Road trip to Amsterdam!

[revwardoc]

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-...0601-bsi8.html

Red-light district hit as tourists become tight-fisted

Eva, a 25-year-old prostitute in Amsterdam's red-light district, gestures angrily in the direction of a rival who has slashed her rates as the economic crisis emboldens sex tourists to haggle.

"People like her make it very difficult for the rest of us," scowled the tall, blonde Estonian in skimpy black-and-white lingerie as she dragged on a cigarette while posing for men passing the window in which she offers herself.

"Some of the girls are now doing it for 30 euros (A$70). My price is still 50 euros, but the men are playing us off against each other. Some want to pay only 20 euros," she said.

Eva is not the only one complaining.

As the credit crunch keeps away sightseers and business travellers, owners of brothels, escort agencies and sex shops grumble that visitors who still do indulge in the pleasures of the flesh are increasingly tight-fisted.

"Things are bad," said Dave Doeve, who owns Casa Rosso sex shop in Amsterdam's red-light district where neon-lit prostitutes' windows normally draw hoards of tourists.

"There are no people, as you can see. And those who come buy small things, condoms, cheap things."

Brothel owner Willy van der Sloot, herself a former prostitute, said she had never seen the sex market so depressed.

"Some days there are just no people," she sighed.

Twenty-six-year-old Oxana, who shares Eva's window, says her income has halved in six months while her window rent went up 25 percent in January.

On a "good day" she sees six clients but sometimes only one -- at 50 euros per visitor not enough to cover her half of the 150 euro daily rent.

"But I can't do it for 20 or 30 euros like some of the others. That is not money."

Escort club owner Hugo Snoep said: "Things have never been this bad" in his 16 years in the business. "Me and the girls are battling to keep our heads above water."

Between taking calls from clients, offering them a special price of 160 euros per girl per hour -- down from the usual 175, Snoep said the economic crisis had made a deep dent in his biggest client base -- travelling businessman.

"Before they had big expense accounts from which they could subtract their 'meals' and the like. Nowadays, their bosses are not so generous. We are all in the same economic boat.

"Where I used to send out 12 to 14 girls a day, now I am down to just three some days."

According to Andre van Dorst, director of the Netherlands' VER sex industry association, turnover has dropped 30-40 percent over the last year.

The more exclusive the club, the bigger the impact as clients seek cheaper options.

"Eating and drinking are the very last things people save on, followed by sex -- both are basic needs. In these difficult economic times, people frequent restaurants less and supermarkets more, just as they opt for less glamorous sex clubs," said van Dorst.

Metje Blaak, spokeswoman for De Rode Draad (The Red Thread) sex workers' representative group, said clients were "paying less and demanding more".

"The girls often have no choice but to discount their prices. They have to pay the rent."

Though prostitution has long been tolerated in the famously liberal Dutch capital, the Netherlands only legalised the world's oldest profession in 2000.

Last December, Amsterdam's city officials announced plans to halve the total 482 prostitutes' windows in the centre in a multi-million-euro revamp that would also involve shuttering many cannabis-vending coffee shops, another tourist drawcard.

Officials claim the two vices, in themselves not illegal, attract elements of organised crime. But observers have pointed to a growing Dutch conservatism.

Blaak warned that these changes, coupled with the economic recession, were forcing the industry underground as sex workers struggling to make ends meet abandon the regulated environment to avoid having to pay window rent and the 35 percent income tax.

"You are already seeing more women walking the streets," said Blaak.

"The economic crisis is changing the character of the industry. Previously, the women were in charge, now it is the men who call the shots."

[DMZ-LT]

Not that I ever went , but if you went to the cheaper end The Wall in Nuremberg the day before payday it cost 6 marks. In 1969 that was about $1.50

[revwardoc]

The Wall: I was there in 1970. First time I saw women with hairy armpits and legs. Kinda put the fire out...for a while anyway. A few beers later and hair be damned.

[Arrow]

“The economic crisis is changing the character of the industry. Previously, the women were in charge, now it is the men who call the shots."

The women have NEVER been in charge in the sex industry. The average age a woman enters the sex industry is 13 or 14 years old. A child that doesn't even know her own mind or who she is, sold, coerced, forced by circumstances into the sex industry does not grow up into a woman in control of her life let alone a world wide criminal enterprise.

In charge “Pretty Women” live only in the the minds of Hollywood screen writers and producers.

"For a great part of 1992 I lived in a beautiful apartment on Capitol Hill. I drove my expensive car. I bought lovely clothes and traveled extensively out of the country. For the first time in my 20 years as an adult woman, I paid my own way. There was no need to worry about affording my rent, my phone bill, all the debts one accumulates simply by living month to month. I felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I hated my life All the things I came to possess meant nothing. I could not face myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul." Survivor interviewed by Debra Boyer, Lynn Chapman and Brent Marshall in Survival Sex in King County: Helping Women Out (1993), King County Women;s Advisory Board, Northwest Resource Associates, Seattle.

The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years (M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133) or 14 years (D.Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution, Lexington, Mass, Toronto). Most of these 13 or 14 year old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against Domestic Violence, 1990)

My great niece ministered to the girls on the street in Vancouver. She could tell you just how in charge they are of their daily circumstances. Controlled by their pimps, lost to their families, brainwashed, and hopeless.


