Many of town's senior citizens oppose plan to outlaw brothels

[matcom]

<snip>

FALLON, Nev. -- Glenna Palludan smiled as she recalled this desert town nearly a half-century ago. Local stores sold saddles and spurs. Sick people visited a tiny hospital that has been replaced by a bigger, more modern successor. And right next to the old hospital was Sallie's house of prostitution.

"We were a wild place back then," the 67-year-old resident said. Town archives hold accounts of lusty fellows, mixed up about the address, who dashed into the hospital. One, it is said, even insisted on being admitted as a patient, thinking that naughty pleasures with "nurses" awaited him.

Now, Fallon has grown up. Sallie's is gone, having given way to a giant Wal-Mart and a community college. Retirees and young families keep streaming into town, drawn by affordable housing and a reasonable commute to Reno, 60 miles to the northwest. Fallon and surrounding Churchill County have a population of about 25,000, three times what it was in Ms. Palludan's high-school days.

A few miles east of town, though, a vestige of old Nevada lingers. Several flimsy trailers jut out of the desert. Above them, a tattered sign has three slinky women beckoning to motorists. This is the Salt Wells Villa Ranch, one of Nevada's 28 licensed brothels, down from a peak of 35 in the early '80s. Though Salt Wells halted operations a few months ago because of financial troubles, what will now become of it is the talk of the county.


Nevada is the only state in the U.S. where houses of ill repute are a legitimate business. Prostitutes are licensed. Owners pay property taxes, and county sheriffs nab customers who leave without paying. Las Vegas, by state law, is brothel-free, but in rural Nevada sin is alive if not thriving.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB109823678482350224-INjfINilaB3n52pZHuIcKWEm5,00.html

[indigobusiness]

1. That's good

because Condoleezza is going to be looking for work.

[Kolesar]

2. What a coincidence

They make Condi look pretty whenever she appears in the Wall Street Journal.