Sin is expensive in Sin City

Recently I had a work trip to Las Vegas and my wife joined me. It was our first time to visit the town and it was quite the sensory experience: the lights, the sounds, the smells. But one of the most interesting thing to me was some of the sidewalk business life. When you walk down the Strip you are accosted by any number of people selling or offering stuff, more aggressive than people you'd see even in New York. But the worst offenders are these little Hispanic dudes wearing shirts that say "Girls Girls" and other info and with a phone number. Some of them also wear these harnesses on their shoulders with a high-def image of two half-naked women making out, sticking up about two feet over their heads. These guys have these little cards - about the size of business cards - advertising escorts. On the card is an erotic photo of a girl (with starbursts over her privatist privates) with her name on it and a phone number and sometimes a website. Here's an assortment (not mine). Here's a good picture of the guys handing them out(they're on the left in the yellow and red shirt) and one with the harness.

These guys have developed this method of taking a handful of cards and slapping or flicking them so that they make this "thwap" sound. You look and they try to hand them to you. You don't look (which you learn)....and they try to hand them to you. In fact, they almost step right in front of you to stick a handful of these cards in your face...and they don't care if you're walking with your wife, girlfriend, etc. If you walk five blocks, you will encounter close to 100 of these guys, no exaggeration (and I think they're all from the same family in El Salvador) and each and every one will try to hand you some cards. At one point during our trip my wife said, for sport, "You should just get as many as you can. See if they'll all hand you some." So I started taking them and had a bunch in my pocket....when we got back to the hotel we looked at a few and noted some of the "marketing." Some of these cards said "$35 special," and others said, "$150 - no hidden fees." That one seemed more likely. I would guess the $35 was the rate you got after hiring an escort at $200 per hour on five different occassions, or something like that.

So curious as to how this works, I called the number from a card that had a girl named "Barit" on it and that advertised a flat $150 fee with no hidden fees. Some woman answers at what I assume is an agency and I said I was calling about a card I got on the Strip and she asked for the girl's name and I told her and she immediately tried to pressure me into an appointment. She asked where I was staying and I told her (as it was immaterial and seemed the next step to get my questions answered) and then she said, "So you want an appointment in the next couple of hours?" And I said that I had a few questions first and asked if the girl on the card was actually the girl who was going to show up. I mean, a lot of these places advertised a girl to your door in 20 minutes. But if Barit is in the middle of....business....at the other end of town, how is she going to get to me in 20 minutes? The response was, "Like every girl on every card in Las Vegas, that girl is just a model. But Barit is a petite, busty blonde with a California look...she is very gorgeous. Can we set up a time?" So who knows what you might be getting. And so I asked about the $150 fee. She said, "The $150 is our agency fee - that gets her to your hotel and gets her naked. She doesn't get any of that money, so what happens after that is negotiated between you and Barit and is considered a tip."

So "no hidden fees" huh?.....except the extra $200+ or whatever to actually get Barit to interact with the client's genitals! Maybe I'm a stickler, but in my book that's a "hidden fee." I thanked her and hung up. I wonder how this works if you're naive about the photo of the girl on the card. If the girl they send has buck teeth, a unibrow, and six fingers on one hand, you've already been charged $150. Are you going to argue with her? Are you going to call the agency? I mean, you're out that money, so I assume you're just going to go ahead and deal with the girl who shows up, right?

Interesting town.