The Las Vegas Courtesan

Even though the small survey that was posted in the Las Vegas Review Journal late last month said that 64% of 405 people didn’t want prostitution legalized in Las Vegas (or Clark county as a whole,) there have been recent moves in the closest legal county next door to revamp two of the brothels out in Crystal, Nevada, since Dennis Hof of the famous Moonlight Bunny Ranch near Carson City bought them. There’s another brothel being built (wow when was the last time they built a brand new building for a new brothel??) south of Beatty. The two are in different directions when leaving Las Vegas but both businesses are in Nye County. I’m definitely going to have to add these stops to my brothel tour I want to take once they open!

I find it interesting that it took this long for Dennis Hof to do something in southern Nevada. His name and reputation are famous from the Cathouse series on HBO over the years and many local vistors get his brothels nearly 450 miles away from Las Vegas confused with the brothels located about 70 miles away. In fact I almost giggle when guys almost threaten me with a, “Well I’ll just go to the Bunny Ranch!” when they can’t agree on entertainment and a lower price. I say, “Ok you can definitely drive 450 miles one way if you want to!” That usually warrants the response of, “What? 450 miles?!” Nye County is also happy about the Dennis Hof movement since the previous owner of the brothels out in Crystal, Nevada, was convicted of bribery of a local commissioner (bribing a commissioner in Nevada? Never heard of such a thing!) These brothels in the county (if they have a certain number of girls) bring in an average of $126,000 annually to the county in fees! I also was digging around and found out each girl must pay a fee every quarter to the county as well. These fee figures vary by county, but in the end they bring a lot of money in to help out with county services (apparently the Veterans Association even gets a good chunk.) I’m curious though how the out-of-the-way brothels in Crystal and Beatty will do. The Denis Hof purchase is 17 miles past the turn off for Sheri’s and the Chicken Ranch while Beatty is a whopping 120 miles from downtown Las Vegas to the new location. The lucky thing about Mound House, where the famous northern Nevada brothels are located, is that they are one split hair away from the Carson City limits and 35 miles from Reno. The little community of brothels gets the advantage of being so conveniently located. That sort of convenience can’t really happen for Las Vegas to Nye County, so will these brothels ever be really busy out there? And why isn’t there another mini-community set up right on the Nye county border on the way out to Pahrump?

Though from my previous post on legalizing prostitution in Las Vegas, I wasn’t much of a fan of actual houses in a certain part of town, but really, if we had some sort of standardization then we wouldn’t be so criticized in the news like prostitution in Las Vegas was just running rampant and some random figure of 3,000 sex workers roaming the streets working here like this is the wild west. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much money the business brings in for the rural counties. In the end I think it could bring a better opinion to the sinfulness of Sin City and keep the shady operations, like the ones just shut down, from scamming our visitors.