It's Thursday, and the new column is up at The Stranger. It's about sex work and the economy, and it would not have been possible without help from some very cool Seattle sex-working ladies, who took time to answer a bunch of my nosy questions about how much money they were making. I regret that due to the space limitations of the column, I could not publish all of the wise and witty answers I got. So thank you very much, ladies, I really appreciate your input! Keep making money!

EDIT: Please know that the names used in the column are NOT the "real" professional names of the ladies in question. Everyone quoted got an alias!

Man, a lot of store-front sexy places are either getting busted or closing up - perhaps to avoid a bust?. What is this, the last hurrah of SPD vice squad before the budget cuts really kick in?

(Not that I'm saying the X-otic Tan ladies did handjobs, because I had pals who worked there and they said nope, they didn't. And they have no reason to lie to me. But there was definitely sexy stuff happening.)

The Lavender Salon place was right across the street from where I get my nails done, and I could tell at a glance it was a sex work business. Monk and I did a podcast, soon to be aired, about how I could tell. One tip: people, do not paint a sex work establishment a really lurid, eye-catching shade of purple. I'm not kidding - the whole building was vividly, painfully purple. It did not blend, in genteel old Madison Park. And Madison Park is a terrible place to put a store-front sex work business, anyway, so that was a bad idea all by itself.

Overall, I'm just glad I'm not taking new people these days, it seems a little weird around town right now. However, the New York Times is quite mistaken if it thinks the recession is going to put an end - or even a really serious damper - on the sex industry. Look for my column in The Stranger on exactly that topic tomorrow.

I’d like to make some clarification about my stance on “sex work in the news” stories. It’s one thing to comment at length on certain types of stories. But several people have sent me links to recent news stories about a fetish model who suffered a horrific attack and lost someone she loved, and asked me what I think about it.

The answer is: I think it’s a terrible tragedy. What else could anyone think? An unbalanced man targeted her for his obsession, killed her boyfriend and kidnapped her. Thank God she survived. I can only imagine how devastated I’d be if I was her. I think we should shut up and leave her decently alone to recover as best she can.

Thus, I have nothing else to say about the matter, except that I’m rather appalled at the “news” stories that took the opportunity to post galleries of sexy photos of her in fetishwear, as if they were somehow germane to the story. Voyeuristic vultures. No, I’m not going to link to them or say her name. You can find the stories if you want to, but really, there’s nothing there that hasn’t happened before.

And that’s the really tragic part – that this sort of thing happens to all kinds of women, and to some men, too. I don’t know if anything anyone might have done would have prevented this. But please, please, buy and read this book: The Gift Of Fear. It is the best resource I’ve ever come across for recognizing and avoiding dangerous people. They do walk among us, and they don’t just prey on pretty models.