In der Mahagonnydrinksalon / La vie secrète de guys / The secret life of guys / VLEEPXTRA: Yobbo City transit map

Hey Guy -- click. It's a good thing.

Vleeptron is extremely
proud to display
the only map of the
Yobbo City Rapid Transit System
to be found anywhere
on Earth or on the Internet.
We present it as an educational
public service to guys everywhere.

e-mail from Curious George:

Got a link to Der Spiegel brothel article?

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Bob, renowned Man of the World, bon vivant, sophisticate of 3 (count 'em! 3!) continents, boulevardiere, feuilletoniste, etc., replies:

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Hiya, is this what you wanted? This has the Latitude and Longitude and the nearest subway stop.

So much for Sex with your Soccer. Where are the Drugs?

As a Certified Human Hetero Male, I am deeply embarrassed to report that I have been inside two brothels, by accident, for long periods of time, and didn't even realize I was in a brothel.

And a third, but not by accident. My passengers on the drive home from Mexico, the guy was a former high school jock from Texas, and he wanted to revisit "Boys Town," the brothel compound maintained by the Mexican government, where all Texan boys are introduced to sex by their uncles. (His wife, a former cheerleader, was muy pissed off.) We got there around lunchtime and had a pretty good Mexican lunch. If you're not having the sex, it's sort of a big truck stop with a big restaurant; most of the customers we saw were truckers taking a relaxing break from the highway.

Hmmmm okay so anyway I was a reporter in Miami and got this assignment to drive to an address in Fort Lauderdale with a guy photographer to interview a visiting celebrity named Margo St. James, a San Francisco woman who had become famous by organizing the first prostitutes' union in America. We got to the address, a very nice one-story suburban rambler -- it looked pretty much like Beaver Cleaver's neighborhood, except the homes backed onto pleasure-boat canals that led to the ocean. It was about 2 pm, and before we conducted the interview on the dock, the hostess lady fixed us iced tea in the kitchen. I noticed she and her husband seemed to have several attractive and healthy-looking high-school/college-age daughters who wandered in and out from the bedroom area, like with shower towels on their heads; they wore t-shirts and jeans. Outside and inside, it seemed just like the family next door.

The photog did his thing and I interviewed Margo for at least 30 minutes before the hostess interrupted, to make a point about what Margo was saying. The hostess said:

"When my husband and I
opened this brothel
three years ago ............."

The photographer's jaw fell to the dock and flies started buzzing around in his gaping mouth. Me -- well, my folks had paid a lot of money to send me to drama school, so I did a better job than the photog at pretending I wasn't having a massive stroke.

The other brothel was in Mexico City, and my Spanish sucks, so that explains how I'd rented a cheap hotel room there and didn't realize it. No other clues if you weren't good with the lingo. Just dozens of young luscious Mexican women leaning over the balconies with their boobs falling out of their peasant blouses and grinning at bunches of men going in and out of their rooms. Perfectly understandable how I missed that one.

I'll never forget that place, it was a block from the wonderful huge Eating Market, the Plaza Garibaldi, wonderful food and loud Mariachi bands 24/7/365. My establishment was the

R*i*v*a
P*a*l*a*c*i*o

and I recommend it very highly: *******. Unbelievably cheap hotel rates. That's how we found it. Our travel companions were two Nutty-Crunch women from Oregon backpacking thru Mexico on a superstrict budget, and they demanded that I (the Official Expedition Translator/Chauffeur) find them the cheapest hotel in Mexico City. I sure did.

During the four days we stayed there, I did indeed finally figure out Where We Were -- but I had to keep it a secret from the Nutty-Crunch women, or they'd be outraged and demand that we leave immediately and find the 2nd cheapest hotel in Mexico City. (I didn't want to do that, we had a ton of crap in the hotel room to carry out to the car.)

When we checked out, I was unable to convince the clerk that we'd been there four days. No one had ever been there for that long. No matter how hard I tried to explain, he only charged us for one night.

I don't think there's a more embarrassing thing in the world than to be a man in a brothel and not even know it.

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Artemis (brothel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Artemis is one of Germany's largest brothels. It opened in Berlin in September 2005, a four-story building complete with a pool, three saunas, two movie theaters, and with room for up to 70 prostitutes and 600 customers.

Prostitution is legal and widespread in Germany. The Artemis is organized as a sauna club, similar to several other German brothels: customers and prostitutes pay an entry fee (70 Euros) and can then use all facilities as long as they want; food and non-aloholic beverages are included (no alcohol is served). The women, about 30-40 in number at a typical night, are nude; the men are clothed in robes. Sexual services typically include oral sex without condom, french kissing, and sexual intercourse with condoms. The payment (normally 60 Euros for half an hour) is given directly to the women after the act; the house does not receive a cut but regulates the prices and services. The German prostitute support group Hydra has endorsed the transparent concept but has reserved judgement until the working conditions of the women could be evaluated.

"Although the outside of the building is about as erotic as a corporate office park, the interior is a bizarre cross between mid-1990s Las Vegas and a cheezy British "Carry-On" film." [1]

The brothel was created by the Turkish businessman Haki Simsek for some 5 million Euros. It has 40 employees, in addition to the prostitutes which technically are not employees. Prostitutes can stay at the brothel, renting rooms on the fourth floor which is off-limits to customers.

Artemis

52° 29' 58.2" N
13° 16' 56.6" E

is located near the West end of the Kurfürstendamm in an industrial area of Charlottenburg, close to the metro and railway station Westkreuz and about 0.5km south of the ICC International Congress Center. It is about a mile and a half from Berlin's Olympic stadium, famous for hosting the 1936 Olympics and the venue for several games of the upcoming 2006 World Cup in football (soccer).

[NOW! It's right NOW!]

"Norman Jacob, lawyer for the private investor who wishes to remain anonymous, said: 'Football and sex go together extremely well.'" [2]

Some newspaper articles have pointed out that the brothel's name is somewhat ill-fitting, as in Greek mythology Artemis was the virgin goddess of chastity.

Several comparable clubs exist in Germany, most of them in the area north of Frankfurt. One of them, Atlantis, was closed in 2004 after legal troubles.

[? gossip, rumor, court documents, newspaper articles in all lingos gratefully accepted @ Agence-Vleeptron Presse.]

* Artemis home page
* Independent news in UK
* MSNBC
* dw-world.de
* Spiegel
* The Guardian
* "Im Gewerbegebiet", Berliner Zeitung, November 10, 2005. Extensive report on Haki Simsek and Artemis. [German]

* This page was last modified 04:35, 6 June 2006.