vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #148 / Social life / Reading article...

Visitors to our city learn quickly that the world's oldest profession is adapting to capitalism quite nicely. Modern brothels advertise in most newspapers, with photos featuring open-mouthed blondes and brunettes looking longingly (or predatorily) at the camera. And foreign men who visit Vladivostok bars and casinos often wonder whether they suddenly became five times more attractive the minute their feet touched down on Primorye soil.

Russia isn't unique. In America, prostitution exists in every major city, and major newspapers carry ads for "escort" services.

But the fact is, while it's natural that recent freedoms are causing a growth in sexual commerce here, prostitution is spreading into life outside the nightclubs.

It's become a joke with some of my friends that for a man, a stay in a Far East Russian hotel means nightly phone calls to his room. One friend, while sitting at a hotel bar, was so harassed that he asked the pimp to tell his "girls" to leave him alone. The pimp became angry and threatened him.

And perhaps a more sordid side to the profession is how it seems to be affecting us "non-working" women.

I was standing at my tram stop recently, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, cleaning my sunglasses. A foreign man approached me and asked in Russian if I wanted company. I said no, and he responded, "What, you don't need money? You have enough money?"

And I have another foreign friend who has to entertain her male bosses when they come to Russia. This involves going to nightclubs and drinking every night.

She was in a casino with her bosses once. Prostitutes walked by, giving her dirty looks. My friend was perplexed. But when her bosses hooked up with companionship, she went home.

The next morning at work, one boss told her that after she'd left the club, a pimp came over wanted to know who she was and who she was working for.

Relatively speaking, it's not so bad. I haven't seen here what I saw in a St. Petersburg hotel bathroom in 1992: a teenaged prostitute in a tight skirt, shooting heroin into her thigh.