Posted on 03/31/2011 8:54:38 AM PDT by mandaladon
Nevada’s state-regulated brothels uphold a vital institution in the American West’s most remote state, finds Rachel Ray. In February, US Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada native whose mother took in washing from whorehouses during his youth to support her family, proposed to a silent Nevada legislature that the world’s oldest profession should become illegal in the Silver State. “He’ll have to pry the cathouse keys from my cold, dead hands,” was one brothel owner’s reported retort to Reid’s suggestion.
Nevada is the only US state with legalised prostitution, which is heavily regulated and confined to rural counties with populations of less than 400,000. Several thousand women, considered independent contractors who must pay their own taxes, are registered as prostitutes in Nevada. But with a limited number of beds available, only about 300 are working at any given time in the state’s twenty-five legal brothels. According to Nevada conventional wisdom, the closer a brothel is to Sin City, Las Vegas, the prettier - and pricier - the girls.
Doug McMurdo, a veteran journalist in rural Nevada, has covered the state’s brothel industry for years and knows “more about prostitution than I care to admit” - although he’s never been a customer for the businesses he’s written about. The money brought into Nevada by the brothels really helps the rural towns, he said, particularly at a time when Nevada is experiencing its worst economy since the 1930s.
Brothel fees vary from county to county and on the size of the operation. Some small brothels, with just a few girls, pay a quarterly fee of $5,000 (£3,100). Bigger houses can pay up to $37,000 (£23,000) per quarter. One Nevada county takes in several hundred thousand dollars a year. The money is used for services ranging from ambulances to veterans’ assistance.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Makes it sound quite noble, eh? I'm so glad I don't have to live in NV.
Miss Kitty was no bar maid and no hooker, she OWNED the Long Branch! A madam for sure but that was never mentioned in the script.
I call Photoshop!
I think they were stained worse when returned.
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