences…

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.)