LAS VEGAS — The pleasure of Stacie’s company used to cost $450 an hour, but no longer. Her clients were capped at 35 and older; but today she’s taking almost anyone. Sex acts once off the menu are suddenly back on — recession specials, served with a side of shrugging compromise.
If she doesn’t do more for less, Stacie says, another prostitute will. And her weekly income is still down by half.
The illegal prostitution economy in the Las Vegas area is a multimillion-dollar beast fed by a black market so diverse that it’s impossible to pin down. On one hand, midrange prostitutes like Stacie say they’re being crippled by the economy. On the other, high-end call girls claim they’re not feeling much pain. And the women charging the least reportedly are making the most these days — counterintuitive in an industry where bargains come with risks.
Consider the work of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who surveyed hundreds of high-end prostitutes in New York and discovered that 40 percent of “trades” in the sex economy never went beyond light petting or kissing.
In Las Vegas, the economy’s effect on call girls is even more complicated: The bulk of clients — or johns — are here are from out of town, tourists or businessmen who spend days in convention halls and nights in hotel rooms with to-your-door entertainment.
Meanwhile, more women reportedly are getting into the business, which creates a classic supply and demand squeeze. An escort agency owner said he’s getting about 40 interested applicants every day, the majority of whom are women running from the wreckage of lost finance jobs.
Now fold another factor into that dynamic: When the economy is bad and people feel their mortgages closing in, they seek comfort in vices: alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, pornography and prostitution.
In Vegas, prostitutes who charge between $600 and $700 are being hit the hardest. The women (and the smaller number of men in the business) who charge in the $200 to $300 range are doing the same business as before, if not better, according to Susan Lopez, founder of the Sin City Alternative Professionals’ Association for local sex workers. And women who charge thousands of dollars for multi-hour appointments say that they’re not really being affected at all.
Rebecca charges $2,000 to start. Overnights cost $4,000. Travel and multiple-day excursions are negotiable.
If you don’t believe people would pay that kind of money, consider the case of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, who authorities allege spent $80,000 on escorts in one year, despite having a lot more to lose than the cash.
When financial panic intrudes on the prostitution world, escorts often lower their rates in response, according to Amanda Brooks, author of the Internet Escorts Handbooks. That’s a mistake, she says, not just because established higher-end prostitutes are more immune to economic fluctuations, but because lowering rates changes the kind of clientele call girls attract.
How street prostitutes are faring in Las Vegas is unclear — even women with close ties to the industry are so far removed from these prostitutes that they don’t know.
Women who work for escort services also face a strain that independents such as Stacie and Rebecca do not. The escort service charges a base fee of several hundred dollars, and it’s up to the escort to negotiate with the client on top of that. One local escort, reflecting on the economy, said she knew things were getting bad when women who once would walk out of a room for anything less than a $1,500 tip were now hanging around for only a few hundred dollars.
But here’s the irony: When the economy is stable, women who charge midrange fees often end up making more money than call girls serving the high-end clientele, Lopez said. High-end call girl Rebecca makes $15,000 in an average month, but when times are good, Stacie, who charges midrange fees, can clear $25,000 — she just has to hustle much harder for it. It’s a trade-off that plays money against mental health and safety.
Brooks said that if the bad economy does anything to escorting it will be this: Prostitutes will become better at marketing themselves.
“They going to be looking into Web sites, looking into blogging, getting a little more savvy about their marketing,” she said. “And the smart ones will compete for clients in a way that doesn’t impact the girls, not by lowering their prices and by giving more than they feel comfortable with, but by increasing their market savvy.”
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