Friday, January 23, 2009
Porn is the New Black (Gold)
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 10:00 AM
This week, intrepid reporter Tracy Moore took it upon herself to answer the age-old question How can I still afford to drink, smoke and screw to my heart's delight when I'm broke? What came of that query was Cheap Thrills: Your Recession-Friendly Guide to Vice in Nashville. In it you'll find a handy sinnin'-on-the-cheap how-to. You'll also find a perhaps unsurprising conclusion: even as paychecks suffer, the demand for vice does not.
As Moore discovered, the Nashville skin trade seems hardly to have been affected by the financial downturn. Hustler Hollywood on Church St. has no problem selling $150 Rabbits (the vibrator made famous by Sex and the City, or so I've been told), Deja Vu strip club says business has never been better and an escort who calls herself Diamond says her $75 private "dances" are still in high demand.
"It's still the same because the same people who spend money for me in the first place are the ones who still have it," she says. "The ones who don't hardly spend are the ones who don't spend anyway."
Stunning bit of logic, that is. Further evidence of this phenomenon can be found in an enterprise called AdultVest. (BTW, that link is technically SFW, but if your boss sees it open on your monitor your performance review might come earlier this year.)
Billed as "the world's first and only investment community designed specifically for the adult entertainment industry" (i.e. a porn hedge fund), AdultVest has pumped money into operations like iPorn, a start-up looking to, you guessed it, deliver porn directly to Apple's iPhone. As AdultVest CEO Francis Koenig put it to the Atlantic Monthly: "You've got six billion people on the planet and they're all horny."
So, anyone else thinking their guidance counselor was full of shit? Right. Meet you at Mystic Tan.
As Moore discovered, the Nashville skin trade seems hardly to have been affected by the financial downturn. Hustler Hollywood on Church St. has no problem selling $150 Rabbits (the vibrator made famous by Sex and the City, or so I've been told), Deja Vu strip club says business has never been better and an escort who calls herself Diamond says her $75 private "dances" are still in high demand.
"It's still the same because the same people who spend money for me in the first place are the ones who still have it," she says. "The ones who don't hardly spend are the ones who don't spend anyway."
Stunning bit of logic, that is. Further evidence of this phenomenon can be found in an enterprise called AdultVest. (BTW, that link is technically SFW, but if your boss sees it open on your monitor your performance review might come earlier this year.)
Billed as "the world's first and only investment community designed specifically for the adult entertainment industry" (i.e. a porn hedge fund), AdultVest has pumped money into operations like iPorn, a start-up looking to, you guessed it, deliver porn directly to Apple's iPhone. As AdultVest CEO Francis Koenig put it to the Atlantic Monthly: "You've got six billion people on the planet and they're all horny."
So, anyone else thinking their guidance counselor was full of shit? Right. Meet you at Mystic Tan.
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
like
dislike