(Describing the trauma of prostitution, and its consequences, one fourteen year old stated: "You feel like a piece of hamburger meat – all chopped up and barely holding together" (D. Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night, Lexington Books, Toronto).
　
(90% of prostituted women interviewed by WHISPER had pimps while in prostitution (Evelina Giobbe, 1987, WHISPER Oral History Project, Minneapolis, Minnesota)

The age of entry into prostitution is decreasing. For example, how do we even conceptualize "juvenile" prostitution, when the age of consent for legal sexual activity is constantly lowered, as in Netherlands and Philippines? (Kathleen Mahoney, Professor of Law, Calgary University, Canada, 1995)


Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes (interviews with Nevada psychologists cited by Patricia Murphy, Making the Connections: women, work, and abuse, 1993, Paul M. Deutsch Press, Orlando, Florida; see also Rita Belton, "Prostitution as Traumatic Reenactment," 1992, International Society for Traumatic Stress Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes," Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133; C. Bagley and L Young, 1987, "Juvenile Prostitution and child sexual abuse: a controlled study," Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, Vol 6: 5-26.

When my dad and his brothers were young men they were in my Grandmother’s dining room running down what they considered a loose woman. My grandmother came out of the kitchen and read their pedigree with "You boys be quiet and never again speak bad about that girl in this house, if she is all that you say she is, it's men like you that have made her that way." Loved that woman. She was my hero.


http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/factsheet.html

http://www.womenlobby.org/site/video_en.asp

[Boats]

Hated the beer - the food was bland. Did window shop a few times felt really uncomfortable for some reason. Went to a Chinese restraunt where they spoke Chinese and German had to order off the picture book. Saw a few windmills and canals. Bicyles were everwhere and not a few but hundreds were riding daily.

I was much happier when I got back to Munich, Germany - Great Beer and food. Went to school in Dusseldorf for about three months. Dangerous at night over there - got some real bad gang's at night. Saw lots of old WWII German war monuments and symbols around Dusseldorf. Was surprised.

[revwardoc]

http://wbztv.com/local/topless.coffe...2.1029391.html

Topless Coffee Shop In Maine Gutted By Fire

A topless coffee shop in Maine has been gutted by fire.

The blaze was reported at about 1 a.m. Wednesday at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, just north of Augusta.

Owner Donald Crabtree says he lost his home and business in the fire, and that he had no insurance.

The state fire marshal's office is trying to determine the cause.

The shop featured topless waitresses and waiters serving coffee and doughnuts.

The fire happened only hours after Crabtree met with town planners to discuss making it more like a strip club, with longer hours and dancing.

The shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it initially went before the town planning board.

Someone recently called police to complain that a waitress was outside the business without a shirt on.

[revwardoc]

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/offb...090526_2515813

Sexy New Vietnamese Cafes

It's service with a smile, bikini and high heels

Garden Grove (myFOXla.com) - Some Vietnamese coffee houses in Orange County are brewing up something different.

No, it's not a new tea or coffee blend. It's the waitresses... who wear a uniform consisting of little more than a bikini with high heels.

Cafe Di Vang 2 in Garden Grove is one of a growing number of local Vietnamese coffee houses where the waitresses wear the revealing outfits.

According to one waitress there who spoke with FOX 11's Al Naipo in his video report, the place is more like an "Asian Hooters for coffee."

Hot beverages and smoothies... that's pretty much all they've got. There's no food, but the the waitresses will take time to sit and chat with the customers.

"We talk to you," says one of the waitresses. "(We) ask you how your day going. Care for you as a friend, too."

It's all about friendly service and making the customer feel at home... a place where they can watch tv, play cards or a board game, and just hang out.

The servers tell us they're ok with wearing very little and also that they rarely get customers who want more than what's on the limited menu.

"How they treat the customer is very respectful and nice," says owner, Dan Nguyen. "I don't have any problem at all."

By the way, if you're wondering what prices are like at Cafe Di Vang 2, here are a couple of examples... the coffee's $4.50 and the smoothies are $6.00.

Not a bad price to pay for the priceless service!

__________________________________________________ ___________________

go to the website for a video

[revwardoc]

http://www.wmtw.com/news/19683419/detail.html

Topless Coffee Shop Relocating To Tent After Fire

Vassalboro Residents To Vote On Future Of Adult Businesses In Town

VASSALBORO, Maine -- The owner of a topless coffee shop destroyed by fire last week in Vassalboro said he plans to have clothed waitresses collect donations in the parking lot to raise money to rebuild.

Under town zoning rules, Donald Crabtree would need a new permit to start operating his business from a trailer or other structure on the property. Instead, Crabtree set up a tent.

"We're under a tent but we're still here," Crabtree told News 8. "Everybody's safe, so it's just material. So, we'll rebuild again and get going."

Crabtree is having employees hand out free donuts and coffee next to a collection jar.

"This is kind of the beginning, just showing that we're not quitting," said Krista MacIntyre, a waitress.

Crabtee's home and business were destroyed in a deliberately set fire Wednesday, just hours after he had talked with local officials about making the business more like a strip club.

"It's great that he can have such a good attitude. I hope people support him and help him," said Gerald Burleigh, who supports the shop.

The fire caused $500,000 in damage, and Crabtree did not have insurance.

Crabtree said the tent will remain open all week, rain or shine.

Previous Stories:
•June 3, 2009: State Fire Marshal's Office Says Vassalboro Blaze Was Arson